Current education reform efforts punish our nation’s most vulnerable

The US has lofty goals and objectives enacting just policies and providing valuable services to eliminate educational inequality. But are we really accomplishing this? It is true that the widening of income and opportunity gaps has been increasing steadily in this country, and has been rising since the 1970s. When it comes to the issue of income inequality, or even disparities in standards of living, these issues are more symptomatic, and not really at the root of social injustice. Issues related to current education reforms are more foundational, and lack of education leads people, both at the individual level and community level, to be far more prone and susceptible to social injustices such as income inequality. For much of our nation’s history before the Civil Rights era, social injustices prevailed. However, with current education reforms and policy proposals, we do not seem to be moving in the right direction.

We live in a world today where everything and everyone is interconnected – a global classroom of sorts. We moved in this direction during the Civil Rights Movement. Indeed, from the 1950s through the 1970s, we put significant reforms in place to desegregate schools and mix students from various backgrounds. I would like to think that we did this because we realized that the only way to move forward was by forming a more united society as a coherent group. I believe that historical successes such as these have implications for how students should be taught today. It has become imperative to train students not only about the importance of collective group efforts, but also how to communicate and work efficiently and effectively with one another. Learning is accomplished through focused and controlled group work with appropriate teacher instruction, guidance, and feedback. Current educational policy places too much emphasis on individual achievement. The very few instances of student-centered teaching in today’s classroom, where techniques are employed through group work, are not usually tracked or assessed properly by teachers. Racial segregation and busing policies characteristic of the mid-twentieth century all pushed the idea of group interaction. Why are we moving away from this?

Historically, educational policy has largely been an issue of the left. However, during the 1980s, much of educational policy was shifted to the right during the Reagan Administration. Reagan’s proposed elimination of the Department of Education was based on the idea of individualized education administered in a local manner. Perhaps this was a way to further student creativity. This was a sharp contrast to what we saw in the 1990s where the idea of outcomes-based education reined supreme, which culminated with “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) in 2001. However, NCLB, which is only being fine-tuned in today’s “outcomes” climate, curbs student creativity by putting emphasis on standardized testing. Traditional methods of direct teaching have been outdated as a way of training young people to be successful in today’s world. This means that the assessments-driven policy of NCLB have missed the mark.

Cooperative learning provides for an appropriate model for measuring group work performance. Learning is an opportunity for positive peer-peer molding in that human beings learn by and are affected by example. The statement, “tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are,” rings true as a human rule of influence, power, and responsibility that we have over others. Modern reforms should push for cooperative learning in a way where both students and teachers have a direct stake in the learning process. This is fitting for our time, just as educating to meet national workforce demand was a fitting policy after the New Deal.

In terms of current educational policy, the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” is the federal government’s new plan to revitalize schools and effect reform at the state and local level. Unlike the Bush Administration’s NCLB program, “Race to the Top” aims at effecting change in education through competition for funding between schools, rather than providing specific blueprints for mandated outcomes. Like many plans for federal department and economic revitalization and recovery, “Race to the Top” was designed by the Obama Administration with the general approach that competition (capitalism’s chief characteristic) will lead to innovation, best practice, and ultimately positive reform. The effect of such type of policy is yet to be realized, but some serious comparison and analysis is a bit overdue. Perhaps “Race to the Top” and NCLB could be used as a case study for such a comparison. However, we miss the mark once again because the schools most likely to innovate will be the schools that can literally afford to do so. Poor kids take a back seat once again.

Educational inequality has always been on our national collective mind, but serious paradigm shifts are required to restructure our schools and curriculum. Poor policy has pronounced effects on populations that are composed of the have-nots more so than the haves. I thought that after the Civil Rights Movement, we were going to move past this.

Let me tell you a story…with data…

What good is data if you can’t communicate it to others in the form of some narrative or story?

The path to a homeless-free America has little to do with homes

The homeless population of America today has been most evident in large urban centers of the country, most notably visible in areas in and around Los Angeles and New York City. However, public concern for the homeless increased in the late 1960s after the Vietnam War, when a specific lawsuit out of New York City was filed in an attempt to secure “shelter space” for every homeless man (women were included later). The homeless plaintiffs eventually won the lawsuit, but then issues regarding the definition and characterization of homelessness and housing status arose from the ashes of legal battles. Classification and legal aside, the solution to housing our homeless has little to do with availability of homes.

In regard to the definition of homelessness, one camp suggested that it should include people in unstable housing situations in addition to those that literally have no overnight shelter. In the 1970s and early 1980s, concerns were raised about the status of veterans of the Vietnam War that were now looking to find their place in society. It became hard to ignore related issues of disability and unemployment as the issue broadened to include more of the general population. The unemployment rate rose to 10.8 percent in December 1982. Many housing program advocates began to push for a broader definition of homelessness after citing the obvious connection between recent economic trends and housing stability of even working Americans, much less those Americans that were out of work for reasons beyond their control.

The other camp, particularly those associated directly with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), argued that it was more important to specifically define “housing status” of a given individual or family so that action and policy designed to alleviate homelessness could be more pointed and focused. The plague of homelessness does not exist in a vacuum, but rather is circumstantial and due to factors that extend beyond a person’s ability to find a physical place to dwell. It is almost as if HUD would be better served by focusing on urban development more so than housing. Lack of housing and its associated effects tend to be on the tail end of a series of factors that lead one along the line of societal downgrade and economic depression, which would lead one to believe that the two camps are too narrowly focused.

FDR’s New Deal included a plethora of government assistance programs (for example, the US Housing Authority, among others) to help Americans get back on their feet in response to the Great Depression. Historians refer to the 3 R’s (relief, recovery, and reform) as a summary of the New Deal agenda and policy goals. With this program, homelessness and poverty were addressed with comprehensive government action that extended beyond immediate quick fixes and temporary relief. LBJ’s Great Society was a closely related program that extended government arms to address poverty and associated racial and social injustices. Comprehensive individual, community, and national development programs all require a wrap-around approach that encompasses all potential areas of growth and maturation. In a sense, the Great Society was aimed at this goal.

The Reagan Administration added to the number of homeless Americans by cutting back on the number of people receiving federal disability payments. Alongside an economic recession, the Reagan Administration was also responsible for this indirect action (not directly related to housing) that led to higher rates of homelessness more so than direct cutting of federal funds for actual public housing. However, the first major and direct response to the homelessness crisis came during Reagan’s second term in 1987, when the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act was signed. This measure authorized programs in shelters to include medical services, employment search services, and job skills training. There was even some communication and cross-collaboration between the Department of Education and HUD to provide services for children and school-aged youth. However, it was not until 2003 that the Social Security Administration got into the act by starting programs to help the chronically homeless (only one definition of homeless) apply for federal disability payments in an attempt to indirectly alleviate homelessness.

In the early 1990s, there was a consensus reached that the root cause of non-chronic homelessness (yet another definition of homelessness) was an insufficient amount of affordable housing for families. However, housing availability is only a side effect to the larger disease of lack of viable economic opportunity, mobility, and education, sometimes even in the wake of additional mental health issues. We have seen through previous Administrations that government agency and departmental collaborations have been successful in addressing homelessness. Many players in the game included entities external to HUD and various public housing authorities. The way to address homelessness is to create programs that support overall human well being, touching on social, environmental, and educational factors. Otherwise we are just fumbling around with definitions of people that we are trying to place in housing rather than giving people the means and motivation to live in housing.