On Saturday, November 8, 2014, the Caucus of Working Educators of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers hosted their first annual convention. I attended the opening plenary and the first workshop. It was a positive atmosphere consisting of various stakeholders of public education who wanted to think critically about what is going on in schools in America.
The opening plenary by keynote speaker Dr. Yohuru Williams of Howard University was insightful and energetic. The central message of his speech significantly reframed how I think about education reform today. I will try to summarize some of the key points that contributed to this reframing:
He explained that education is identified by many today to be the "civil rights issue of our time." While it is true that education is a complex and contentious issue, and while it is true that too many children in America are not receiving a a fair or adequate education, it is imprecise to say that "education is the civil rights issue of our time."
It would be more precise to say that "Poverty is the civil rights issue of our time, and poor education is a symptom of this critical civil rights issue."
Education is a hugely important issue that all stakeholders, which is everyone in society, should be invested in trying to make better. Neverthless, when we look at education as the civil rights issue, and we try to solve the ills of our education system from this vantage point, then we are looking at the issue with too narrow a lens. The solutions that derive from this perspective will be incomplete and generally incoherent: like using a band-aid to cure a broken arm. If we do not find ways to solve poverty in our country, whereby poor communities are increasingly concentrated and segregated from the rest of society, then we will not find the "magic lesson plan" to make all our schools better. In addition, within our American context, we cannot forget that there are many children who are being phenomenally well educated in our country.
By reframing the narrative of struggling schools within the appropriate context of an often unequal and unjust society, it will be possible to think more clearly about how all stakeholders in communities play roles in collaborating in the development of better schools and better communities for all students and families. While I believe it is important to take this broader approach to the analysis of struggling schools, this is not meant to fuel ideological bigotry and finger pointing; I simply think it is the appropriate way to approach creative thinking for real solutions to the education problems we face as a nation.
