Fall Forum Opening Address
November 6, 1997
Amy Gerstein
Thank you Ted and thank you to BayCES, and thanks to all of you for coming.
I am happy to be here! Happy to be home in San Francisco. I am happy to be at the Fall Forum! Thrilled to see friends, former teachers of mine from elementary and high school. I am honored to stand before you all tonight.
When prepping for this speech most people I know asked me what I was going to wear, not what I was going to say. The good news for you is, I took a second to pull something gorgeous out of the closet and spent much more time worrying about what I would say tonight. The bad news is, you still need to tell me I look fabulous.
Tonight, I am going to talk about the issues of democracy and equity in school reform. I will encourage us to engage in a debate about these issues, I will ask us all to try to move forward on these issues now and in new ways, and I will give you some examples of ways that schools I know are making progress.
A year ago at the first meeting of the CES National Congress the idea of adding a 10th Common Principle about democracy and equity was formally discussed. Today, at the third meeting of the CES National Congress, we looked at a draft of this principle, revised it and adopted a 10th Principle. I am thrilled to read it to you now.
"The school should demonstrate non-discriminatory and inclusive policies, practices, and pedagogues. It should model democratic practices that involve all who are directly affected by the school. The school should honor diversity and build on the strengths of its communities, deliberately and explicitly challenging all forms of inequity."
This was an important moment in CES history. The ideas, even the language, came out of the Congress.
This principle and our conference theme ask us to focus on the role of democracy and equity for schools. After much reading and plenty of conversation with smart people, I am now convinced of only one thing. Defining democracy and equity is slippery business. We live in a country that espouses democracy as our central value. We live in a country that claims that anyone can be President. We live in a society that claims we have equity of opportunity. But we have gross inequity of experience. Racism, classism, sexism, homophobia all threaten our democracy. Education has always been viewed as central to democracy. But often our schools promote democratic values while denying the harsh reality of inequity. To have a conversation about democracy and equity we have to struggle with the fundamental values which shaped this country. Most of you in this room have a vision statement for your school. I am willing to bet that each vision statement contains a phrase about educating students to be active citizens in our democracy. I am also willing to bet that most of us have not had a rigorous conversation about what that means.
Ted Sizer always says the Coalition is nothing more than a conversation among friends. Sometimes, I cannot say that without snickering. Look at us. Three thousand people having a conversation? But you know what?ãthis is profound. We believe that talking about ideas and values will help us to make changes for kids. I have to say, I agree.
The first set of Common Principles encouraged us to discuss and debate the ideas. What does it really mean to teach a student to use his or her mind well? How will we know? What do we want our students to know and be able to do? How will they show it? How can we best engage students to do the hard work of discovery and debate? We believe, in CES, that to teach a student well we need to know that student well. We all agree with that idea. We may not all agree on what that means for our work. But the conversation about the ideas is what has always made the Coalition a vibrant, dynamic movement.
Whether this 10th principle is a formality or not, these ideas deserve the same discussion as the first nine principles. Our conference theme is designed to spur the conversation.
So, what do I think Democracy means? Democracy places ultimate faith in the people to preserve and protect the common good. Democracy demands freedom from bias. Democracy calls for everyone to participate. Our educational system was designed to protect the common good, to ensure our democracy. But we cannot foster the common good if we do not also self-consciously strive for equity. We can only arrive at democracy by surfacing inequity. And we must overcome the inequity once we unearth it.
How do our schools prepare our students for a democracy? Ultimately, a school governed by the nine Common Principles is one that will prepare students for a democracy. But it is not just about preparation for the future. Students have to live a democracy today. The Common Principles guide us to live democratically in our schools. By living democratically now in each of our schools, we help insure our nation's democracy.
We attend to the common good by asking ourselves hard questions. We attend to the common good when we make our work public. We attend to the common good when we find ways for parents to be essential collaborators.
We attend to the common good when we surface our biases. We attend to the common good when we find ways for our work to include students' voices and experiences.
Many of you may say, what's new here? It is new to articulate an explicit standard of equity and democracy. The explicit conversation about equity and democracy will ratchet up the work in our schools. This standard will push us to insure that the Common Principles reach into every classroom.
