Equity and my school

I knew that there were distinct differences in funding and education opportunities between schools, districts, and states, but I was not fully aware of how disparate those differences are. It reminds me of the separate but equal doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson. We have these separate but “equal” schools (demographically segregated based on where people want to or are economically or culturally led to live). Because of current funding formulas many of our schools are defined by the economic status of the parents and the neighborhoods they live in.

Even in my own district with only two sets of elementary/middle/high schools serving two different towns the equity issue is evident. We only recently stopped identifying our district with the name of the larger and economically dominant town. Many of the best teachers want to live/work in the bigger/wealthier town. The schools in my town are the training place for many teachers and then when they are proficient they move to the other school. This flux of teachers moving through every few years damages the cohesion of our schools. The principals in the bigger town have superior skills for organizing a productive environment, access resources, and generally support learning. The community in the larger town is more unified and vocal, so I believe the administration pays more attention to the quality of the principal and teacher staffing there and not so much to our town with a less sophisticated and less demanding population. 

This creates a classic inequity that Darling-Hammond describes. Where more resources ought to be directed to the schools with the highest need they often are not. The one important area where our district supports our high need community is in student to teacher ratios (usually less than 20). But, as I mentioned above our classrooms are often a learning ground for new teachers wanting to move to the bigger town. That said, we do have a dedicated core group of classroom teachers that try very hard to meet the needs of our disadvantaged students.

Page 120 of The Flat World and Education has a statement that bothers me:  “(S)tudents are unable to benefit from more investment because they live in a ‘culture of poverty,’ experience poor parenting, or are, implicitly, though it is not usually said straightforwardly, innately inferior.”  I sometimes see this reflected in the actions of some teachers and staff in my school, especially in weak moments when situations seem desperate. Even though I know better I have these thoughts when I get frustrated, especially with some the parenting I see). But we (I) should not let it affect the way we (I) work with these children, unless it is a call to double down on our (my) efforts to provide the best learning opportunities we (I) can.

I will make the most of my collaboration and collective planning time this year. My two partner teachers had a good start last year and focused mainly on moving toward the mathematics Common Core SS. This year we are focused on the language arts standards and plan to use units designed in Georgia (http://georgiaelaccgpsk-5.wikispaces.com/). We believe the curriculum is of relative high quality and many lessons have adaptations for students with disabilities. We are working on building formative and summative assessments to better understand what students are learning. I really benefited from the Mathematics Thinking Initiative and would appreciate follow up trainings annually to continue to grow as a teacher. Something similar should be provided to all teachers for language arts.