Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond’s speech at the Save Our Schools March

July 30, 2011

The mess we are in

“Many people are asking: Why are we here? We are here because we are committed to a strong public education system that works for ALL our children. We are here because we want to prepare children for the 21st century world they are entering, not for an endless series of multiple-choice tests that increasingly deflect us from our mission to teach them well. We are here to protest the policies that produce the increasingly segregated and underfunded schools so many of our children attend, and we are here to represent the parents, educators and community members who fight for educational opportunity for them against the odds every day.

We are here to say it is not acceptable for the wealthiest country in the world to be cutting millions of dollars from schools serving our neediest students; to be cutting teachers by the tens of thousands, to be eliminating art, music, PE, counselors, nurses, librarians, and libraries (where they weren’t already gone, as in California); to be increasing class sizes to 40 or 50 in Los Angeles and Detroit.

It is not acceptable to have schools in our cities and poor rural districts staffed by a revolving door of beginning and often untrained teachers, many of whom see this as charity work they do on the way to a real job. And it is not acceptable that the major emphasis of educational reform is on bubbling in Scantron test booklets, the results of which will be used to rank and sort schools and teachers, so that those at the bottom can be fired or closed – not so that we will invest the resources needed actually to provide good education in these schools.

We are here to challenge the aggressive neglect of our children. With 1 out of 4 living in poverty — far more than any other industrialized country (nearly double what it was 30 years ago); a more tattered safety net – more who are homeless, without health care, and without food security; a more segregated and inequitable system of public education, in which the top schools spend 10 times more than the lowest spending; we nonetheless have a defense budget larger than that of the next 20 countries combined and greater disparities in wealth than any other leading country.

We have produced a larger and more costly prison system than any country in the world — we have 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its inmates — populated primarily by high school dropouts on whom we would not spend $10,000 a year when they were in school, but we will spend more than $40,000 a year when they are in prison – a prison system that is now directly devouring the money we should be spending on education.

But our leaders do not talk about these things. They say there is no money for schools – and of poor children, they say: ‘Let them eat tests.’

And while many politicians talk of international test score comparisons, they rarely talk about what high-performing countries like Finland, Singapore, and Canada actually do: They ensure that all children have housing, health care, and food security. They fund their schools equitably. They invest in the highest-quality preparation, mentoring and professional development for teachers and school leaders, completely at government expense. They organize their curriculum around problem-solving and critical thinking skills. And they test students rarely (in Finland, not at all) – and almost never with multiple-choice tests.

Many of the top-performing nations rely increasingly on assessments that include research projects, scientific investigation, and other intellectually challenging work – developed and scored by teachers – just as progressive educators here have been urging for years.

None of these countries uses test scores to rank and sort teachers – indeed the Singaporean minister of education made a point of noting at the recent international summit on teaching that they believe such a practice would be counterproductive – and none of them rank and punish schools – indeed several countries forbid this practice. They invest in their people and build schools’ capacity to educate all their students.

Meanwhile, our leaders advocate for teachers with little training – who will come and go quickly, without costing much money, without vesting in the pension system, and without raising questions about an increasingly prescriptive system of testing and teaching that lines the pockets of private entrepreneurs (who provide teacher-proofed materials deemed necessary because there are so many underprepared novices who leave before they learn to teach).

Our leaders seek to solve the problem of the poor by blaming the teachers and schools that seek to serve them, calling the deepening levels of poverty an ‘excuse,’ rewarding schools that keep out and push out the highest need students, and threatening those who work with new immigrant students still learning English and the growing number of those who are homeless, without health care and without food. Are there lower scores in under-resourced schools with high-need students? Fire the teachers and the principals. Close the schools. Don’t look for supports for their families and communities, equitable funding for their schools, or investments in professional learning. Don’t worry about the fact that the next schools are – as researchers have documented — likely to do no better. If the banks are failing, we should fire the tellers. [And whatever you do, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.]

But public education has a secret weapon: the members of communities and the profession like yourselves who are committed first and foremost to our children and who have the courage to speak out against injustice.

This takes considerable courage – of the kind that has caused each of you to be here today. Remember, as Robert F. Kennedy said:

‘It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.’

