urbaned

Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education

Reflections of a black female scholar: I know what it feels like to be invisible

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

Cherise Smith, University of Texas at Austin

A new insurance commercial shows comedian Mindy Kaling embracing what it means to be invisible: As Kaling walks down the grocery aisle messily eating ice cream, she uses her “cloak” of invisibility to feel up the muscles of a handsome basketball player.

Kaling, who is of South Asian descent, successfully makes the point of how people look through her, until the punchline arrives: Nationwide Insurance sees her and will take care of her.

As a black female academic, I know only too well what it feels like to have people look right though you. Let me give one instance – from just a few weeks ago, when I felt unrecognized for who I am.

I approached the podium of the lecture hall at the university at which I am a tenured professor. It was the first day of class and the instructor of the previous course was still around, talking informally with her students. Looking around the podium, I noticed that the classroom was not equipped with a computer.

I asked my colleague, whom I did not know, if there was a computer hidden in the cabinet. She proceeded to instruct me: “faculty are provided computers, they bring their computers, and use a dongle to project on the screen.”

Her words told me she didn’t recognize me as faculty; she did not see me as professor.

So, I responded: “This faculty was provided a computer which she has brought. This faculty has not taught in a classroom that is not equipped with a computer before today.”

Without missing a beat, she said, “When the professor arrives, she’ll have the right set up. Are you the teaching assistant?” “I’m the professor,” I told her emphatically. She gave me a confused and befuddled look, before saying “Oh.”

Black academics are almost invisible

What’s the point of this anecdotal evidence, and does it have anything to do with race and gender? I bring this up to illustrate a larger problem which is a huge topic of conversation among black academics and other professionals across the country.

Actor David Oyelowo expressed a larger sentiment, when analyzing the “Selma” Oscar snub (in which only the film’s song won an award but its director and actors were not even nominated) recently, he said:

“We, as black people, have been celebrated more for when we are subservient; when we are not being leaders or kings or being in the center of our own narrative, driving it forward.”

Let me first put things in perspective: a recent American Association of University Professors (AAUP) study shows that around 25% of professors at doctoral degree granting universities are women.

However, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, at that same level of research institution, African Americans make up less than 5% of faculty and fewer than half of those professors are women.

The small number of African-American women academics makes us mostly invisible: if you can’t see us, you don’t have to engage with us or with our perspectives.

Such episodes have longer term consequences

While episodes of “misrecognition,” as the one that I experienced, may seem harmless, they are actually not so. Psychologists call them acts of “micro aggression.”

Micro aggression sends out messages that have serious long-term consequences
Fist image via www shutterstock.com

Micro aggression is the name given to behaviors that are a result of biases against marginalized groups. Such behaviors often leave people feeling uncomfortable or insulted.

One study states that “micro aggressions result in high degrees of stress for blacks because of denigrating messages: ‘You do not belong,’ ‘You are abnormal,’ ‘You are intellectually inferior,’ ‘You cannot be trusted,’ and ‘You are all the same.’”

The authors conclude that “feelings of powerlessness, invisibility, forced compliance and loss of integrity, as well as pressure to represent one’s group are some of the consequences.”

My colleague’s refusal to “see” me smacked of racial bias, conveyed through an act of micro aggression. My physical package as a middle-aged, professionally dressed black woman did not correspond with her idea of what a professor looks like.

She couldn’t see me as the leader of the class and couldn’t recognize me as a professional equal.

With a few short sentences, and, I assume, without malice, that colleague dismissed my experience, education, and training at the same time that she undermined my authority in front of 60 students.

Ignorance is not an excuse

Often such incidents get attributed to a youthful appearance. Upon hearing the story, my husband tried to point out how the “confusion” happened. Generally a pessimist, he is forever an optimist when it comes to matters of race – likely due to his own Anglo-Saxon background.

“Sweetie, you referred to yourself in the third person rather than in the first person,” he reasoned. “You confused her.” “Besides,” he continued, “you look young.” “Maybe you should take it as a compliment,” he suggested.

The course’s teaching assistant, having watched the entire episode, expressed somewhat similar sentiments. “That happens to me all the time,” she said and suggested her Latina background and youthful appearance, as an explanation.

That I was “misrecognized” might be a function of my outfit and my youthful appearance, she ventured.

I understand that none of us — neither Oyelowo, the Latina graduate student, nor I — is the victim of lynching or Jim Crow-era discrimination. Oyelowo starred in a well-received movie in a lead role.

My colleague was astute enough to see I was part of the university community, albeit as a graduate student rather than as tenured faculty. There was no harm done, and there was no foul play. Right?

Not exactly.

The consequences of such micro aggressions add up: they equal “death by a thousand cuts,” as one colleague calls them. They result in diminished mental and physical well-being, and they are shown to “increase the risk of stress, depression, the common cold, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, and mortality.”

What in academic language is called micro aggression, is, in fact, experienced as “aggression.” This aggressive tendency comes from a shared experience among dominant white culture, namely, a refusal to see the import and impact of racism, as described by Jessica Nelson, Glenn Adams and Phia S Salter, researchers at the University of Kansas and Texas A&M University.

“Although popular and scientific understandings tend to portray ignorance as a lack of knowledge,” the researchers say, “this work emphasizes that ignorance itself is a form of knowledge that makes it possible to ignore or remain unaware of things that might otherwise be obvious.”

As with the law, ignorance is no excuse. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

__________

The ConversationCherise Smith is Associate Professor of Art History at University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Policy & Reform, Trending Topics, Year-Round Schooling

How to Implement a Year Round Schooling System

Do you feel year-round schools would be a good choice for your district? The article that follows offers information on how to transition to a year-round school format, if you choose to go that route.

First, you need to decide what type of year-round school scheduling system you will use. Year-round schools are usually set up as single-track (ST) with unified attendance or multi-track (MT) with staggered attendance programs. Some schools use a combination of the two. The main difference between the two systems is that single-track allows the entire student and staff population to adhere to the same calendar, and multi-track separates students and teachers and places each in one of several staggered instructional blocks and vacation schedules.

To make this even more complicated, the single-track and multi-track systems can have different variations. In the 60-20 schedule, the school year is separated into three sixty-day sessions with three twenty-day vacations. A variation on this schedule is the 60-15, which provides for an additional three- to four-week collective vacation. This plan can be used with either the single-track or multi-track system. Collectively, these calendars are used by a little more than a third of year-round schools in America.

Lastly, let’s talk about two year-round calendars that are used by around 40 percent of year-round schools. In the 45-15 schedule, forty-five days of instruction are followed by fifteen days of vacation time. The related 45-10 schedule provides an additional four-week vacation for staff and students. Again, these plans can be implemented in either a single-track or multi-track system (Quinlan et al. 1987).

