Tag Archives: educational equity

Tracking = Resegregation?

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Source (image): “Coming Clean Beyond the Fiscal Cliff”, http://solari.com/articles/beyond_the_fiscal_cliff

I am always amazed at how excellence in education is equated with equity. Although, I am not an elementary or secondary educator, I am often privy to my educator-friends who are assured that one of these concepts comes at the expense of the other; that a school lending itself to equity will undoubtedly sacrifice excellence. Or, that to be academically excellent, the school must limit its equity in order to properly serve high-achieving students who deserve academic consistency and progressiveness. Forgive me, but I am somewhat confused by this idea. Wouldn’t an environment that offers its best curriculum to all students be simultaneously achieving excellence?

In Margarita Pivovarova’s (2014) article , Show we Track or Should we Mix Them?, she explores the notion of tracking in elementary schools. Tracking refers to the grouping of students by ability; thereby placing high-performing students in an environment with peers of the same ability, while placing lower-achieving student with low-achieving peers. Basically, this is a fancy way of saying “put the smart kids in one classroom; put the dumb kids together in a different classroom.” You can tell by my tone, that I do not agree with this idea in any form. Pivovarova (2014) asserts that while positive effects can be seen through tracking, it greatly impacts lower-performing students in detrimental ways. She based her assertion on literature that implicitly showed that “the data does not support the linear-in-means model” (p.7), coming to the realization that the nature of peer effects within the learning environment are more complicated than the model suggests. While Pivovarova (2014) doesn’t clearly state which data set presented this finding, she mentions that some research indicated positive findings, while other research indicated no effect; she finds that peer interaction is a highly important component to achieving the success of tracking (Pivovarova, 2014). I agree with Pivovarova’s (2014) assertion here. Simply grouping students together based on ability alone is not sufficient to prove that this method achieves optimal results. Students must be able and willing to engage with peers and instructors in a way that fosters positive identity and confidence in the learning environment, therefore, producing desired results.

High school principle and author, Carol Corbett Burris (2014) discusses tracking in her book On the Same Track: How Schools Can Join the Twenty-First-Century Struggle against Resegregation pointing out that previous literature documents tracks as “racially and economically stratified” (p. 112). For example, if a high-performing Black student who comes from a low socio-economic background is put into a classroom with a large number of White students from middle to high socio-economic status would the linear-in-means model be so clear cut? Would the student feel confident to perform? Would he/she be able to relate to the classroom climate or culture of privilege within the group? While some students may perform well in this environment, some may not. In addition to the inconsistency of this model, other learning theories come into play (i.e. stereotype threat, “performing whiteness”, etc.) that can easily blur the framework of academic tracking. Tracking also puts a great burden the teacher to ensure that equity is maintained between groups; a burden that lends itself to resources, tools, and institutional support. Pivovarova (2014) concludes that a mixed learning environment is optimal, asserting that the quality of peers has a great impact on both high and low achieving students stating, “…while the average quality of peers is more important for high-achievers, adding just one more smart kid in a classroom has a larger impact on marginal kids than it has on top students” (p. 28).

Tracking, in my opinion, lends itself to labeling as well. In a society where emphasis is placed on the level of coursework studied by the student, it is no wonder that parents will work the system to ensure their child is put into high-achieving classrooms to ensure that all social and academic opportunities are made available to them. Labels such as “gifted”, “honor student”, “special needs” and “remedial” are identities placed on the student which often confirm the student’ identity of self-worth, and so very often students perform to the label by which they are identified. Why not eliminate the curriculum gap in an effort to close the achievement gap? I am sure there is no easy solution to this issue, but we must work harder to ensure educational equity, or risk repeating the injustices of the past.

References

Burris, C. C. (2014). On the same track: How schools can join the twenty-first-century struggle against resegregation. Boston: Beacon Press.

Pivovarova, M. (2013). Should we track them or should we mix them? Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University.