Thank you for each ripple of hope you create – for each and every time you do what is right for children. Thank you for your courage and your commitment. It is that courage and commitment that will, ultimately, bring our country to its senses and save our schools. Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on!”

via http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/darling-hammond-the-mess-we-are-in/2011/07/31/gIQAXWSIoI_blog.html

The Blues Idiom and “post traumatic slavery disorder”

Last Thursday while driving around in San Francisco, I got a text from a friend telling me to tune in to KPFA.   Apparently there was an event scheduled for the upcoming Saturday night and to talk about it there was the host, an in studio guest and guest on the (phone) line.

What I heard bothered me so much that I had to turn it off.    I thought about going to the event (without going inside) just to see the aesthetics but I passed and instead spent a relaxing Saturday evening at home.

The discussion wasn’t about education or youth.  But it bothered me because it represents to me, a mind-set that I believe is part of the problem when it comes to much of what’s wrong with how we approach urban youth and education.   So instead of getting into all of that I thought of something that could capture how I felt about “post traumatic slave disorder” and  healing.
These excerpts are from an article written by Ralph Ellison titled, “The World and the Jug,” in the book of essays-Shadow and Act. This essay is a reaction to an essay written by Irving Howe titled “Black boys and native Sons”.

  Ralph Ellison:

 “I must say that this brought a shock of recognition. Some twelve years ago, a friend argued with me for horst that I could not possibly write a novel because   my experience as a Negro had been too excruciating to allow me to achieve that psychological and emotional distance necessary to artistic creation. Since     he “knew” Negro experience better than I, I could not convince him that he might be wrong. Evidently Howe feels that unrelieved suffering is the only “real”   Negro experience, and that the true Negro writer must be ferocious.

But there is also an American Negro tradition, which teaches one to deflect provocation and to master and contain pain.  This a tradition which abhors as    obscene any trading on one’s own anguish for gain or sympathy; which springs not from a desire to deny the harshness of existence but form a will to deal with it as men at their best have always done.

More

“One unfamiliar with what Howe stands for would get the impression that when he looks at a Negro he sees not a human being but an abstract embodiment of living hell. He seems never to have considered that American Negro life (and here he is encouraged by certain Negro “spokesmen”) is, for the Negro who must live it, not only a burden (and not always that) but also a discipline—just as any human life which has endured so long is a discipline teaching its own insights into the human condition, its own strategies of survival. There is a fullness, even a richness here; and here despite the realities of politics, perhaps, but nevertheless here and real. Because it is human life.

To deny in the interest of revolutionary posture that such possibilities of human richness exist for others, even in Mississippi, is not only to deny us our humanity but to betray critic’s commitment to social reality.

For even as his life toughens the Negro, even as it brutalizes him, sensitizes him, dulls him, goads him to anger, moves him to irony, sometimes fracturing and sometimes affirming his hopes; even as it shapes his attitudes towards family, sex, love, religion; even as it modulates his humor, tempers his joy- it conditions him to deal with his life and with himself. Because it is his life and no mere abstraction in someone’s head. He is no mere product of his socio-political predicament.   He is a product of the interaction between his racial predicament, his individual will and the broader American cultural freedom in which he finds his ambiguous existence.

End

Who better to summarize this than a warning from Ellison’s old friend, Albert Murray:

“But what we are suffering from now is the full weight of a new piety of scientific terminology that has been built around the Black experience, which is seen in terms of social science…..”  from Conversations with Albert Murray - “A conversation with Albert Murray” from Black Creation magazine, Fred Beauford (1972)

“The whole point of the blues idiom lyric is to state the facts of life. Not unlike ancient tragedy, it would have the people for whom it is composed and performed confront, acknowledge, and proceed in spite of, and even in terms of, the ugliness and meanness inherent in the human condition.  It is thus a device for making the best of a bad situation.    Not by rendering capitulation tolerable, however, and certainly not by consoling those who would compromise their integrity, but-in its orientation to continuity in the face of adversity and absurdity- the blues idiom lyric is entirely consistent with the folklore and wisdom underlying the rugged endurance of the Black American. ”  Albert Murray

To quote a friend, “the Blue-idiom is a perfect fit for a non-linear 21st century.”   I wonder what would have happened had the Blue-idiom been embraced instead of accepting the notion that we are sick. Now it seems there are those who want to double down on that notion.

