One of the most interesting sections I read in Reese this week was, how southern journalists pointed out how ironic it was that the northern liberals called them racist. While a certain degree of racism was certainly more prevalent in the south, the fact that African Americans rarely had the same academic opportunities in the north as whites, hardly demonstrated a more tolerant and accepting atmosphere. The fact that a certain degree of racism was accepted and even encouraged was overlooked by even the most liberal of northerners.
The discussions about the failure rate among the poor and minorities was not that different than the discussions I hear about ‘failing’ schools and ‘good’ schools. The inequities in retaining teachers is not a new concept for schools. Although I do not think that teachers are promoted to better schools solely because they are ‘good teachers’ thus leaving all urban schools with ‘ineffective’ teachers, I do think that there is some self-selection among teachers for the schools they are willing to teach at. A lot of teachers I have talked to won’t even apply to certain districts, something that never really made sense to me.
I interviewed at a few other schools this summer and while I was debating what I wanted out of my career and whether I wanted to be recalled or to try another school, I thought back to conversations I had in undergrad with other students in the education program who mentioned that they would not want to work in an urban school. They said it would be unnecessarily challenging and not as rewarding. In college I wanted to try different placements and internships, prior to the full year internship to have experience in different types of schools. I never saw myself working in any one particular type of district but as I considered whether to leave, I found myself wanting to stay in my district. My district is not a typical urban district, and though I feel that working there is in no way easy, it is that much more rewarding when I see my students succeed. My school has been on the restructuring plan since failing AYP the required number of years, and it has been very gratifying to have a chance to impact what changes are made to improve the school. My views of NCLB and AYP aside, this opportunity has been great for our staff to try to move our school in a more positive direction, with a great amount of teacher input.
As I started writing this post I had intended to go in another direction, but this idea of teachers being sorted into public schools and shuffled based on whether they were ‘good’ is a troubling concept that I still see parts of today. This idea that our school system is expected to improve society is a lofty expectation that Reese outlines. It is particularly difficult when society itself has not found the solutions for the problems presented to schools. The issue of poverty was a common theme in this weeks reading and the Great Society programs that Johnson initiated focused a great deal on improvement for various groups that are often overlooked.
The arguments focusing on special education was particularly interesting. It is not hard to notice that special education classes are disproportionally filled with minorities, and that this has a lot to do with the criteria used to classify students. I’m sure today it is no where near as bad as Reese describes, but the impact is concerning. While I don’t have any specific background in special education, many of the classes I teach are co-taught. I have seen how this model plays out in a few different school districts. My co-taught classes have many more students in them, usually 32-36, and my co-teacher is usually only in the room three times a week, due to obligations in the resource room. One of my classes had sixty-eight percent of the students with IEPs. Often our counselors would ‘track’ behavior problem students into the co-taught classes, making the combination of students particularly difficult to manage. While teaching this class I found myself wondering who exactly was benefitting from this particular set up? Having over 20 students with IEPs being taught by a teacher with limited special education background did not meet the students’ best interests. I could not spend much one on one time with any of the students, which many needed. From my perspective, this problem seems to stem from the misclassification of so many students as needing special education services, the tracking of other students who may have unique needs into co-taught classes, and not providing the general classroom teacher with enough resources to adequately meet the needs of such a diverse group of learners.
Reese, W. J. (2006). America’s public schools: From the common schools to “No Child Left Behind.” Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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