From MUSE: T4SJ:2011: Keynote Dr. Gloria Ladsen-Billings

Here are my notes from the Keynote Address Achievement gap is usually seen as a deficit in the students:  they and their parents need to catch up. We should view it instead as a debt. Kids don't need to catch up, we need to pay down the debt. Scholastic disparity Semantic problem with achievement gap: Academic progress is not static, characterizes problem as one of student achievement.  Framed as if the students are not doing their part. And we hear nothing about funding gaps (per pupil spending), health gaps, wealth gaps  Achievement gap worsens as kids get older Suburban schools on average: 10k more per child than kids in urban schools Why does the funding gap map so cleanly onto the racial population disparities in schools? Persistent underfunding -- decades Earning ratios Wealth gap bt white and Black in us is much greater than the earning gap Community ties are between and amongst same race - wealth stays within those communities No wealth to trade, move around in black and brown communities So earning is it in those families Extreme poverty: less than 7k per year for family of three One million kids in the US are in extreme poverty Health gap Death rates higher for four main causes of death To focus on achievement gap in midst of these other gaps, wrongheaded and disingenuous Substantive problems with achievement gap Not new, imbedded in our thinking about poor children and children of color Even when the specific language of cultural deficit is not used, the thinking behind it remains Parents don't care, don't have enough exposure or experience, families don't value education, not ready for school, coming from a culture of poverty THEIR PARENTS JUST DON'T CARE No one acknowledges things like transportation difficulties, danger? Of leaving neighborhood    Possibility of things like carpool organization Treating families with dignity and humanity Home visits INVOLVING PARENTS I have never met a parent who doesn't care  Have different ways of expressing CHILDREN LACK EXPOSURE OR EXPERIENCE So classrooms are filled with "experiences" INSTEAD OF. TEACHING Sympathy instead of rigorous teaching - you poor dear    Sympathy becomes excuses for why can't expect much Permission to fail rather than demanding success NOT READY FOR SCHOOL Definition of "ready" of to begin school Now have to know colors, shapes, reading, count to twenty, etc    How is staying home with parents that "don't care" going to help. And isn't school a good place to learn those When to start school varies across the world Wealthy families have luxury of giving more time to students to prepare for school - additional experiences, time to mature, enrichment activity - so they're looking for more academically rigorous kindergarten curriculum Sense that "I need even more" in middle class thinking FAMILIES DON'T VALUE EDUCATION Poor families actually place a higher value on education    Pay more in tax dollars for education, primary targets for noodles on phonics, etc Seen as the primary means to life them out of poverty Rich see school as a credential ing mechanism Poor see school as school Historical records: civil rights era, education was the primary battle ground- school mattered more than jobs, houses, other social inequalities The meaning we give to behavior: same behavior, different interpretations CULTURE OF POVERTY Poverty is NOT a culture It is a condition produced by the various pieces of a society Consultants making money from desperate school talking about culture of poverty - the students are so deviant and strange, primary purpose of school is to bring order to their lives Does not deal with students as individual people's, their humanity Pedagogy of poverty, Haberman, 1991 -- 14 functions of urban schooling in the pedagogy of poverty Poverty that exists on one side of society is related to the affluence on the other Pedagogy of poverty defines the way that pupils spend their time, etc Students can succeed without becoming involved or thoughtful Obsessed with control - fear students of color CHANGING THE DISCOURSE controlling discourse, controlling thinking "education debt" holds us all responsible rather than blaming students and parents - underfunding, exclusion, unethical/immoral treatment of large segments of our population This post was also published on MUSE '13