Thursday, Wesleyan Democrats and Teach for America co-hosted a panel discussion on educational inequities in America in the Woodhead lounge. The topics of discussion ranged from the advantages of the No Child Left Behind Act to the struggles of Teach For America recruits. The panel wrestled over why such a large achievement gap exists between low-income, public school students and their high-income, private school counterparts.
Guests included John Motley, former director of External Affairs at the Hartford public schools; Ramona Gatison, principal of Lincoln Bassett School in Hartford; Ellie Sutton, a 2002 Teach for America Corps member in New Orleans and currently a third year law student at Yale; and Hannah Gay ’06, a 2006 Teach For America Corps member in New Mexico.
While each of the four panelists emphasized a different approach to determining why a tremendous achievement gap has emerged along lines of race and income, all agreed that the key to bridging the gap is close collaboration between teachers, parents and administrators.
“Teachers are making a difference, but it’s too slow,” Motley said. “We have lost several generations of our children in the inner city. We’ve got to go into fast forward now.”
The four panelists themselves served as working examples of how solutions to the achievement gap may be achieved both in the classroom and from administrative positions.
“Much of my approach comes from being in the classroom,” Sutton said. “There, it’s not so much about looking at aggregate numbers. It happens quickly and it happens year by year as students fall behind one by one.”
Gatison emphasized how a solution must involve building a professional community between parents and schools.
“Parents play a key role,” she said. “Often parents come in having had a bad educational experience themselves.”
She cited how the average kindergartener should begin school with a 30,000-word vocabulary. In inner city Hartford, the average child begins with 4,000 words.
“You have to build a learning community where everyone is responsible,” Gatison said.
The discussion opened with an examination of the most recent data regarding Connecticut’s education system. Despite having one of the nations highest incomes per capita, Connecticut has one of the largest achievement gaps. Last year’s educational assessment tests revealed that only about 15 percent of Hartford third-graders were performing at grade level. Possessing a high school diploma from Connecticut is no longer indicative of possessing adequate literacy or math skills. Most 12th-graders graduate with eighth grade skill levels.
At the same time, though, several of the panelists expressed concerns over methods of compiling statistics, including the No Child Left Behind Act.
“The good thing about No Child Left Behind was that it raised the bar,” Motley said. “It forced school districts to work with data. The bad part was that there wasn’t money behind it.”
“No Child Left Behind gives statistics, but it doesn’t give answers,” Sutton said.
The panelists also agreed that while widespread social disparities along the lines of race and income certainly affect the achievement gap, such social ills could be combated with high academic expectations and clear standards of accountability.
“Many folks come into the world with disadvantages,” Motley said. “It becomes easy to talk about how these issues exist because they’re minorities, or because they’re poor. I prefer no excuses. Let’s just get it done.”
Sutton also demonstrated a “no-excuses” perspective when telling personal stories about her Teach for America experience in New Orleans.
“If a student looks you in the eye and tells you, ‘I can’t do my homework tonight because I have to work six hours to make rent,’ you have to tell them they need to do it, because otherwise they’ll be stuck working like that forever,” she said. “They’ll give a thousand reasons why they can’t do it. Then you have to tell why you don’t care. They need to break out of the cycle.”
Other students felt that root structural problems in the overall political-economic system took agency away from educators.
“It’s good to hear people’s experiences and what they know as administrators and teachers,” said Alexandra Early ’07. “But it also made me really frustrated and angry that the citizens and government of this country are allowing people to be left behind. Our priorities are skewed. But at least people are interested in solutions.”
The panelists concluded the discussion by congratulating the students for attending and taking an important first step in becoming involved.
“It was great to see students take a first step towards making an impact,” said Matt Brownstein ’07, one of the event’s coordinators. “Most students know about the issues but this was an important way to hear about it from experts, and then follow up with a course of action.”
While the issues raised were complex, all of the panelists agreed that the achievement disparity in Connecticut, as well as across the country, was most definitely a solvable problem.
“There are many schools that show once you stop playing the blame game, things can happen,” Motley said. “You need the will and the intolerance to make it happen. We need to get rid of excuses and focus on the solution.”
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