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Home > Fall Forum > 1997
Democracy and Equity in School Reform
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:
- How are we attending to the common good?
- Why do certain groups of students succeed more than others?
- How do we know we provide adequate support for all students to meet high standards?
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.
- How are we attending to the common good?
- Why do certain groups of students succeed more than others?
- How do we know we provide adequate support for all students to meet high standards?
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: It has become a common
feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that
our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged
boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building
of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings
out of shame. This is the tragedy of our world. For we can do nothing substantial
toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves
individual by individual, and bringing our small imperfect stones to the pile.
In this regard, I have a story to tell."
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.
- How are we attending to the common good?
- Why do certain groups of students succeed more than others?
- How do we know we provide adequate support for all students to meet high standards?
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.
Page last updated: May 15, 2002
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