Choosing an implementation team

Before attempting to set up a year-round school in your district, it is important to get approval from at least 80 percent of your faculty, staff, and parents. This will require a number of meetings, presentation of literature on the subject, and time for discussion. If you do not get approval, you should strongly reconsider implementing a year-round system in your district. Assuming that you will receive the necessary approval, let’s move on to the next steps.

When transitioning to a year-round school setup, you must first assemble the implementation team. Groups no larger than seven usually work best. The team can be made up of a variety of district personnel and staff. Implementation teams normally consist of a school board member, the superintendent and assistant superintendents, principals, teachers, and other pertinent individuals.

Once the team is created, efforts must be made to assess the district’s capacity for implementing and sustaining year-round schools. The team must ask itself whether the district has all of the resources needed to implement and sustain a year-round system. In extreme cases, when the district feels it is unable to coordinate its own implementation efforts, the team may want to consider hiring an experienced educational consulting firm to oversee the process. There are many well-qualified firms that will be able to either work in conjunction with an implementation team or oversee the process themselves. Note, however, that this can turn into an enormous job with a significant price tag.

The consulting team or team leader must be committed to developing and implementing innovative strategies that have the potential to effectively produce educational change. Simply assembling a top-notch team is not enough, however. All of the major administrators, including the superintendent and school board, must fully support the decisions of the implementation team.

Remember that parents, community leaders, and policymakers must also be included in the process. Many parents are involved in their students’ educational plans and want to be informed of any changes. The implementation team will need to decide if parents and community leaders should be included as formal members of the team, or to simply elicit their advice and expertise as needed. When making decisions concerning which individuals will populate the team, remember to include members that have the expertise to be taken seriously within the district.

Involving parents and community members in the implementation process might provide the restructuring team with a way to engage other members of the community, such as grassroots organizations, local business leaders, and area politicians. Community members can also assist the school in choosing the correct year-round school system and schedule. It is vital for the team to understand the culture of the community, its needs and wants, and the life skills its young people require.

If the school would like to create fundraisers to assist in the efforts to transition to a year-round school system, it is important that the community members understand why the school wants extra money and why they should give the extra money. If the community members disagree with the changes being made, they will be less likely to participate or contribute to the cause.

Having an implementation team is an important component in a successfully transition to a year-round school system. The task of choosing the leader and deciding on the roles of the implementation team should not be taken lightly. In many instances, the leader of the implementation team will be the superintendent or someone he or she appoints. Alternatively, the leader and other members of the team can be voted in. The leader must be held accountable for ensuring the success of the entire team as it moves to implement and sustain year-round schooling. The leader’s roles might include, but are not restricted to, determining the areas of expertise the team members bring to the table and how he or she can utilize that expertise.

Implementing a year-round schooling system

 To ensure the minimum amount of time is spent on implementing the system, the leader will need to establish a standing meeting time and develop an agenda to utilize time to the fullest extent possible. The leader must decide if the team should have mandatory or optional meetings. If the meetings are optional, the leader must decide how information is disseminated to members who do not attend meetings. Prepared agendas are essential for smooth meetings and excellent communication within the team.

Once the year-round system is approved by all team members, the plan will need to be approved by the superintendent before it is presented to the school board. The same rules apply whether implementation is needed by one school or by all the schools in the district.

A concern, alluded to in the comments above, is the need to assess the district’s capacity for implementing and sustaining a year-round schooling system. To appropriately assess the abilities of the district or school, the leader will need to complete an inventory of the pros and cons. If the inventory concludes that the district or school does not have the capacity to implement or sustain the plan, it may be wise to suspend the idea until you have the necessary capacity.

Often, volunteer team members do not understand the dedication and length of time it will take to carry out the transition to a year-round schooling schedule. Before the team starts to implement the necessary changes, the leader will need to stress to all team members the enormity of the task, the number of hours the members will need to dedicate to the project, and what is at stake.

Once the team’s year-round schooling plan has been approved, it is time to implement the approved plan. First, the implementation team will discuss possible impediments to the approved plan and ensure the team has a contingency plan in place to deal with the issues as they arise. Next, they should implement their target goals and timelines. The leader will need to appoint a member of the implementation team to take on the responsibility of collecting, reporting, and evaluating any data collected. The leader will use the data collected to continuously revise and refine the team’s implementation efforts, as well as report their findings to the superintendent and/or the school board.

A useful tool for education specialists considering a move to year-round school years is the “Year-Round Education Program Guide” published by the California Department of Education. The guide takes you through the process of deciding on and implementing a year-round schooling calendar. The steps below are taken from the guide.

Implementation steps

  • Select schools and grade levels.
  • Establish a process for resolving issues.
  • Select and approve a calendar by working with employee groups.
  • Assess the need for facilities modifications, including shade modification and storage areas for off-track teachers.
  • Submit budget requests to district business office.
  • Decide if year-round education will be implemented on a voluntary or mandatory basis for students and employees.
  • Develop and approve a track preference and assignment policy for students, keeping in mind the need for same schedules for family members. Balance tracks by ethnicity, academic ability, socioeconomic level, and educational need.
  • Develop and approve a track assignment policy for teachers and staff.
  • Determine staff in-service schedule.
  • Institute a year-round education informational network for certificated and classified staff members and parents.
  • Send choices of tracks to parents by early spring.
  • Notify parents as soon as possible of track assignment.
  • Develop a policy and system for track-change appeals.
  • Develop a system for delivering services during the summer (e.g., classroom supplies and textbooks).
  • Modify/expand food services according to need.
  • Modify payroll periods.
  • Develop a system for plant maintenance and utilization of empty rooms.
  • Ensure that air conditioning and insulation are able to provide summer comfort.
  • Bargain with all appropriate classified and certificated units.
  • Develop a work schedule for office, custodial, and administrative staff members.
  • Develop a system to deliver electives and special services, such as special day classes, psychological services, resource specialists, and bilingual education.
  • Ensure appropriate cash reserves to meet summer payroll and supply expenses.
  • Modify transportation system as required, including routes, number of buses, and service schedules.
  • Establish a system for teacher room rotation or roving.
  • Develop a community-school communication system for notifying off-track families of important school dates and activities.
  • Provide activities for connecting off-track employees and parents.
  • Reschedule special events such as holiday programs.
  • Design attendance accounting system as required.
  • Modify report card schedule.
  • Coordinate with community services, such as the recreation department, youth organizations, church groups, and the police department.
  • Identify and coordinate with child care providers.
  • Identify intersession instructional programs and schedules.
  • Modify student testing program (California Department of Education 2015).