Dan Rather Report

A must see! Check it out on itunes.  Here’s a sample:

Happy New Year!

Wishing a vibrant and successful 2011 to everyone.

Despite a couple of setbacks Connect 2 Youth will move forward with its commitment to support the college and/or work-force readiness of deserving youth.

Connect 2 Youth is and will remain a non-partisan organization with the strict mission of connecting community to achieving students in inner-city schools.  We aren’t advocates of any of the contemporary arguments on the issues surrounding education and school reform.  There are more than enough people willing to debate the merits of charter schools, whether vouchers are good or bad and whether more money is needed vs more accountability.  Yes, we have opinions but this isn’t the forum.  We refrain from those debates because none of it matters to a currently enrolled 11^th grader with a 3.8 GPA who wants to do well on the SAT; or the kid with excellent SAT scores but can’t afford college application fees at $25 a clip; or the B student who wants preparation to enter the workforce.  These young people are not mere products of their sociopolitical predicament or stats in a research study. They are living breathing people with real, hopes and dreams.

The students have become parable figures in a grander argument.   What went on in Washington DC (see links below) last fall is a perfect example: the election, the personalities involved (Fenty and Rhee-no knock on either of them I don’t know them) and the passionate fallout.    In the end: a couple of elections, a few years pass, another election, accusations leveled and cheap shots taken.  While the forces around them take shots at each other and posture around education reform, the current students still have lives to live.

C2Y is not about polemics, or personalities.  If you care about education (the student) we’re interested in your passion, ideas and knowledge; not whether you’re conservative or liberal; Democrat or Republican.   To the extent C2Y has some broader social paradigm-shifting goal, it’s that we spark more pathways of entrance for those who care about providing opportunities to inner-city youth.   We hope to promote a more open and inclusive environment; and broaden an approach that leans too heavily on a social science orientation.  However this IS NOT our mission, only a potential byproduct of linking passion and leveraging brainpower.

We believe that transparent, accountable, and collaborative connections can evolve to replace the deficit mindset that breed’s apathy with an opportunity meme that transforms the culture.

*Washington DC
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2019395,00.html

http://blacksnob.com/snob_blog/2010/10/13/dc-school-chancellor-rhee-out-after-fenty-loss.html

The idea and the motivation

It started as a throw away comment. My wife and I were watching TV one evening and one of those Sally Fields type commercials came on (it may have in fact been Sally Fields) about sponsoring children from an impoverished country. You’ve seen them, Sally with her slap puppy-it’s a long way from the flying nun-look, a picture of a needy child with sad music playing in the background.    I remember saying, ‘we don’t have to leave the country, we can go a few blocks and find kids who need sponsoring’.  The more I thought about it the more it made sense and I began thinking of how it could be done.  A few weeks later I ran across  the concept of micro-financing or micro-loans and watched a program profiling innovative companies and organizations.  They were profiling an organization called Kiva.  I quickly hit the record button and called my wife into the living room.  I said ‘this is exactly what I was talking about’!  And that was it.

The Motivation

I had been part of one of those community task forces organized for Mayor-elect, Ron Dellums as he came into office.  The community task force was a way to engage and bring the community back into the process of city government.  The group I was in focused on youth related issues.  Much of the language was the typical stuff you hear about inner-city youth.  But as always no one was advocating for the achieving kids and again, I became the one. I often find myself taking positions, not out of any deep conviction but as a way to extend the conversations; anyone can regurgitate conventional pieties. However this position was and is based on conviction.   There was an acknowledgment of what I was saying but I could tell it wasn’t going to get any traction. The mission was to think outside the box. I remember suggesting that kids be given vouchers which could be used for whatever they were interested in or needed.  Of course in my enthusiasm I spoke without thinking about where I was and how politically charged that word is. Vouchers? Talk about using the wrong word; you can’t just throw around words like vouchers, profit or competition.  So I guess I take the blame for that, I should have realized the setting. I just remember silence and blank stares.  To break the awkward silence, the moderator said, ‘well that’s out of the box’; no one wanted to touch it so we moved on.    Shortly afterwards in subsequent meetings that didn’t seem to be going anywhere, people begin to lose interest and I was one of them.  I don’t know what the final recommendations were, last I heard there was something about ‘healing center(s)’.