One device for engaging in skillful discussion is a tool we know well in CES Essential Questions. These are questions with no simple answer. These are questions which invite controversy. They force us to clarify our values. They are questions, I believe, we need to ask ourselves and each other. Here are a few I think we need to grapple with in our debate on democracy and equity in our schools. If this were my classroom, I'd make sure you were taking notes now! You need to remember this:
Coming to address these questions will be hard work. No doubt about it. It is an enormous intellectual challenge to understand what democracy means in a school. It is an even bigger challenge to practice. As a nation, we have struggled for more than 200 years to understand and enact democracy. Addressing these questions is also an emotional challenge. Many of us are numb, afraid of being blamed, afraid of the answers to these questions, afraid we all lose our jobs. We have every right to be afraid and challenged. But as educators we are responsible to address these essential questions, to stand for what is right, and to demand a higher standard of our work. As Frederick Douglas said, "there is no progress without struggle."
The promise of engaging in this conversation of democracy and equity is the promise of educating our children. This rigorous investigation into the goals and means of democracy will ensure that more students are succeeding. This debate will help us to find more ways and to enlist more people to help more students succeed. This is one struggle worth enduring.
And the need is urgent. It is easy to become numb to the pain and the tragedy we live with in the USA. But, we need some ways to understand the urgency children now face in this country.
Over fourteen million children in the US now live below the poverty level and the poverty level is pitifully low. Just $16,000 for a family of four.
What does fourteen million look like? Imagine that each one of us in this room represents almost five thousand poor children. Look to the person sitting beside you. That person represents almost five thousand poor children. That number of children, represented by a single one of us, could not fit in this room. It would take more than five thousand rooms this size to contain the extremely poor, hungry children in this country.
Most of the poor in this country are white. Yet, race continues to play a significant role in influencing success in this country. Researchers at the Center for the Future of Children calculated the following profile: a young black high school dropout has a 15% chance of being a self-sufficient adult. Whereas a young black who graduates from high school has a much higher chance of being adult self-sufficient. Think about it. A 42% chance of not living in poverty. That means fewer than half black high school graduates have a chance of being adults who are not poor. That means 85% of black drop outs are likely to live their lives in poverty.
This picture is grim and grave. Poverty, race and ethnicity still impact and limit opportunities for the people of this country. But, I believe, there is a lot of power in knowing what affects the potential of children to escape the grip of poverty. We know educational attainment is an essential ingredient for success. It may not be the only one, but it is vital. We, in this Coalition of Essential Schools, who do what is essential for this country, help all students beat the odds by finishing high school.
We also help them beat the odds by knowing them well. We know that powerful, caring relationships change life trajectories. Knowing our children well is likely to insure success.
With such glaring inequity in this country, our democracy is threatened. Our schools face enormous challenges to create democratic experiences when we live within a fundamentally inequitable society. But schools in our Coalition have been making this happen for more than a decade.
Let me tell you a few stories about communities that are actively grappling with the three essential questions I highlighted earlier.
These are places where the conversation has revealed interesting insights and produced new practices. These stories are brave beginnings. I want to emphasize this is not rocket science. This is work done by ordinary, courageous people.
I tell these stories because I want to be clear about the actions we can take. When I call for conversation, I am not calling for flip-chart paper all over the walls of our schools. This is not just endless talk with no action. I am calling for rigorous attention to the common good within the context of our everyday work. We need to surface the ways that we inevitably, unconsciously promote inequity.
You will find commonalties in these stories. The people at these schools made pain-staking efforts to uncover the ways they were perpetuating inequity and threatening democracy. They also made pain-staking efforts to change.
I know of a school that has always shown remarkable success according to standard measures. The community generally felt happy with the school. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Recently though, the school decided to take a closer look at itself. The school decided to disaggregate student performance data by gender. They discovered that the boys were consistently lagging behind the girls in all areas. They had no idea this was going on. They had no idea that something was in fact broken. This inquiry allowed them to uncover a problem that had been masked by the usual ways we accept data on student performance.
Not resting on having discovered new information, they took action. They started to investigate the possible reasons why this might be happening and they reported their findings. A brave move. Parents might begin to distrust the school. The press could get a hold of these findings and make it front page news without giving the school a chance to understand what was happening. They chose to make everyone in the community listen. "You are all part of understanding this problem. We don't know what it means yet, but we think it deserves your attention." This school called for the people to attend to the common good. Without looking critically at student performance data, without being willing to engage in serious self scrutiny, they would have missed a significant problem that threatened the common good. Now that is a profoundly democratic act.