Track assignment considerations

General axioms

Establish the following priorities in deciding who gets first track preference, of a track:

  • Respect district employees and keep parents on the same track as their children.
  • Respect the terms of divorce settlements by respecting parents visitation schedules.
  • Consider unique family circumstances (e.g., predictable annual visits of families located in different parts of the country or the world).
  • Acknowledge unique educational opportunities (e.g., a cello prodigy who is offered a summer camp).
  • Use a fair, balanced track assignment policy once priorities have been honored. Each track should mirror the ethnic and socioeconomic composition of the entire school population.
  • Minimize ability and/or special education need track segregation. If a special population must be put on one track, isolation and segregation can be minimized by partial day integration of self-selection of track.
  • Develop an appeals process, including:
  • A site administrator.
  • An appeal committee (made up of an administrator, a teacher, and a board member).

Do not:

  • Load tracks by ability level.
  • Load tracks by special groups (e.g., band or football).
  • Move students from track to track each year (unless requested).
  • Wait too long to announce track assignments.

Operational strategies for special services

Special day classes

  • Typically confined to one track (or two if the population warrants).
  • Extended school year days are typically offered during intersessions (California Department of Education 2015)

Evaluation of a year-round schooling system

In order to validate their efforts, the implementation team will need to evaluate the effectiveness of its year-round schooling system. The process of evaluation can be completed in-house, or the district can hire outside consultants to perform the task. Hiring outside consultants is preferable, as it provides an impartial evaluation of the year-round schools. However, this can be costly, so many school districts may have no choice but to do it themselves. If the implementation team is willing to evaluate the success of the year-round school system, they must first develop a plan for evaluation.

The team’s evaluation plan should have been developed before the year-round schooling system was implemented. Performance goals that were created at the beginning of the implementation process should be used to guide the evaluation process. The team will need to decide who will collect, analyze, and interpret the data. In order to avoid biased results, it may be in the best interests of the school to hire an outside consultant who may provide a more objective assessment. The team will also use the results to determine whether the year-round schooling system was effective. The results may indicate that the plan was not a success. In this case, the best solution is to build upon the small successes and learn from the mistakes.

Implementation of a year-round school system is a long-term process. Reform occurs on a continuous cycle that must be sustained in order for improvements to be maintained and furthered. Keep in mind that not every reform effort bears fruit. Even the best schools have to continue to work in order to perfect their year-round schooling system.

References

Adler, Rachel, Rebecca Franckle and Kirsten Davison. 2014. “Accelerated Weight Gain among Children During Summer Versus School Year and Related Racial/Ethnic Disparities: A Systematic Review.” Preventing Chronic Disease 11:130355. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd11.130355.

“Benefits of Year-Round Schools Touted.” n.d. Education News. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.educationnews.org/articles/benefits-of-year-round-schools-touted.html.

Breslow, Jason. 2012. “By the Numbers: Dropping Out of High School.” PBS Frontline. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/by-the-numbers-dropping-out-of-high-school/.

Burgess, Matt. 2013. “Mapped: How Many Hours Do Children Spend at School around the World?” Help Me Investigate. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://helpmeinvestigate.com/education/2013/04/mapped-how-many-hours-do-children-spend-at-school-around-the-world/

California Department of Education. 2015. “Year-Round Education Program Guide.” Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/fa/yr/guide.asp

Chaika, Gloria. 1999. “Is Year-Round Schooling the Answer?” Education World. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin137.shtml.

Dessoff, Alan. 2011. “Is Year-Round Schooling on Track? Summer Learning Loss and Overcrowding Drive Alternative Schedules.” District Administration. Accessed September 9, 2016. https://www.districtadministration.com/article/year-round-schooling-track

“Education Policy: Advantages.” n.d. K12 Academics. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.k12academics.com/education-policy/year-round-school/advantages#.V9VFZ_krLDd.

Fitzgerald, John. 2009. “Minnesota School Year Requirements Too Casual.” Minnesota 2020. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.mn2020.org/issues-that-matter/education/minnesota-school-year-requirements-too-casual

Holzman, Seymour. n.d. “Year-Round School: Districts Develop Successful Programs. Education USA. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED062682.

Lederman, Doug. 2009. “The Impact of Student Employment.” Inside Higher Ed. Accessed September 9, 2016. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/08/work.

Mendez, Edgar. 2014. “Congressional Report Highlights Year-Round Schools.” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, July 8, 2014. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://archive.jsonline.com/blogs/news/266264841.html

Morin, Amanda. 2016. “The Pros and Cons of Year-Round Schooling.” Child Parenting. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://childparenting.about.com/od/schoollearning/a/year-round-school-pros-cons.htm.

O’Brien, Daniel M. 1999. “Family and School Effects on the Cognitive Growth of Minority and Disadvantaged Elementary Students.” University of Texas at Dallas. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.utdallas.edu/research/tsp-erc/pdf/wp_obrien_1999_family_school_affects.pdf .

“President Obama Wants to Keep Kids in School Longer: Extended Days, Weekend Hours, Shorter Summers.” NY Daily News, September 28, 2009. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/president-obama-kids-school-longer-extended-days-weekend-hours-shorter-summers-article-1.407418

Quinlan, Claire, George, Cathy and Emmett, Terry. 1987. Year-Round Education: Year-Round Opportunities. A Study of Year–Round Education in California. Los Angeles, CA: California State Department of Education.

Rogers, Kate. 2014. “How to Keep Your Electricity Bills Cool This Summer.” Fox Business. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2014/05/27/how-to-keep-your-electricity-bills-cool-this-summer.html

Von Hipple, Paul. 2007. “Save Iowa Summers.” Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.saveiowasummers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Paul-von-Hipple-Research1.pdf.

Washington, Jessica. 2013. “Year-Round School Could Be the Answer to the Minority Drop-Out Problem.” Politic365. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://politic365.com/2013/05/20/year-round-school-could-be-the-answer-to-the-minority-drop-out-problem/

American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “WatchingTV/Screen Time and Children.” n.d. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Children-And-Watching-TV-054.aspx.

 

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity, Matthew Lynch

4 Troubling Truths About Black Boys and the U.S. Educational System

Most people like to think that American K-12 schools, workplaces and courthouses are pillars of fairness, but statistic after statistic all point to a crisis among the young, Black men of the nation. This crisis begins in homes, stretches to K-12 educational experiences, and leads straight to the cycle of incarceration in increasingly high numbers. In America’s prison systems, black citizens are incarcerated at six times the rates of white ones – and the NAACP predicts that one in three of this generation of Black men will spend some time locked up.

Decreasing the rates of incarceration for black men may actually be a matter of improving educational outcomes for black boys in America. In his piece “A Broken Windows Approach to Education Reform,” Forbes writer James Marshall Crotty makes a direct connection between drop-out and crime rates. He argues that if educators will simply take a highly organized approach to keeping kids in school, it will make a difference in the crime statistics of the future.

While there are many areas of improvement that we could look at changing for more successful outcomes for black men, I will discuss just four indicators that illustrate the current situation for black boys in the U.S., with the hope of starting a conversation about what we can do to produce a stronger generation of Black young men in our society.

