Outside+Readings+3-3

Work Remains to Ensure Equality in Grandes Écoles

This article is very interesting. It is about an elite school in France who takes 30 percent of incoming students from among the poorer social classes and attempts to give them the equal opportunity of going to an elite school to learn. Even though this school has made considerable improvements, there is still more effort that needs to be put in if they intend to keep their promise. I like what this school is doing. I wonder how a school like this in the US would go over.

[|Professional Equality]

As we are reading about equality this week I came upon this blog post not about equality within the classroom, but the dignity of teachers in the professional world. I am sure we are all aware that some people do not think teaching is hard work and look down upon teachers assuming if they teach kindergarten they are only as smart as a 5 year old and all they do is "play" all day. Even teacher put each other down: Secondary teachers claiming that elementary school teachers only play and elementary school teachers claiming that secondary teachers only repeat the same thing 5 times a day and have extra prep time they don't need. Two quotes from this article that stood out to me were  "the dean of education at Temple University said to me: "Why do we bother to educate people like you if you're going to end up as kindergarten teachers?" and "When I got a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987, reporters said the same thing: "Now that you have this award, what will you go on to do in the future?" "Teach," I replied, "of course." But they found that inconceivable."

=**Closing Achievement Gap** =

I thought this article was interesting because it discusses closing the achievement gap, but without widening a racial one. I thought this would be relevant since we are discusses all students having equal opportunities. Dr. Ronald Ferguson went to 60 various school around the country speaking to teachers about their curriculum. He talks about that half the gap has to do with economics and the other half has to do with different skills. How can we make sure that both poor/wealthy and all races have an equal opportunity to have a quality education?

[|One drop of Hispanic blood]

This article by Joanne Jacobs highlights a relatively recent U.S. Department of Education decision that affects how students are classified racially. It says that students with one drop of Hispanic blood will be considered Hispanic and anyone else that normally would mark multiple races will be considered '2 or more races.' This could have huge effects in the data collected about achievement gaps and consequentially would affect the funding, assistance, and provisions for different groups. Some are wondering about the motives of the decision. Is it to collect better data to help those groups that are suffering poor achievement? Or is it some kind of manipulation of data to reach some desired end goal?

I understant that racial classification is important for many aspects of our society. It is important in trying to determine gaps and in providing assistance to close those gaps. But I also sometimes wonder if it isn't part of what fuels racial disparities in our nation. The numbers game and classifying race can become an obsession and takes up time, resources, and energy that could be spent just helping those in need. This Department of Education decision seems a little ridiculous to me. How can we truly determine "one drop of hispanic blood?" Do most of us really know our ancesty well enough to determine that? And I have to ask myself, why do we insist on dividing ourselves into racial categories when race is really a social construct? Wouldn't it make more sense to ask a question about our country of origin than our race- which thereby continues spreading the idea that race is something real?

Or maybe we could just stop classification all together and hope that it would decrease the feelings of separation between groups. Who knows? Maybe if we stopped classifying our children into groups, we would begin to truly see them all as equal (not the same, but equal). We could quit worrying about what group is smarter and which group is discriminated against and could start looking all the groups as one big whole that needs to learn to work together and value each other. I know that collecting racial data and such is necessary for public aid and welfare - but those are just quick fixes. We need to completely transform the way our society is structured.

-Beth