The Root Causes of Educational Underachievement

Before we involve our state, Michigan, in the rigors of the "Race to the Top" federal program, let's take a long look at the environment from which student under achievement is most consistently drawn.

WE KNOW WHO MOST OF THE STUDENT UNDERACHIEVERS IN MICHIGAN SCHOOLS ARE:

*They are the poor.
*They live largely in urban ghettos.
*They live in high crime areas.
*They are exposed to constant gun violence.
*They are children in homes rife with abuse and neglect.
*They are hungry and go day-to-day without proper nourishment, staggering numbers qualify for free or reduced meals.
*They are the children of children, frequently the off spring of promiscuous mothers, often children themselves.
*They live in rundown, dangerous, or condemned housing.
*They go cold in the winter without proper outerwear.
*They are exposed everyday to the drug culture.
*They are harassed, threatened, and controlled, herded about by gangs. They live in constant despair, terrorized by street crime and shots in the night.
*They are those who have been neglected or abandoned by the houses of worship.
*They grow up in a jobless environment and have no real hope for an adequately paying occupation.
*They are in large numbers teenage boys of color who drop out of school.
*They are unhealthy, too many die as infants, get few vaccinations, no pre-natal or little post-natal care.
*They are culturally deprived: living in areas with few good public libraries or free or affordable cultural activities.
*They have very limited access to banner stores such as abound in the suburbs.
*They are often in foster care.
*They have little opportunity to investigate the natural beauty or the beauty and wonders of the out state areas of Michigan, many have never left their neighborhoods, have never seen the open countryside, the dunes, or the Mackinaw Bridge.
*They have juvenile criminal records, often numerous misdemeanors.
*They are truant, or frequently fail to come to school.
*They have few books or educational stimuli in the home.
*Their caregivers are unemployed or on welfare.
*They often lack the basic social skills, at age five cannot perform such simple tasks as tying their own shoes, may eat out of bowls without utensils.
*They are outside the profile sought by the "marketplace entrepreneurials," with the exception of drug pushers.
*They have not received the proper diets in the early critically formative years of mental development.
*They are victims of various kinds of political shams and disparaging debates, the flotsam and jetsom of Lansing debate and cynicism.
*They cannot move or play freely in their neighborhoods without fear and anxiety.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN WHEN IT COMES TO EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT?

Everything, if we comprehend the depth of the problem and nothing, if we shift blame and refuse to do what we can to correct this deplorable situation through a sustained, collaborate effort.

In a moment of pure honesty Grand Rapids former Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Grotsky said some of the best teaching takes place in our inner cities, predominately minority elementary classrooms, it doesn't show up in high test scores, but taken from where these students start out, how far behind educationally they come to us, the persistent progress that is being made reflects some of the finest teaching in the district. The love and dedication of these teachers is outstanding.

Our public schools rooms are "nurseries of our future and their wanton neglect entails a kind of social suicide."
Why are we squandering hope and help for a school generation moving through the inner city public schools while we repeatedly make public education the object of criticism and scorn, as the editorial board of the Detroit News is prone to do with its habitual harangues. When does the News become collaborative with teachers and go pro-active?

When are we going to hold the tax-hating Lansing pols responsible for their cynicism and neglect?

In spite of the many attempts to portray themselves as the promoters of "education reform" in Michigan, the Detroit News and the Michigan Senate's civic and social blindness about life in the abandoned squalor of the state's dead and dying cities ignores the root causes of educational underachievement. In the their blame-laying fixations on test scores and measurements, that simply confirm the plight of our urban and poor rural area children, they have not become the answer, they have become enlargers of the problem.

Posted on November 21, 2009 to the Detroit News Newstalk Forum.