  1. Black boys are more likely to be placed in special education.

While it is true that Black boys often arrive in Kindergarten classrooms with inherent disadvantages, they continue to experience a “behind the 8-ball” mentality as their school careers progress. Black boys are more likely than any other group to be placed in special education classes, with 80 percent of all special education students being Black or Hispanic males.

Learning disabilities are just a part of the whole picture. Black students (and particularly boys) experience disconnection when it comes to the authority figures in their classrooms. The K-12 teaching profession is dominated by white women, many of whom are very qualified and very interested in helping all their students succeed but lack the first-hand experience needed to connect with their Black male students.

  1. Black boys are more likely to attend schools without the adequate resources to educate them.

Schools with majority Black students tend to have lower amounts of teachers who are certified in their degree areas. A U.S. Department of Education report found that in schools with at least 50 percent Black students, only 48 percent were certified in the subject, compared with 65 percent in majority white schools. In English, the numbers were 59 and 68 percent, respectively and in science, they were 57 percent and 73 percent.

  1. Black boys are not reading at an adequate level.

In 2014, the Black Star Project published findings that just 10 percent of eighth-grade Black boys in the U.S. are considered “proficient” in reading. In urban areas like Chicago and Detroit, that number was even lower. By contrast, the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress found that 46 percent of white students are adequate readers by eighth grade, and 17 percent of Black students as a whole are too. The achievement gap between the two races is startling, but the difference between the NAEP report on Black students as a whole and the Black Star findings of just Black boys is troubling too. It is not simply Black children in general who appear to be failing in the basics – like literacy; it is the boys.

Reading is only one piece of the school puzzle, of course, but it is a foundational one. If the eighth graders in our schools cannot read, how will they ever learn other subjects and make it to a college education (or, in reality, to a high school diploma)? Reading scores tell us so much more than the confines of their statistics. I believe these numbers are key to understanding the plight of young Black men in our society as a whole.

  1. Punishment for black boys is harsher than for any other demographic.

Punishment for Black boys – even first-time offenders – in schools is harsher than any other demographic. Consider these facts:

What’s most troubling is that not all of the Black boys taken from their schools in handcuffs are violent, or even criminals. Increasingly, school-assigned law enforcement officers are leading these students from their schools hallways for minor offenses, including class disruption, tardiness and even non-violent arguments with other students. It seems that it is easier to remove these students from class through the stigma of suspension or arrest than to look for in-school solutions.

School suspension, and certainly arrest, is just the beginning of a life considered on the wrong side of the law for many Black boys. By 18 years of age, 30 percent of Black males have been arrested at least once, compared to just 22 percent of white males. Those numbers rise to 49 percent for Black men by the age of 23, and 38 percent of white males. Researchers from several universities concluded earlier this year that arrests early in life often set the course for more crimes and incarceration throughout the rest of the offender’s lifetime.

No wonder they aren’t in college…

These trends are not conducive to improving the numbers of young black men who are able to attend college. In fact, the numbers are dismal when it comes to black young men who attend and graduate from colleges in the U.S. Statistically speaking, black men have the lowest test scores, the worst grades and the highest dropout rates – in K-12 education, and in college too.  The recognition of this educational crisis has led to some strong initiatives targeted at young black men with the intention of guiding them through the college years and to successful, productive lives that follow.

This is why college motivation within and outside the black community is so vital for these young men. At this point in the nation’s history, they are in the greatest need for the lifestyle change that higher education can provide, and not just for individual growth, but also for the benefit of the entire nation. But in order to get there, black boys must experience the motivation to succeed well before college.

 

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Equity, Matthew Lynch

Ask An Expert: Disrupting the School-to-Prison Cycle

Question: Dr. Lynch, I am a youth counselor in Philadelphia, PA. Everyday I witness the public school system fail our children. The end result is that many of them drop out and end up in prison. What can activists like myself do to end the school to prison pipeline? Nate T.

Answer: Nate, thank you for sending this question my way. Though all people are genetically predisposed, it is ultimately the environment that encompasses the formative years that shapes lives. Some of that comes from home environments, and the rest from society. Our nation’s public schools play an integral role in fostering talents, but also in building our children’s internal worth.

When one student is causing a classroom disruption, the traditional way to address the issue has been removal – whether the removal is for five minutes, five days or permanently. Separating the “good” students and the “bad” ones has always seemed the fair, judicious approach. On an individual level this form of discipline may seem necessary to preserve the educational experience for others. If all children came from homes that implemented a cause-and-effect approach to discipline, this might be the right answer. Unfortunately, an increasing number of students come from broken homes, or ones where parents have not the desire or time to discipline. For these students, removal from education is simply another form of abandonment and leads to the phenomenon called the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

Children are just as much a product of their environments as the expectations placed on them. Parents on a first-name basis with law enforcement officials certainly influence the behavior of their children, but school authorities with preconceived negative associations create an expectation of failure too. Increasingly, educators are learning how to recognize the signs of textbook learning disabilities like ADHD or dyslexia. But what about the indirect impact that factors like poverty, abuse, neglect or simply living in the wrong neighborhood have on a student’s ability to learn? Where are the intervention programs that keep these students on academic track without removing them from the school setting?

The term “zero tolerance” may sound like the best way to handle all offenses in public schools, but it really does a disservice to students. Not every infraction is a black and white issue and not every misstep by a student is a result of direct defiance. Often students with legitimate learning disabilities or social impairment are labeled as “disruptions” and removed from classroom settings under the guise of preserving the learning experience for other, “better” students. I suppose there is an argument to be made for protecting straight-and-narrow students from the sins of others, but at what cost? Schools are the first line of defense against this early form of pigeonholing, but the community needs to embrace the concept. Students with discipline problems are individuals that need customized learning experiences to succeed academically, in the years ahead.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, HBCU's, Higher Education, Matthew Lynch

Projecting False Truths: The 4.0 GPA at an HBCU vs. a PWI

Note: Today’s op ed comes to you courtesy of George M. Johnson, an advocate for change in Higher Education.  He is the Former Director of Student Accounts at Virginia Union University and counsels students properly preparing for college.  He has been published in HBCUDigest.com and blogs at iamgmjohnson.com.  Follow him on twitter @iamgmjohnson

Yesterday, a tweet from @Med_School12 took Social Media by storm that stated “A 4.0 at a HBCU is not equivalent to a 4.0 at a rigorous PWI.  Sorry, but it’s the truth”.  Immediately twitter swarmed this tweet as the thousands of retweets with comments ranged from a question mark to all out fury.  I too, took my frustrations out tweeting how my multiple degrees from HBCU’s have in no way made me less that of a person who received their degrees from a PWI.  After the initial shock and awe of the situation, I decided to sit down, gather my thoughts, and really think about what she actually wrote.

