A group here in Atlanta called “Atlanta Communities for Excellent Schools” (ACES) has been organizing regular discussions about books centered on educational issues. It’s a great idea that brings together parents, educators, and community members from across the city to engage in substantive conversations about teaching, learning, and schools. For the most recent discussion, ACES selected The Diverse Schools Dilemma: A Parent’s Guide to Socioeconomically Mixed Schools by Michael Petrilli, a parent and executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an educational think tank and advocacy organization. For this week’s blog post I’ll share some thoughts about the book—both in the context of our work at ANCS and for schools more broadly.
By and large, I found The Diverse Schools Dilemma a thought-provoking and accessible read—though the book might more accurately be subtitled “A Middle Class Parent’s Guide…” (Petrilli acknowledges in the introduction that the book is pitched more towards parents like him and his wife who were searching for a diverse school for their own kids in Washington, D.C.). Petrilli cites a good bit of research that acknowledges the benefits to students—academically and otherwise—from attending socioeconomically and racially diverse schools, and he also captures the challenges such schools can face in realizing those benefits.
Like Petrilli, I want a school experience for my own son that affords him the opportunity to learn with and from students of different backgrounds. And as a school leader, it’s long been important—for all of the reasons Petrilli cites in his book—to help build a school community that is diverse and that makes the most of that diversity through the words and actions that happen in the spaces inside and outside the classroom. So it was noticeable to me when I felt some angst as I read a section from the chapter titled “Cultural Conflict in the Classroom”.
In this section, Petrilli refers to the work of Lisa Delpit, a well-respected educator and author, probably most well-known for her book Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. Petrilli focuses on a 1986 article by Delpit that later became a part of Other People’s Children. In the article Delpit recounts her experiences as an early career teacher in a racially diverse classroom and the struggles several of her students of color encountered when she used predominantly “progressive” teaching methods, such as “open classrooms, learning stations, carpeted sitting areas instead of desks, math games, even weaving to teach fine motor skills”. Petrilli writes that “Delpit eventually adopted more traditional methods, which helped her black students improve their reading and writing skills. That’s not to say that she rejected the tenets of progressive education entirely. But her article sparked an enormous response from other black teachers, who believed that the fashionable progressive methods were good for ‘white folks’ but not for kids of color. And those teachers might have been right.” Later in the chapter Petrilli goes on to suggest “progressive education…is not generally the best approach for the neediest kids…”.
This section of the book bothered me, mainly because it seems to reinforce a myth that, to be frank, ANCS sometimes faces, one that I believe impacts our efforts to foster a diverse school experience for students. First, though, a bit of context.
ANCS is a school most would consider to be educationally “progressive”. While we work to tailor our approach to teaching and learning based on differing student needs (as most good schools I know do), putting into practice the principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools like “helping students learn to use their minds well”, “depth over breadth, “teacher-as-coach, student-as-worker”, and “demonstration of mastery” is very different than schools that primarily emphasize memorization, multiple choice tests, and teacher lectures.
As well, ANCS is committed to having a student population that reflects the diversity of southeast Atlanta for all of the reasons supported by research. And we also aim to live out the CES common principle that says a school “should demonstrate non-discriminatory and inclusive policies, practices, and pedagogies…model democratic practices that involve all who are directly affected by the school…[and] honor diversity and build on the strength of its communities, deliberately and explicitly challenging all forms of inequity.” In terms of numbers associated with diversity, ANCS is one of a small handful of APS schools (less than 15%) whose student population is not made up of more than 70% of a single racial or ethnic group, our middle school campus is a “Title I school” based on the percentage of families who qualify for free and reduced price meals, a higher percentage of students with disabilities is served at ANCS than nearly 70% of all APS schools, and educators of color comprise about one-third of the school’s faculty. And our students of all backgrounds generally experience high levels of success when they leave us after 8th grade, as measured by enrollment in honors and AP courses, high school graduation rates, and annual surveys of our alumni.
