schools vs. parents

Eddie Rodriguez (Exec Dir of REACH) and another friend, who used to be a NYC public school teacher, have been having an interesting discussion about whether schools or parents are more to blame for the underachievement of low-income, minority kids.  Here are my friend's comments:

I fear I will get a tongue-lashing from Whitney for "blaming the victim" here.  I don't believe I had low expectations for my students; quite the opposite.  I was irritated, if  anything, that I was more ambitious for them than they were -- or their  parents were -- for themselves.  But I do believe the children I worked with grew up in a low- to no-expectation culture.  Frankly, I think the culture at large is sclerotic, but it's easier to mitigate against it if you're well-off.  I'm simply out of my depth on what seems to make Asian communities different, but education appears to be a core civic value in many,  perhaps most, Asian communities.  There were very few families that I worked with that came from educated backgrounds.  Indeed, I often felt that, apart from a few standard homilies, most of my students’ families didn't really internalize the idea that education could be a means to any meaningful end.  On the other hand, I'm stunned at the percentage of the student population at the selective high schools that are Asian.

One of  the reason that I'm interested in doing more for the high-achieving subset of low-income minority kids is my belief -- utterly untested, I'll allow -- that  we're not doing anything meaningful to create a core of highly educated,  upwardly mobile families in our most economically devastated neighborhoods.  Everyone focuses on outcomes, but they define it too narrowly: rising test scores, even high school graduation rates, are meaningless unless those things lead to higher education opportunities and success in college and beyond.  I'm on the board of a non-profit that runs a new small school in  the inner city -- and a supposedly successful one.  Privately, I'm not  convinced yet.  I'll be convinced when the school's graduates go to reputable four-year colleges, stay there, and take their place at the economic table after graduation.  Anything less is not satisfying.  Or  acceptable, really.

Here's Eddie's reply:

I don't think you're blaming the victim at all.  If anything, you're keeping it real.  At some point, people in the hood need to stop hating and start duplicating.

Honestly, though, I have always struggled with the issue.  Most of the time I firmly believe that kids and families are so far removed from being "in the know," that the  absence of high expectations is understandable.  Nonetheless, there is a  saying -- "If you don't know, you better ask somebody!" -- that you always  hope folks will just do (but we understand may not be happening).  It  seems to me that Chinese dishwashers and laundromat workers know at least to ask, and have access to some answers pointing them in the right direction, no  matter how removed they are from "being in the know."

Other times, I may be a bit harsher on folks and the low expectations they may have, but the concern about behavior probably needs to be articulated more.  Indeed, if we're about obtaining real results, perhaps it's counterproductive to sugarcoat things -- let's keep it real.  The statistics are real; our low achievement is real; the difficulty that so many poor kids of color will  experience to get on the track of true upwardly social mobility is  real.

We should also keep it real, particularly if all that means is setting the bar high in order to help folks understand how high the bar is and how attainable meeting high expectations is if we all keep it real.

As for my "tongue lashing for blaming the victim," I actually agree with what my friends are saying.  I don't think schools deserve all the blame for the awful academic underachievement of low-income, minority kids.  In fact, if I could push one button and either fix parents or fix schools in this country, I'd push the parents button in a heartbeat.
 
My point is simply this: we can fix -- or at least substantially improve -- schools, whereas I don't think we can fix parents (or our increasingly materialistic, shallow, complacent and self-centered culture in general).  The discussion of lousy parenting reminds me of the one over trying to integrate schools -- I'd love to improve parents, just as I'd love to integrate schools, but I don't think either is going to happen to any material degree, so let's get moving on fixing schools (and, incidentally, good schools tend to engage parents and help them be better parents).
 
Lastly, speaking of our culture vs. Asia's, my in-laws just got back from China and visited a kindergarten classroom there.  The level of stuff the kids were doing confirms what I've been saying for a while: the Chinese are going to kick our asses for the next century (until they too become rich, lazy and complacent).