The tweet, although less than 140 characters is much layered in contradiction and furthermore should have been sold as her opinion not truth.

Issue 1: What differs a PWI from a Rigorous PWI

At first read, the tweet all but diminishes the worth of attending an HBCU in comparison to going to a PWI.  But upon further analysis, she actually does compliment and offend all in the same sentence.  Based on her teeth, she agrees that a 4.0 at an HBCU is equivalent or better than that of one from a normal PWI, just not a rigorous PWI.  So the true question that needs to be answered is “what is a rigorous PWI”.  Is it a top 20 ranked college? Is it a private school as opposed to a public school?  Is it based on the college’s endowment?  Either way, the determination of what makes one college rigorous compared to another is purely subjective to the student that attends.  Some students probably thought Harvard was easy as compared to those who may have struggled at Rutger’s.  There is no true way of determining the “rigors” of one college over another.

Issue 2: Is the statement based on where you were educated or where you teach?

This is one I had to think about.  Let’s say the PWI is made up of 5 professors that all were educated at HBCU’s.  The school they are being compared to is an HBCU that is made up of 5 professors that were all taught at PWI’s.  There is probably no need to go any further as you can probably see where I am going with this.  The statement does not take into account the people that are actually doing the instruction.  Based on the statement, your professors could have come from community college and HBCU’s, but as long as they are “worthy” enough to teach at a “rigorous” PWI, the learning will be greater.  But if you attend an HBCU with all professors with Harvard Education, your learning will not be equivalent because the perception of the HBCU as a whole is less than the standard.  The patriarchy and privilege in that statement alone is disappointing.

Issue 3: The final issue, which was also my initial reply, “whose truth”? 

In this age of social media, people are very quick to make accusations, assumptions, opinions, and poorly executed statements and claim that they are truth as if some actual research had been done.  Her claiming that the PWI she is attending is rigorous for her is “her truth”.  This should not be generalized and projected on others as a factual statement about the university that she attends.  My truth is that I have never attended a PWI, and any statement made about the rigors of one would solely be my opinion.  And to play devil’s advocate, there are many people whose truth is that they attended a PWI and an HBCU and found the HBCU to be more rigorous than the PWI.  That statement vice versa is someone else’s truth.

Living in the age of social media can be quite fun and intriguing, but it can also be dangerous when we begin spreading our truth’s as facts and making them the beliefs of others.  Rather than arguing if a 4.0 at an HBCU is equivalent to that of a 4.0 at a PWI, we should be praising and commending anyone that receives a 4.0 at any institution of Higher Education.  For that takes “rigorous” work.

 

Read all of our posts about HBCUs by clicking here.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Bullying

The use of homophobic slurs in sports: It’s for the athletes’ own good, right?

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Jennifer Fraser

“…male athletes in particular are held up as and expected to be paragons of a certain kind of masculinity, seen as the rejection of all that is coded ‘feminine.’ Exhortations that male athletes ‘be a man’ or ‘not act like little girls’ are even more pervasive in sports than they are in general culture. So it’s little surprise that a coach would use insults that imply his players are less than men to shame, humiliate and control them.” —T. F. Charlton

Homophobic slurs are an ideal way to stop young athletes from reporting abuse: if the coach regularly calls boys “pussies” or tells them to “grow some balls” or screams at them that they are “soft,” these boys are very unlikely to report because they worry that if they can’t hack such tough, masculine coaching, they might just be the feminized, degraded players the coach accuses them of being. Chances are good if you ask this kind of coach why he speaks to the boys this way, he will tell you that it’s to ‘toughen them up’. He will tell you that humiliating, taunting, and insulting, namely bullying, are effective tools to build athletic greatness. That’s how he was coached.

Unfortunately, there are many studies that reveal this kind of coaching harms athletes and fails to make winning teams. According to University of Toronto experts in the use of emotional abuse in sports: “One of the barriers to the implementation of an athlete-centered approach is the assumption, held by many sport practitioners, that holistic development comes at a cost to athletic performance.” However, there is “no empirical evidence” to back this belief up.[1] One of the greatest misconceptions in the sporting world is the belief that being hard on athletes makes strong teams.

As long ago as 1983, psychiatrist Dr. Alice Miller exposed a poisonous pedagogical approach as having devastating effects on children. Her study, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childhood and the Roots of Violence has been so influential that a new edition was released in 2002. Essentially, Miller argues that care-givers who use abusive approaches, whether physical or emotional, harm children in significant ways even though they claim to have “the child’s best interests” in mind.[2]

Poisonous pedagogy underpins the argument that coaches need to yell, swear, humiliate and demean athletes in order to get the best out of them and for their team to be successful.

I resigned from a school where homophobic culture was widespread and tolerated in the basketball program. To give some examples of the culture: one day, while the Senior Boys Basketball team were competing in the Provincial Championships, one of the coaches wrote an email to all faculty at the school using a homophobic slur: “Boys lose by 11 with a soft second half performance.” This is a team where the term “soft” is hurled at the boys on a regular basis at practices. The messaging is that the abuse is deserved because the boys are failing to achieve masculine hardness (with all of its sexual overtones likely not lost on adolescent boys or in sports culture in general). One of the coaches would yell at students that they were “soft as butter”; according to Google’s online urban dictionary, “soft as butter” is an “expression to describe an absolute pussy who makes the most cowardly person look like a hero.”[3] Fourteen students came forward to report that taunting and insulting language was eroding their confidence and killing their love of the game. They were clear that homophobic slurs were harmful to them.

The use of misogynistic or homophobic terms to humiliate teenage boys is both widely discussed and well documented in sports journalism and abuse literature. However, as the coaches themselves said in their responses to the student allegations of bullying, in a School culture where using this language is seen as “normal” it was difficult to know when they’d crossed the line. And far more insidious and poisonous are the students’ beliefs, when exposed to repeated humiliation, as they recorded in their testimonies, that perhaps they deserve it because they are “soft.” And to bring it full circle, the worry that they are in fact soft stops them from asking for help or protection.

When Rutgers’ basketball coach Mike Rice was exposed as using homophobic slurs, there was significant outcry and he was fired. In Yahoo Sports in April 2013, sports reporter, Erik Adelson says that when the video of Mike Rice abusing players was aired: “social media exploded with horror and one resounding question: Why didn’t anyone fight back?” He looks beyond Rutgers University to multiple athletics programs for his answer and concludes that the question of why athletes tolerate abuse has “a one-word answer: fear.”[4] Athletes, boys in particular, are afraid that if they speak up, they will be accused of being “soft”.