During the campaign leading up to the election I also participated in a youth group organized for Dellums.  Again, Dellums showing that he was committed to including more people in the process wanted to engage the youth.  (Parenthetically, a lot has been said about Dellums and the job he’s done. Personally I think he’s a fine man, who never really wanted the job but couldn’t find it in himself to say no. Besides at his age, you don’t go from the House arms committee to pot holes. So in many ways this was a bad match from the beginning, but people love names.) The group consisted of various youth organizations and after about 3 or 4 meetings  I noticed that they were mostly interested  in ‘speaking truth to power’. A couple of people began strategically positioning themselves through one-up(ing) each other with colorful, demanding rhetoric leftover from another era. I tried to strike a different tone, but the head shaking, body language and quiet hissing told me that they weren’t and didn’t want to hear it.  I thought I was cool and hip enough but  to them my ‘Carlton-with a hint of country boy inflections’ just didn’t strike the right rhythm and cadence to conjure up any amens and finger snaps.  Or maybe they were put off by my propensity for smiling.  Anyway, I found it all a little odd;  if this was a guy (Dellums) who’d ignored you I could understand shaking your fist at the establishment, but  this isn’t some pot-bellied cigar chumping plutocrat, its liberal Bay Area Ron Dellums, he’s one of you AND he’s inviting you in the process on the front end.   So it occurred to me that, they didn’t really have any ideas and weren’t really interested in anything beyond striking a pose. They certainly weren’t  interested in brainstorming, researching and collaborating for creative ideas and out of the box approaches.    I wrote a long e-mail to the one of the organizers who had invited me in and told her I was no longer interested.

Afterwards I thought about what an author in his late 50′s had said, when talking about the climate during his time as a young man, saying he found  them ( I assumed revolutionary type) as mostly ‘dismantlers’.

After these 2 civic-minded experiences on the back-end of my introduction to the inner-workings of the non-profit construct of this city and how the school district functions, it became clear to me that there needs to be an extreme paradigm shift.  Here’s the skinny from my vantage point. There are plenty of people advocating for the ‘at-risk’ group; some attention needs to go to the other group of kids who may not be in the ‘at-risk category but who are in fact at risk; of not getting into college, at risk of graduating but needing remediation or at risk of disengaging because they aren’t being challenged.   There are also plenty who want to follow a ‘social justice’ mission; at what point is the social justice mission accomplished, by what criteria is or will it be measured, what does it look like outside the abstract?     You also have the pettiness of those who go after well run organizations like Youth Radio out of simple jealousy, claiming ‘elitism’.  Then there are well-intention organizations where sadly mission creep has set in. But that’s what happens with no growth, no new ideas, projects or programs and most of all, not witnessing enough success to keep morale up.   Lastly, there is way too much  focus on personalities; on far too many occasions the what gets drowned out by the who. There’s just  too much at stake to reject ideas based solely on who suggested them, what this person may have said  or  a stance they took on a particular issue a long time ago.

What’s needed after the paradigm shift is an influx of innovators, ideas and best practices that look more like those of sound businesses and not social services.  It won’t be easy  we’ll have to go against (as a friend so aptly calls it) ‘Yo-community’:  the turf guarding, petty bickering, those who benefit from the status quo and those (all these years later) still fighting cultural wars through the school districts and non-profits. There is also a mindset that  sociology has all the answers.  They’ve had and many believe deserve a proprietary hold for about 40yrs. The sad fact is that far too many people have bought into the lexicon of sociology as an answer to who they are; ignoring or replacing what sustained and held in tact the humanity of their forefathers and mothers for a few hundred years just to become statistical abstractions. (The Frances Piven and Richard Cloward effect no doubt, but I digress.) So far they have been reluctant to embrace those outside of the school of social sciences.    Jeremay Rifkin’s, The End of Work, talked about a 3rd sector, which is now called the social economy.    So things are shifting and we’re well on our way of seeing more collaboration of people across disciplines. No better time than now for Oakland and similar communities to embrace that concept.  There are smart intelligent and courageous but ordinary people doing amazing things;  most of which could be adopted, tweaked and scaled.

