"America: Fair & Just?"

As the nation turns its attention to the holiday season, as Americans rapidly drive their SUV's down highways, often too rapidly and close to the vehicles in front of them I might add, and maneuver all too quickly around metropolitan streets, among others, in search of the gift for loved ones -- reminders of poverty, of death and desperation brought on by mother nature, and the inequality of class, are too soon forgotten. Lost it would seem to a casual observer, is the hope that the images of Katrina's aftermath seemed to have engendered -- permanently seared one would have thought, into the conscience of our nation. Only a few weeks ago, writers from all sides of the political spectrum wrote of the "silver linings" which might emerge from the hurricane. A wake-up call of sorts. A call-to-action.

Yet seemingly the hope derived from the moment has faded into the background of an American montage of disasters, crises, work and play. The nation seems to have blinked and moved on to more, at once personal and global affairs. However, not for those Americans who struggle to regain their foundation, in what remains the footprints of their former homes and lives in New Orleans.

According to Alexander Keyssar, "Reminders of Poverty, Soon Forgotten," The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 4, 2005, "Disasters and crises in American history have, in fact, rarely produced any fundamental changes in economic or social policy. Natural disasters, like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and fire, are invariably local events, leaving too much of the nation unscathed to generate any broad-gauged shift in understanding or ideology...Poverty is not a technical issue, but a deep, structural problem that implicates our values, our economic institutions, and our conception of the proper role of the state (B7)."

Mary Frances Berry, writing also in the same issue of "The Chronicle" as above, (please see "Reflecting a Tarnished America," p. B9), speaks about the great American historian John Hope Franklin's surprise and the "'shock and awe' at the persistence of racism..." in this country. The two "Chronicle" articles continue to reflect socio-cultural patterns that deny America opportunities to reach the moral high ground its founders used to frame the Constitution. As George Lakoff writes, "...the grand American tradition of freedom, fairness, human dignity, and full equality under the law."

In a frequently cited quote by the American philosopher John Dewey, "...education is the opportunity to escape from the limitations of the social group in which one is born," Dewey's premise is as relevant today as it was decades ago. American political forces continue to push for education reform, seemingly recognizing that if we are to see America's values actualized, we must do a better job of educating the nation's schoolchildren and youth. Yet the ability of reformers to bridge the great divide between policy and implementation remains a daunting challenge.

Searching for the proverbial silver bullet regarding education reform, many community leaders, activists and stakeholders push for increasing the number of charter schools, as a prominent example. In hope that a few well placed charter schools will balance the playing field and eliminate the achievement and economic gaps. And there are a few, who suggest that the limited intellectual capacity of children challenged by poverty and those behaviors attributed to their race, is a reality that neither aspiration, nor program will remedy in terms of their ability to learn, earn and enter the middle class of America (see recent "Forbes" piece written by Dan Seligman, or online article of Charles Murray at AEI).

Given the demographic shift projected by 2050 in this country, where the nation's people of color will become the majority, it would seem that America would recognize the urgent need to support large-scale school reform. Working and competing in the global marketplace, businessmen and woman recognize the new realities of the workplace, which indicates, as an example, that there is no difference in high school course-taking between a future engineer and an auto-trade journeyman. Meaning that all American schoolchildren will have to be taught skills related to high intellectual performance.

As a nation can we afford to maintain our prejudices and over-generalizations about some of the citizens, which deny all American equal opportunity? The answer for most must obviously be a resounding no! Writers such as Conway and Moy write, "This nation's unfair gulf between the haves and the have-nots demands a critical call to action. This vast disparity does not need to be. Instead, there are steps we can take to turn [the social problems we face] around. Solving this problem is about more than just doing the right thing. The country's economic prosperity is at stake" (see The Aspen Institute's "Family Economics: Work and Wealth in the New Economy.")

At the National Urban Alliance we propose specific reforms for K-12 education based on several major beliefs:

1. All children are capable of meeting high educational standards.
2. Intelligence can be modified; it is not fixed.
3. Effective teaching is at the heart of high-performing schools.
4. All community stakeholders must be involved in improving learning and teaching and addressing children's social, cultural, and intellectual needs.

Reform begins with belief -- an irrefutable belief in the intellectual capacity of all American's to succeed in their lives in a manner that enables the nation to maintain its leadership, its highest values and its place in the future of humankind.

The reforms start with the improvement of teacher quality and sustains student achievement through advocacy, demonstration of best practice, effective and sustained professional development, and implementation of those structural changes in schools which best meet the individual learning needs of each student, e.g.: program looping so that high school students are placed in successful learning environments with a teacher for multiple years;
high administrative commitment to implement an innovation, along with administrative support...the harder people work at an innovation, the more committed they grow, fueled by increasing technical mastery of the innovation (see Miles); strong top-down mandates as well as bottom-up action and buy-in to carry out innovations (all engaged in participatory dialogue and decision-making); establishing a core of substitutes who are trained along with full-time personnel in cognitive strategies, given benefits and access to future employment;
creating learning communities in each school in collaboration with university and outside partners, and community-based organizations; rethinking academic tracking in a manner which provides increased access for all students to "talented and gifted programs," and Advanced Placement courses; using special education specialists as in-school consultants so that mainstreaming of identified students into regular academic programs where feasible and is facilitated throughout the school day and year; engaging community-based organizations in parent-school partnerships through programs such as Comer's school development program; building trust in the community for the schools by maintaining high accountability and standards for all.

Unless we all speak out on behalf of our children and other people's children as well, we will ultimately fail as an effective democracy and representational model for other nations to emulate. Whether in America or elsewhere, societal problem markers are increasingly being recognized in the media by those whose personal lens has not been clouded or dulled by self-absorption. The recent upheavals in France are an obvious reminder of what Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time." And yet it was a pleasant surprise to witness the French government's response to the riots, i.e., declaring that all French citizens would be guaranteed jobs in economic and education enterprise zones that are being established throughout the country. Can a nation as wealthy as America do anything less?

Eric J. Cooper, Ed.D.