In an article that responded to the Mike Rice scandal, T. F. Charlton examines the phenomenon of athletes not reporting on abusive coaches:

We should hardly be surprised, then, that players don’t speak up about abuse — and even, as in Rice’s case and many others, actually defend abusive behavior. Male and female players alike model the message they receive: that coaches who violate their emotional and physical boundaries do so for players’ good, and players who don’t handle this stoically aren’t up to snuff.[5]

Only one player on the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights risked speaking up against Coach Mike Rice before the video was played on ESPN. Homophobic coaching must be stopped. As T. F. Charlton argues:

“Instead of teaching young athletes to accept and shoulder abusive coaching as being ‘for their good,’ let’s teach them — and remind ourselves — that they have a right to not have their emotional and physical boundaries violated. Let’s provide an institutional structure that is proactive about preventing and addressing abuse and protects athletes and staff who speak out about it.”[6]

As a society, we will never eradicate bullying until we create a culture of support and remedy for those who find themselves in a cycle over which they have little or no control. Just like children who bully are not tolerated, coaches who bully need to be removed instantly from their positions until they are able to stop, get a clean bill of health from a psychologist, and hopefully return to their job. We would never let a teacher with a highly contagious disease near students. Likewise, we should never let a coach or teacher who suffers from a bullying or other psychological disorder to interact with students as their tendencies may well be passed on.

As one student recounted in his testimony at my former school: “I worry that I might become like [two of the coaches]. I’m scared I will snap and coach like them. It’s a really big worry for me. I have the fear that being abused, I’ll abuse others.” Another student reports that when coaching his little brother’s team, he found himself resorting to the same abusive practices to which he had been subjected. When his behaviour was pointed out to him by the adult with whom he was coaching, he felt terrible. Nevertheless, it was still a struggle for this bullied player to stop emulating the abusive coaching style he had learned as a younger player. He wanted to be seen as tough, hard, and successful after having that beaten into his mind over and over again at practices and games.

This honest admission by teenagers about how they have been negatively impacted is extremely concerning especially in terms of the students who normalize bullying behaviour, do not speak up against it or turn a blind eye when they witness it happen. Perhaps this is why there is a bullying epidemic not only in schools, but also in the workplace. For further discussion of emotional abuse in athletics, see Fraser’s forthcoming book, Teaching Bullies: Zero Tolerance on the Court or in the Classroom.

 

[1] Ashley E. Stirling and Gretchen A. Kerr, “Abused Athletes’ Perceptions of the Coach-Athlete Relationship”, Sport in Society Vol.12.2, March 2009: 227-239.

[2] Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childhood and the Roots of Violence, trans. Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux: 2002.

[3] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Soft%20as%20butter

[4] Erik Adelson, “Why do College Athletes Tolerate Abuse?” Yahoo Sports, April 2013: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaab–why-don-t-college-athletes-call-out-abusive-coaches–222535612.html

[5] T. F. Charlton: “Why do athletes tolerate abusive coaches? In locker rooms, insubordination is a worse crime than abuse of authority. Unless that changes, nothing else will.” Salon.com http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/why_do_athletes_tolerate_abusive_coaches/

[6] T. F. Charlton: “Why do athletes tolerate abusive coaches? In locker rooms, insubordination is a worse crime than abuse of authority. Unless that changes, nothing else will.” Salon.com http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/why_do_athletes_tolerate_abusive_coaches/

_____

Jennifer Fraser has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto and is a published writer. She is presently teaching creative writing and International Bacclaureate literature classes at an independent school in British Columbia.

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Matthew Lynch published in Bullying

The use of homophobic slurs in sports: It’s for the athletes’ own good, right?

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Jennifer Fraser

“…male athletes in particular are held up as and expected to be paragons of a certain kind of masculinity, seen as the rejection of all that is coded ‘feminine.’ Exhortations that male athletes ‘be a man’ or ‘not act like little girls’ are even more pervasive in sports than they are in general culture. So it’s little surprise that a coach would use insults that imply his players are less than men to shame, humiliate and control them.” —T. F. Charlton

Homophobic slurs are an ideal way to stop young athletes from reporting abuse: if the coach regularly calls boys “pussies” or tells them to “grow some balls” or screams at them that they are “soft,” these boys are very unlikely to report because they worry that if they can’t hack such tough, masculine coaching, they might just be the feminized, degraded players the coach accuses them of being. Chances are good if you ask this kind of coach why he speaks to the boys this way, he will tell you that it’s to ‘toughen them up’. He will tell you that humiliating, taunting, and insulting, namely bullying, are effective tools to build athletic greatness. That’s how he was coached.

Unfortunately, there are many studies that reveal this kind of coaching harms athletes and fails to make winning teams. According to University of Toronto experts in the use of emotional abuse in sports: “One of the barriers to the implementation of an athlete-centered approach is the assumption, held by many sport practitioners, that holistic development comes at a cost to athletic performance.” However, there is “no empirical evidence” to back this belief up.[1] One of the greatest misconceptions in the sporting world is the belief that being hard on athletes makes strong teams.

As long ago as 1983, psychiatrist Dr. Alice Miller exposed a poisonous pedagogical approach as having devastating effects on children. Her study, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childhood and the Roots of Violence has been so influential that a new edition was released in 2002. Essentially, Miller argues that care-givers who use abusive approaches, whether physical or emotional, harm children in significant ways even though they claim to have “the child’s best interests” in mind.[2]

Poisonous pedagogy underpins the argument that coaches need to yell, swear, humiliate and demean athletes in order to get the best out of them and for their team to be successful.

I resigned from a school where homophobic culture was widespread and tolerated in the basketball program. To give some examples of the culture: one day, while the Senior Boys Basketball team were competing in the Provincial Championships, one of the coaches wrote an email to all faculty at the school using a homophobic slur: “Boys lose by 11 with a soft second half performance.” This is a team where the term “soft” is hurled at the boys on a regular basis at practices. The messaging is that the abuse is deserved because the boys are failing to achieve masculine hardness (with all of its sexual overtones likely not lost on adolescent boys or in sports culture in general). One of the coaches would yell at students that they were “soft as butter”; according to Google’s online urban dictionary, “soft as butter” is an “expression to describe an absolute pussy who makes the most cowardly person look like a hero.”[3] Fourteen students came forward to report that taunting and insulting language was eroding their confidence and killing their love of the game. They were clear that homophobic slurs were harmful to them.

The use of misogynistic or homophobic terms to humiliate teenage boys is both widely discussed and well documented in sports journalism and abuse literature. However, as the coaches themselves said in their responses to the student allegations of bullying, in a School culture where using this language is seen as “normal” it was difficult to know when they’d crossed the line. And far more insidious and poisonous are the students’ beliefs, when exposed to repeated humiliation, as they recorded in their testimonies, that perhaps they deserve it because they are “soft.” And to bring it full circle, the worry that they are in fact soft stops them from asking for help or protection.