Consider another example. I know of a district where they studied the performance of second language learners over time, K-12. Historically, these students did not perform as well as native English speakers. Intent on finding ways to help these students be more successful, they looked for trends. They discovered something they hadn't realized. The achievement gap between native English speakers and second language learners actually widened after 4th grade. They also found that the gap continued to widen as the children progressed through high school. The teachers and administrators in that district were faced with several choices: Do we decide that this trend is inevitable? Do we assume there is little we can do to impact the outcomes? Do we assure ourselves that we are working as hard as we can on behalf of those children? Do the K-4 teachers get to heave a huge sigh of relief since the gap widens after fourth grade or do we decide to try to understand better the reasons for this trend? Do we include more people from the community to help us address this trend? Hundreds of teachers sat in small groups and studied that data. They worked with consultants to understand the trends and the implications. It took months to look at that data. It is taking many more months to understand the implications of that data. And it will take even more time and attention to develop strategies to change those trends. By examining the data, they attended to the common good. They made the work public. They made everyone feel party to the crime and party to the solution. That is a profoundly democratic act.
These two examples describe looking at student performance data as a strategy to attend to the common good. But we don't need to wait for test scores. We can also look at our practice. What do our budget allocations tell us about our view of the common good? What do our grouping practices reveal about our definition of equity? Does our curriculum reflect the cultures of the students in the school? In what ways do our assessment practices reinforce our values?
There is another school I know where students perform exhibitions of their work every six weeks. Originally, only the faculty judged the exhibitions. After a few years, the faculty wanted to open up the assessment process. They wanted to include the parents. So, they solicited volunteers. Parents of all stripes agreed to participate. The faculty held multiple training sessions. Parents learned about standards, rubrics, and norms. This was very ambitious work. I admired their efforts and told the faculty so. They then expressed to me how hard the work was. Many of the parents had very limited education and struggled to understand the assessment tasks. Other parents had language barriers that got in the way of understanding the student work. Another group of parents questioned the values embedded in the rubric. They did not want simply to adopt the standards set by the school. Some of these reactions were anticipated by the school faculty. But mostly, the faculty didn't realize it would be so hard. They were determined to keep up the effort. And as far as I know, parents are still involved in assessing student work, and in taking part in the discussions of what constitutes quality work. This school took seriously the charge of making our work public. Including parents, in substantive work, was a profoundly democratic act.
I know, looking at our work will inevitably produce fear, worry, blame, guilt and even paralysis. But until and unless we look critically at the ways our students are performing and the ways our practices reflect our values, we will continue to reproduce the results that we are living with today. And that is not good enough. When we do examine our work, and strive to improve the success of all students, we will meet the challenge of democracy.
This is not new work. Many of us in the room have disaggregated our data for years. Many of us in this room have engaged the community in the work of the school. The challenge is that too few of us are doing that and the stakes are getting higher all the time.
We can only arrive at democracy by surfacing inequities. It will take courage. But this is not any different from our other debates about what is best for all students. We have the capacity. We have the technology. Now, we need the will and the skills to attend to the common good.
One of the people who inspires me is Alice Walker. In her recent book about
activism, Anything We Love Can Be Saved , she says:
So it seems to me that in the Coalition we have stories to tell and they are not getting much play. There is a tremendous wealth of knowledge and experience in this room. And each of us represents dozens more people who are thinking about our youth with respect and hope and a good measure of fear about their futures. It is perhaps the most radical and the most democratic act we can perform to bring our small imperfect stones to the pile. Our common good depends on it. When we do, we may well discover that they are not as imperfect as we had thought. And we might well learn ways to make them rounder and polish them so that they'll shine. But we will most certainly have a huge pile of stones.
I want to encourage you to take this metaphor home with you. Remember your stones. But also remember these essential questions.
Develop your own essential questions. Have the conversation. Attend to the common good. Include a few people who are traditionally left out of the conversations. In doing so, we are assured a brighter future.
Let's use the opportunity of this Fall Forum to practice. Let's take risks. Let's build coalitions. Let's share our stones of activism as we attend to the common good. Let's also remember to laugh and recognize our accomplishments. Most of all, let's not forget the huge numbers of students depending on our democracyãthose students are depending on you to engage in this conversation among friends.