Three (and counting) solutions to the schools crisis

My theme this week has been that there is not one or two or three new policies that alone will bring disadvantaged students' achievement up to acceptable levels. We waste too much time these days searching for a magic solution to this very complex problem. From year to year, the fads change — from better curricula to lower class size to more qualified teachers to more adequate funding to pre-kindergarten to more choice to tighter accountability, etc. And when the achievement gap persists, we move on to the next cure-all.

The reality is that all of these, and much more, must be done simultaneously. The achievement gap does not have a single cause, and it will not have a single solution.

I agree that the changes that you, Russlynn, have advocated the last few days are important. They should be done. But again, I want to challenge you to abandon your claim that school reform alone is sufficient. The claim is not even consistent with your own views.

On Wednesday, you wrote, "Exactly, Richard: It's not an either-or choice. Our nation can and must address the outrageous conditions under which too many of our children are growing up and simultaneously work to ensure that they have the intellectual tools they need to contribute to and benefit from our economic, social and cultural mainstream."

But then you contradicted yourself by saying that you know "to a certainty that low-income kids absolutely can achieve at high levels — levels just as high as their more affluent peers," if only schools were improved.

If you would stick to your first claim, that all these things must be done simultaneously, we would have little to argue about. And policymakers then would no longer be able to take encouragement from your words to conclude that they can ignore our vast social and economic inequalities while holding teachers and schools exclusively accountable for closing the achievement gap.

Whenever I speak or write about the social and economic policy changes we need, I am careful to insist that we cannot substantially narrow the achievement gap without better schools, that school improvements of the kind you advocate are also essential, and that no teacher or school should use the nation's social and economic policy failures as an excuse for poor performance. I emphasized this in my presentation to the California Education Summit in Sacramento, at which I spoke two weeks ago (and which led to this online debate), and indeed, my book, "Class and Schools," has as its subtitle "Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap" [Italics added]. Can you add to your writings and presentations a parallel insistence that we cannot substantially narrow the achievement gap without greater social and economic equality, and that no policymaker should be permitted to pose as a defender of minority children by demanding school improvement without also working to ensure that such children have adequate healthcare, housing and economic security? We could then be a team!

In addition to better access to quality curricula for all students, more qualified teachers, and more adequate school funding, here are three places we could suggest these policymakers start, to make it possible for disadvantaged children to take full advantage of the school improvements you advocate:

• Because the pre-literacy gap at age 3 is as great as the achievement gap many years later in school, let's make sure that all children have access to high-quality early childhood care, beginning in infancy when their mothers return to work. Early childhood programs will prepare disadvantaged children by requiring highly trained teachers with strong vocabulary and language skills, high adult-to-child ratios and adequate physical space for children to play games that prepare them to succeed later. (Did you know that the most important predictor of third- and fourth-grade reading and math scores is kindergartners' fine motor skills, developed in such play?) A mother working a minimum-wage job has few options better than placing her young children in low-quality day-care settings, parked in front of television sets. We must transform the quality of disadvantaged children's early childhood experiences, extending high quality into pre-kindergarten and kindergarten.
• Let's make sure that all children (and their parents) have adequate healthcare. Earlier this week, I described how health differences make an achievement gap inevitable. Reduced to its simplest level, children can't benefit from high-quality instruction if they are absent from school because of illness. Universal health insurance alone will not be not enough because parents working by the hour at low-wage jobs cannot get time off from work to take their children to pediatricians, dentists and optometrists for routine and preventive care. There is an easy solution to this problem — place health clinics in schools serving low-income children, so these children can get middle-class-style healthcare without their parents' having to take time off from work. Such a reform would be pretty inexpensive for schools or community agencies — Medicaid would reimburse most of the costs. Do this, and you'll see test scores go up.
• Let's make sure that disadvantaged children have stimulating after-school and summer programs. Middle- class children don't succeed because they get better drills in math and reading. They succeed, in part, because when they are out of school, they can apply their basic skills in free reading, access well-stocked public libraries (rare in California's disadvantaged communities) and broaden their interests (and a desire to read about them) in dance, music, sports and clubs.

These three program areas, added to better curricula and teachers (and adequate school financing to pay for them) would be a good start toward substantially narrowing the achievement gap. Can we work together in advocating for them?

Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington and author of "Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap." He was formerly the national education columnist for the New York Times.

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Richard, we both agree that inequities in our society have an appalling impact on poor children and children of color throughout America. We also agree that the responsibility to help make our country better belongs to every one of us. Indeed, as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from the Birmingham city jail, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Let me share one of the biggest injustices we've witnessed, because it happened to involve that very same "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Picture a classroom of low-income, African American 10th graders. Think about how powerful a lesson could be taught around that letter. Then consider what a teacher actually did. "Read the letter," she said. "When you're done draw a picture. And remember, neatness counts."