When Rutgers’ basketball coach Mike Rice was exposed as using homophobic slurs, there was significant outcry and he was fired. In Yahoo Sports in April 2013, sports reporter, Erik Adelson says that when the video of Mike Rice abusing players was aired: “social media exploded with horror and one resounding question: Why didn’t anyone fight back?” He looks beyond Rutgers University to multiple athletics programs for his answer and concludes that the question of why athletes tolerate abuse has “a one-word answer: fear.”[4] Athletes, boys in particular, are afraid that if they speak up, they will be accused of being “soft”.

In an article that responded to the Mike Rice scandal, T. F. Charlton examines the phenomenon of athletes not reporting on abusive coaches:

We should hardly be surprised, then, that players don’t speak up about abuse — and even, as in Rice’s case and many others, actually defend abusive behavior. Male and female players alike model the message they receive: that coaches who violate their emotional and physical boundaries do so for players’ good, and players who don’t handle this stoically aren’t up to snuff.[5]

Only one player on the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights risked speaking up against Coach Mike Rice before the video was played on ESPN. Homophobic coaching must be stopped. As T. F. Charlton argues:

“Instead of teaching young athletes to accept and shoulder abusive coaching as being ‘for their good,’ let’s teach them — and remind ourselves — that they have a right to not have their emotional and physical boundaries violated. Let’s provide an institutional structure that is proactive about preventing and addressing abuse and protects athletes and staff who speak out about it.”[6]

As a society, we will never eradicate bullying until we create a culture of support and remedy for those who find themselves in a cycle over which they have little or no control. Just like children who bully are not tolerated, coaches who bully need to be removed instantly from their positions until they are able to stop, get a clean bill of health from a psychologist, and hopefully return to their job. We would never let a teacher with a highly contagious disease near students. Likewise, we should never let a coach or teacher who suffers from a bullying or other psychological disorder to interact with students as their tendencies may well be passed on.

As one student recounted in his testimony at my former school: “I worry that I might become like [two of the coaches]. I’m scared I will snap and coach like them. It’s a really big worry for me. I have the fear that being abused, I’ll abuse others.” Another student reports that when coaching his little brother’s team, he found himself resorting to the same abusive practices to which he had been subjected. When his behaviour was pointed out to him by the adult with whom he was coaching, he felt terrible. Nevertheless, it was still a struggle for this bullied player to stop emulating the abusive coaching style he had learned as a younger player. He wanted to be seen as tough, hard, and successful after having that beaten into his mind over and over again at practices and games.

This honest admission by teenagers about how they have been negatively impacted is extremely concerning especially in terms of the students who normalize bullying behaviour, do not speak up against it or turn a blind eye when they witness it happen. Perhaps this is why there is a bullying epidemic not only in schools, but also in the workplace. For further discussion of emotional abuse in athletics, see Fraser’s forthcoming book, Teaching Bullies: Zero Tolerance on the Court or in the Classroom.

 

[1] Ashley E. Stirling and Gretchen A. Kerr, “Abused Athletes’ Perceptions of the Coach-Athlete Relationship”, Sport in Society Vol.12.2, March 2009: 227-239.

[2] Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childhood and the Roots of Violence, trans. Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux: 2002.

[3] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Soft%20as%20butter

[4] Erik Adelson, “Why do College Athletes Tolerate Abuse?” Yahoo Sports, April 2013: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaab–why-don-t-college-athletes-call-out-abusive-coaches–222535612.html

[5] T. F. Charlton: “Why do athletes tolerate abusive coaches? In locker rooms, insubordination is a worse crime than abuse of authority. Unless that changes, nothing else will.” Salon.com http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/why_do_athletes_tolerate_abusive_coaches/

[6] T. F. Charlton: “Why do athletes tolerate abusive coaches? In locker rooms, insubordination is a worse crime than abuse of authority. Unless that changes, nothing else will.” Salon.com http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/why_do_athletes_tolerate_abusive_coaches/

_____

Jennifer Fraser has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto and is a published writer. She is presently teaching creative writing and International Bacclaureate literature classes at an independent school in British Columbia.

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education

What your choice of degree means for your future earnings

Francis Green, UCL

The mass expansion of higher education, the arrival of high fees in English and Welsh universities, the ongoing technology revolution and the Great Recession have pushed and pulled the graduate labour market in contrasting directions over the last 15 years.

So a new study published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies to help us to better understand how new graduates fare when they leave university is especially welcome. Until now, our understandings have come from surveys, with only some thousands of respondents, or else from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey, which tracks earnings six months after graduation.

By linking administrative data from the Student Loan company, pay data from HMRC’s records, and university level data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the study’s authors have been able to work with a data set containing a quarter of a million English-domiciled graduates. They have been able to look at earnings in much greater detail, by institution and by subject area.

The study also captures earnings at the upper extremes better than surveys can, which is especially important at a time when earnings have become more and more unequal at the top end. Despite some weaknesses – it only covers students who applied when they were living in England, for example – this is a significant step forward.

Big differences in earnings

It’s well known that graduate earnings vary a lot according to subject taken. The report confirms that medicine and economics graduates earn the most, while creative arts graduates occupy the bottom of the earnings table, as the graph below shows. In addition, the study finds a remarkable spread in how much graduates earn, even among those doing the same subject at the same institution.

On the face of it, the investment in higher education is quite a risky business, when looked at solely in financial terms. The authors illustrate this with remarkable findings from the LSE, where the top 10% of male graduate earnings was £170,000, compared to median earnings at around £40,000. At the bottom end, graduation does not guarantee employment in a graduate job.

Naturally, there are also substantial earnings variations between graduates from different universities. Yet most of this is accounted for by differences in student intake and in subject composition.

The study also found that graduates from high-income households earned much more than those coming from low-income households – some 45% more for women and 60% for men. This family income gap is partially accounted for by subject choice, and further mediated by the university a student attended.

Nevertheless, it looks as though parental income continues to affect children’s fortunes beyond their time growing up – more so for men than for women, and more at the extremes of the earnings spectrum. So, while higher education continues to matter a great deal, the labour market seems not to be entirely meritocratic. Possible explanations have centred on the role of social and cultural capital, including the role of social networks.

What’s the endgame?

More studies such as these can be expected over the coming years as administrative data is better harnessed for research purposes. The ultimate aim is to find and present accurate information of the graduate earnings premium for each institution and subject. This information would then be available to aid students in their choices. It’s hoped this could address Britain’s low social mobility by minimising unwise choices by those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.

While better information will surely be welcome, we should not hold too many high expectations for this new era of big data for higher education research. Not least, the focus will inevitably always be on earnings and employment. There will be a great temptation for the media to hold some universities to account when their students do less well in terms of pay. Yet one could hardly expect those universities to somehow fix the labour market by altering the changing demand for skilled labour – which is where the problem may lie.

While the IFS study does not name institutions at the lower end of the graduate earnings spectrum, it seems only a matter of time before this happens as future studies emerge with even larger data sets.

