The Price of Inequity

In 1954 Chief Justice Earl Warren said:“In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunities of an education.  Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right that must be made available on equal terms.”

Over sixty years ago, the Brown v. Board of Education case sought to provide an equitable education for all children, yet we are failing to provide equity across the nation.

I am here today to speak about the school to prison pipeline, yet I cannot speak about the pipeline without addressing the inequity that is plaguing our urban school districts.  I have spent my entire twelve year career as an educator in urban education.  While my experience as a teacher has never been easy, it has become increasingly more challenging over the past six years.  Over the past six years, I have experienced the effects of reduced funding, high stakes testing mandates, and a lack of resources.

Some people will say that students have changed, but I contend that students have not changed.  They are kids.  Some are joyful, industrious, and compassionate.  Others are broken, angry, and lost.  They are the product of their lived experiences, and it is our responsibility as their teachers to provide the best educational experiences we can, no matter what challenges our students bring into the classroom.  

Unfortunately, nationally and locally, teachers are often asked to do it alone.  

Locally, we need highly qualified and licensed co-teachers to help us meet the diverse needs of our special education students, yet we have paraprofessionals who have received little to no training about how to work with students, how to redirect behavior, or how to lead a lesson.   

We need to provide a culturally responsive and relevant education to our students, yet we’re handed curriculum guides and textbooks that are Eurocentric, standardized, and are often irrelevant to our students.  As a result, many of us spend hours writing grants so that we can buy the materials we need to engage our students.  

We need legislators to get out of our way so we can teach and do what’s best for our students.

We need more time to spend on character education, conflict resolution,  and relationship building without feeling like we’re not going to prepare our students to pass a myriad of assessments over the course of the year, including the ISTEP.

We need schools full of highly qualified and highly effective, culturally responsive teachers.  

Not only do we need these resources, our students need these resources.  While my experience has been in the high school, these resources are denied to teachers and students starting in kindergarten.

Urban, high poverty schools, can be difficult to staff with highly effective teachers.  Despite efforts to provide quality teachers, research shows that students in high poverty schools often have less access to quality teachers than students in more affluent schools (Glazerman & Max, 2011).  

A lack of resources, time, and staff, means that students do not receive the socio-emotional support they need via consistent and equitable access to school counselors, social workers, and psychologists

A Euro-centric curriculum that is the norm across the U.S. means that too often students do not see themselves reflected in the curriculum, yet we wonder why they are not engaged.

A lack of cultural diversity among educators, means that it can be challenging to provide students with a bias-free and anti-racist education.

The product of what students do not receive from the age of 6 is evident in the achievement gap, student misbehavior, and the school to prison pipeline.

Student misbehavior is a valid concern. Not all teachers are prepared to handle misbehavior when it arises and not all misbehavior is easy to handle.

Those of us who strive to keep our students in the classroom, cannot control students’ decisions to fight, skip school, or engage in verbal aggression with other students.  We know that if a student is not in our room, then they cannot learn.  We also know that sometimes no one can learn because one  student is in our classroom.  This is a struggle that many educators wrestle with, as we try to maintain a safe and effective learning environment for students.

It can be physically, mentally, and emotionally draining to manage student misbehavior, and many educators don’t have the energy to fight anymore.  

Sometimes it’s easier to remove a student from class than to spend the time preventing or mitigating that behavior in the first place.

Sometimes it’s challenging to have a student call you a slew of names without taking it personally.

Sometimes it’s hard to go from breaking up a fight, to teaching an engaging lesson like nothing happened.

It’s difficult knowing that for many of our students, the only option they have for breaking the rules is being suspended or expelled.  

It’s even harder to know that for students who are already on probation, the only option they have when they break the rules is to return to the Juvenile justice center, where they will become further behind in school, become isolated from friends and families, and be more likely to commit recidivism.

Many of us recognize the need to reduce suspensions and expulsions, yet few of us in urban education have received the support and resources we need to do so.

If we truly want to provide an educational experience that leads students to success, then we must invest in early childhood education, provide a rigorous and relevant curriculum, develop and promote cultural responsiveness, invest in conflict resolution training, and meet the needs of the whole child.