Yet despite all of this, more than once, I have heard some variation of this question I was once asked by a prospective parent at an ANCS information session: So this stuff you do here is really better for middle class white kids, right? As you can imagine, the first time I heard this kind of question, I was a little taken aback. But I now realize there are a couple of important points for our school—and other “progressive” schools striving for diversity—implicit in questions or comments of this type.
First, ANCS is experiencing subtle swings in the demographics of our school that work against our goal of socioeconomic and racial diversity. Some of the reasons behind this trend reflect changing demographics in southeast Atlanta as a whole that are somewhat outside of our control. But they also point to a need for our school to do a much more effective job of outreach and support before and after the enrollment process to families and students of color and of lower income levels. We’ve got to do better in this area, and it is a major emphasis of our strategic plan that will soon be presented. There is much to be learned from other charter schools tackling this issue in other parts of the United States.
But we must also work at debunking the myth Petrilli writes about and that the parent question above suggests: that “progressive” schools are only good for “certain kinds of students.” While there may be different types of schools on the spectrum from traditional to progressive and parent may prefer a particular type for her student to attend, to say that one type “works” for middle class students and another type for other students is just plain wrong. I’ve visited or worked at schools—Urban Academy and the Beacon School in New York; Fenway High School, Mission Hill School, and Boston Arts Academy in Boston—with diverse student populations whose students demonstrate phenomenal success in high school and college and in the work force, and I’ve read about numbers of other similar schools. And many of our own ANCS graduates disprove this supposed truth about “progressive” schools. So why does this myth live on?
About five years after Lisa Delpit published Other People’s Children, in about 2000, the phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations” started to pop up in speeches and around discussions in Washington, D.C. about how some public schools were failing students of color and students of lower income levels. This rhetoric and the fact that many students were being under-served by their schools led to the passage of the “No Child Left Behind” Act which called for annual academic testing for students in grades 3-8, disaggregation of the scores from these tests by racial and economic subgroups, and consequences for schools that did not meet performance targets for students. One result of the past 12 years of this policy has been an increased emphasis on achievement as solely measured by standardized test scores and a perception that if a school is not rigorously focused on preparing students of color or students of lower socioeconomic levels to meet ever higher performance targets on these tests then it is “lowering expectations”.
All of this makes it surprising to me that Petrilli’s focus on Lisa Delpit didn’t include an interview with her or make mention of her more recent writings, such as her 2012 book “Multiplication is for White People”: Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children. In the introduction to that book, she writes, “I am angry that the conversation about educating our children has become so restricted. What has happened to the societal desire to instill character? To develop creativity? To cultivate courage and kindness? How can we look at a small bundle of profound potential and see only a number describing inadequacy?” Delpit goes on to lambast people who have misappropriated some of her earlier writings as a call for more testing and “rigor” and provides examples of why “progressive” teaching is essential for students of all backgrounds.
Indeed, in the past week, I’ve read news about a new Harvard study that says economic mobility patterns have not changed in forty years and another study that shows that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who are more engaged in school have greater opportunities for mobility later in life. And what is it that leads to higher levels of engagement and motivation among students that could result in improved chances at upward mobility? Brain research and school examples suggest the most effective path to student engagement and deep learning is lined with the traits of many “progressive” schools: collaboration, social-emotional learning, perspective taking, and chances for reflection and revision. A recent New York Times opinion piece by David Brooks even asked President Obama to use his State of the Union address as a call for more emphasis in schools on social and emotional development and other skills that “are hard to see and measure” as a way to improve the lives of underprivileged students.
As Delpit and these other examples make clear, when you broaden your definition of what “works” and what is “best” for students of color and students of lower socioeconomic status beyond only test scores, you have a whole different understanding of how other approaches might be just as critical and useful for these students.
Creating and supporting a diverse school is challenging and requires much more than just a stated commitment to doing so, something I am realizing about what we are trying to do at ANCS—we certainly have work to do improve. But I adamantly refuse to let the idea that a school that is focused on creating a meaningful, thoughtful, and joyful school experience can only be good students of a certain color or income level. There’s too much evidence to show otherwise, and there’s too much for our society to lose if we don’t acknowledge that evidence.