Race Matters in Education Even in 2014

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“The hierarchies rarely endure for more than a few generations, but the arguments, refurbished for the next round of social institutions, cycle endlessly.” (Gould, 1981, p. 30)

Source: robertxavierrodriguez.com

Recently, my nephew’s 8th grade Honors English class was given the assignment to read O. Henry’s, The Ransom of Red Chief, then conduct an analysis of humor in the short story. I had glanced at the title of the article earlier but was busy doing something else that the title did not register, until my nephew started looking up words with a surprised expression on his face. I asked him to tell me the word but he said he couldn’t say it. I asked him to spell it and he said he would rather not. Curious, I looked at the page and to my shock and surprise the word was “niggerhead.” Even I had to look up the word but I think we can all guess that the word has something to do with a black person’s head. I immediately flipped to the first page and re-read the title, The Ransom of Red Chief, “Red Chief!” How could I have missed these words! I then took over the story, told him he would not be completing this assignment and proceeded to read the story in its entirety. The Ransom of Red Chief was written in the early 20th century and it’s supposed to be about the humor surrounding two men who kidnap a young boy from a mining town only to be terrorized by the boy as he plays being a “pesky redskin.” The boy, who is white, attempts to scald, scalp and hang one man in particular until both men are fed up and pay the father to take the boy off their hands.

These are some of the stereotypical and offensive phrases in the story: “Red Chief, the terror of the plains,” “to be scalped at daybreak (said by the child playing “Indian),” “[B]raves returned from the warpath,” “pesky redskin,” “simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars” and “niggerhead.” The term niggerhead refers to something that looks like a Black person’s head and it also means lazy, a common racist stereotype used for Black people when we all know that the economy of the South could not have been built by lazy African slaves.

On the one had I felt shocked that this was an 8th grade reading assignment on the other hand I knew this was the norm in our society. So I wrote my nephew’s teacher and explained how the story was an assault on Indigenous children’s identity and offered detailed explanations of how the story reinforced racist and sexist stereotypes. This story is an example of the pervasiveness of the ideas about race that scientists from the nineteenth century established. Sociobiologist, Stephen Jay Gould (1981) said it best in the quote above, the arguments and ideas about race “cycle endlessly” (p. 30).

In Mismeasure of Man, Gould (1981) details how scientists used their position of “objectivity” to justify the social ranking of diverse peoples. Basically, scientists of the nineteenth century put forth ideas about racial difference that justified white domination and the subordination of all others. The ideas of nineteenth century scientists have become entrenched in our minds and our society as American citizens. Ideas, mainly racist ones, about diverse people are the bedrock of this nation.

Though various hierarchical systems no longer exist (e.g. slavery, Jim Crow, etc.), ideologies, or justifications for oppression, are still widely used and applied to maintain the white supremacist society in which we live. In an article advocating for culturally relevant teaching practices, Howard (2003) writes, “race has always and continues to matter in an increasingly racially diverse society” (p. 197). He talks about our diverse society, yet our values especially with regard to cultural capital are based upon white standards and norms. Howard (2003) posits that educators must incorporate the cultural capital (diverse languages, beliefs, practices, etc.) that diverse students acquire from their given social structure into the teaching and learning environment to practice culturally relevant teaching. In practicing culturally relevant teaching, we can create equitable educational environments. Garcia and Ortiz (2013) recommend, “document[ing] the knowledge and skills children acquire in home and community contexts and then develop ways to incorporate the information into curriculum and instruction” (p.40).

These practices are crucial if we are to ever to make changes in society, in our social institutions and in how we interact with one another. We need only look at national statistics to see that educational attainment; health, wealth and even how long one will live fall along racial lines. Black and Native Americans are almost always at the bottom of any social measurements. As a Black and Navajo woman, Gould’s (1981) chapter, American Polygeny and Craniometry Before Darwin: Blacks and Indians as Separate Inferior Species, was especially relevant to me. I have noticed how even today, people in society still have distaste for Blackness. Few would admit to it but like Morton, “expectation is a powerful guide to action” (Gould, 1981, p. 65). Sometimes, people are unaware of perpetuating racist stereotypes like in the case of my nephew’s teacher. I urged her to reconsider the assignment. Surprisingly, she was receptive to my instruction and is now revising 8th grade Honors English curriculum to be culturally inclusive.

References

Garcia, S.B. & Ortiz, A. A. (2013). Intersectionality as a frameowrk for transformative research in special education . Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners, 13(2), 32-47.

Gould, S.J. (1981). The mismeasure of man. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.

Henry, O. (1907). The Ransom of Red Chief. The Saturday Evening Post. Retrieved from http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2010/10/04/archives/classic-fiction/ransom-red-chief-intro.html

Howard, T. C. (2003). Culturally relevant pedagogy: Ingredients for critical teacher reflection,      42(3), 195-202.

Niggerhead. (n.d.). In Wordnik. Retrieved from https://www.wordnik.com/words/niggerhead