I also must say that  many of the  people who won’t send their own child to a public school, find themselves advocating for and protecting the status quo. This is in no way a criticism of those who want the best for their children and it isn’t a call for them to enroll them in troubled schools as sort of a way to tip the balance.  It isn’t fair to asked them to sacrifice or allow their kids to be used as guinea pigs.  So I resist that sort of guilt trip.  But it is to say that you can’t then find yourself in the role of enabler.  If it isn’t good enough for your child you can’t expect it to be ok for someone else’s child; so it may be prudent to reconsider your position and the implications of your advocacy.

In the end, as tough as it may be, the reality is that we can’t  overhaul our public education system without casualties.  A few people are going to have to be asked to go do something else.  We need the will to be honest and the courage to move forward.  The outlook isn’t very promising when you consider how our society handles tough issues.  We reduce them to 2 sides and then continue the back and forth without any movement towards a solution.  They just becomes things to fight about; and it seems as though the fight becomes more satisfying than any notion of a resolution.

So in the meantime we have a responsibility and opportunity to fill the void for the children who are unfairly caught in the current reality. We have to be as concerned about the student who did the work but couldn’t or didn’t get into college as we are with the drop-out.  Besides, if the achieving kid doesn’t see rewards for their accomplishment and work its that much tougher to make the case to the drop out; why he/she should come back to school.

Welcome

A shift in perspective

On a typical fall Saturday, I accepted an invitation to support a friend. I volunteered to help at a middle school that was being wired through a partnership that included a private corporation, the Oakland Unified School District and local non-profits. Shortly after that I participated in a community technology conference and was captivated by the topics, ideas and projects that were being discussed. I was fascinated by this excitement around the concept of bridging the digital divide and augmenting technology to help transform communities. I decided to leave the private sector and ended up at a non-profit that partnered with OUSD to provide technology services and support to the district, students and their families. My work required that I frequent the middle and high schools throughout the district, collaborate with other non-profits and promote the program in the community.

One hears or reads stories all the time about under-performing public schools in the inner cities across the nation and Oakland is no different. The conditions are well documented. Witnessing them in 3-D; on campus, walking the halls, in the classrooms, makes the conditions even more tangible. However while associated with the schools, I saw and met impressive young men and women. One of my responsibilities was to hire and manage a staff of interns to work with our program. This is when I met Daniel, Dominique and Hakeem.

Daniel and Hakeem stuck out and were obvious candidates. Dominique got involved because of his mother’s graceful persistence and he proved to be invaluable. Working closely with them gave me a chance to get to know them. It was a joy and the experience had a profound effect on my perspective. They represented the kids we never hear about (or at least not enough about) who despite all the dysfunction around them have great attitudes and are still striving, performing and achieving.

Naturally I was drawn to them; after all they wanted to be wherever they were and who can’t be inspired by those kinds of young people. Immediately at every opportunity I became an advocate for those kids. As they came through the program, I would look for ways to reward them with special favors I thought they’d earned. I began to notice that because of a particular orientation or mindset;  certain students in Oakland were being ignored. The attitude ostensibly was/is- 
we are strapped and the achieving students are doing ok, they will be fine; we have to focus on (save) the students who aren’t performing.

I realized that a great share of resources and energy from schools, organizations and programs that serve youth are concentrated towards the ‘at risk’ category population. I believe those who feel passionate about the ‘at risk’ group should continue working with them; we are all served by their commitment. However there is no reason not to have a parallel mutually exclusive approach to this other segment of youth.

Dr. Ben Chavis

Thanks Dr. Ben Chavis for caring, for being passionate, for your courage, for not accepting things as they are and most of all for speaking in clear practical language.

A very special personal thanks for your help!