Concentrating only on the employment and pay implications of going to university also encourages neglect of the broader educational needs of a modern advanced democracy. Yet as my own ongoing research is finding, even when graduates do not succeed in getting graduate jobs, they gain in other ways: they contribute external benefits to others in society, and still earn more on average than those in non-graduate jobs.

The Conversation

Francis Green, Professor of Labour Economics and Skills Development, UCL

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Higher Education, Teachers

Teacher Prep and Better Resources: How to Reach Urban Students

By Matthew Lynch

Students in urban schools tend to have stereotypes attached to them. Rather than see these students as individual learners, many urban kids and their schools are often thrown into the “lost cause” category. Problems like deteriorating buildings and overcrowding often become too overwhelming for reformers. As always, before we can implement change, we need to fully understand the problem.

Not one-note students

In a 2009 article in the Harvard Political Review, writers Tiffany Wen and Jyoti Jasrasaria discuss the “myths of urban education.” The article points out that many people are quick to label urban schools as lost causes without actually investigating individual issues or how they can be resolved. Issues such as overcrowding, poor discipline practices and budget cuts are continually pervasive in urban schools.

Studies have found a correlation between overcrowding and lower math and reading scores. Teachers also cite overcrowding as a definite contributor to student behavior problems. Too many kids in classrooms means too little individual instruction. It also means that academic time is spent dealing with issues that distract from education. Overcrowding is only one problem that contributes to urban student disadvantages but one that deserves the spotlight.

Too quick to remove students?

Removal from school as a disciplinary measure, while potentially the easiest short-term solution, feeds the school-to-prison cycle that is built primarily in urban schools. Instead, mentorship programs would go a long way toward directing urban students toward higher academic engagement and graduation rates. Many colleges have implemented mentorship programs for at-risk students, like first-generation college students, so why can’t K-12 schools do the same?

With budget cuts a perennial complaint, though, more money for K-12 mentorship initiatives is unlikely. The bottom line is that urban students need more individual attention in order for their academic outlooks to improve. Technology has the potential to reach a wider number of students but the human connection is what will have a lasting positive impact on urban students.

Better teacher prep for urban students

In my book The Call to Teach: An Introduction to Teaching I explore the “real world” of teaching, particularly how new educators are ill-prepared to face the challenges of teaching in urban settings. Traditional university programs for K-12 educators do not adequately prepare students for what awaits them in the urban schools of America where the achievement gap and dropout rates are highest.

In the face of these obstacles, strong teaching in America’s urban schools is the key to overcoming dropout and achievement gap issues. Recruiting teachers with urban backgrounds—and then rewarding them is one strategy.  In addition, urban student teachers should be required to spend at least a few hours in an urban classroom, in addition to their other teaching assignments.

Seeing urban challenges firsthand must be part of every educator’s path to a degree, even if he or she never teaches full time in such a classroom.  With the right guidance, urban K-12 students can rise above their circumstances to be stand-outs in academics. They may even return the favor as teachers themselves one day. For urban teachers, and therefore students, to succeed they need more support and encouragement from their industry, government and society as a whole.

What do you think?  What other issues do urban students face that make their situations uniquely challenging?

photo credit: Draco2008 via photopin cc

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Education Leadership

The economic argument for ethnic studies

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest column by Jim Estrada

Our nation is undergoing a cultural evolution as a result of an ethnic population explosion. In a blink of the eye, Hispanics, Latinos, and mestizos have grown to 54 million in 2015 and are projected to reach 132.8 million by 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Much of this growth will come from natural childbirth among U.S. citizens, not immigration as many in the U.S. have been led to believe to believe.

But what else do we not know about our nation’s largest and fastest-growing ethnic neighbors? Simply stated, very little!

We have a substantial information gap in the USA’s educational curricula regarding our nation’s non-European white populations. Exposure to accurate unbiased information about them, their histories, and contributions to our nation can lead to a better understanding of their increasing influence and contributions as the fastest growing consumers, K-12 students, taxpayers, voters, and members of the workforce. This gap represents a glaring need, as they are already the “majority” of the population in many metropolitan areas across the nation.

According to the Selig Center at the University of Georgia, consumer spending among Latinos increased appreciably and grown at a faster rate than that of the overall U.S. population. Since 1990 the nation’s Hispanic buying power grew dynamically. In sheer dollars, their economic clout rose from $212 billion in 1990, to $489 billion in 2000, to $978 billion in 2009, and was estimated to reach over $1.5 trillion by 2015.

To effectively interact with this diverse and fast-growing ethnic group, mainstream society must become better informed of its members’ histories, cultures, and contributions to our nation. Already, U.S. Spanish-language media has recognized the historical void in positive programming images and limited news coverage related to the Latino segment of U.S. society and is addressing that need. In a world of increasingly diverse information sources and content, Spanish-language media is demonstrating that cultural relevance works; and more importantly, that it is profitable—for itself and its advertisers.

Questions many non-Spanish speaking professionals and managers need to answer are: “Do you possess the necessary skills to deal with the growing influence of this ethnic population on your “bottom line”? Is the traditional white-Eurocentric “one size fits all” approach to marketing and advertising still profitable?” If the answer is no, then the next question must be: “Are the nation’s educational systems, companies, government, and non-profit organizations prepared to invest in preparing experts who can provide them with culturally competent professionals?”

There are many thoughts on how to create cultural competency. The logical place to start is in our nation’s school systems, which are charged with expanding the knowledge base that affect the goals and objectives of our society and the marketplace. The most successful private companies and public service delivery sectors must increase their number of culturally competent, career-specific, degreed individuals when creating a diverse employee team that more accurately reflects the demographic changes occurring in our population.

Due to these rapidly changing demographics, employers must increasingly rely on employees who demonstrate knowledge of their respective organization’s diverse consumers and possess the cultural proficiencies to manage new brands or services, communications, and outreach initiatives that address the organization’s integrated operational and marketing efforts. Having culturally competent “aces” in all the right places insures increased market share, profits, and sustainability in an increasingly diverse and competitive marketplace.

Ethnic studies are important to the fast-growing non-white segments of our country’s population for a variety of psychological and social reasons; but from an strictly economic point they may of equal importance to non-minority individuals who must become culturally aware of those who are already affecting their professions and careers—as well as related revenue streams.

Our nation’s educational institutions must address this critical need for preparing tomorrow’s multi-culturally trained workforce, for especially in the marketplace (and workplace) “adapt or perish” remains nature’s inexorable imperative.

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Jim Estrada is a nationally recognized expert in ethnic marketing, communications, and public relations. The author of the award-winning book, “The ABCs and Ñ of America’s Cultural Evolution,” has provided his counsel to the most respected corporations and nonprofit organizations in the USA. A former TV newsman and corporate executive, he attended San Diego State University, Boston College, and Harvard Business School.

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