by Alesha Seroczynski
University of Notre Dame
If you read my last Science of Virtues blog (http://scienceofvirtues.org/forums/p/512/519.aspx), you know that I ended with the supposition that students in Indiana could pass our state achievement exam (the ISTEP) in the elementary years and then, without any changes in educational environment and/or individual learning ability, suddenly begin to fail the achievement exam in middle school or early high school. This is due to the fact that, when held against a nationally standardized exam like the NWEA, the ISTEP becomes increasingly more difficult—at grade level—with each passing year.
This summer I met a student during one of our intake assessments who is experiencing this very same phenomenon. As his mother was recounting his educational background, she became increasingly despondent about her son’s middle school experience. “I don’t know what happened,” she said. “He used to do O.K. in school; he used to pass the ISTEP. But recently he just doesn’t seem to be able to [pass it].” He has not been diagnosed with any learning disability, and subsequently has no individual plan for academic assistance. I asked if anyone had noted the trend and stepped in to intervene. “No,” she replied. “No one has said or done anything.” She seemed very defeated.
As a result of academic marginalization, this boy, and so many others like him, become increasingly ambivalent about school and detach from the process. He attends school regularly, but doesn’t always understand class lessons. He tries hard, but can’t quite pass most exams. Eventually, he feels set up to fail, and knows that options for his future are narrowing with each passing semester. Both he and his mother can sense the injustice of the situation and know that the boy is heading toward high school failure or dropout, yet they feel incapable of obtaining assistance. Some do try to get help; but they find themselves embroiled in a mass of paperwork and meetings—if they are even able to get that far. They hardly understand the professional vernacular and feel shunted by overworked and underpaid teachers and case managers. After months or years of academic setback, immobility, and failure--much like Seligman’s dogs (1975)--some youth just give up. When pressed by his grandmother about obtaining assistance from school officials or continuing to work with our mentors to improve his academic situation, another student in our project apathetically replied, “That’s just someone else to disappoint.” Our public school system simply is not fair.
Of all the virtues, Justice is one that our students seem to thoroughly, almost intuitively, understand. They know that many of their academic environments are unjust, although they can hardly appreciate the long-term effects of a state- or nationwide educational system that has failed to adequately prepare them for life. Unfortunately, school districts that fail No Child Left Behind standards go for years in a decrepit state of academic affairs before officials step in to remediate the situation. Indeed, the most dire school system in our area has seen three superintendents fail at reforming area schools in the amount of time it has taken one student to move from kindergarten through high school [which, unfortunately, many of them do not; the graduation rate in South Bend, Indiana’s public schools was a paltry 62% in 2008 and an improving 71% in 2009 (Bien, 2010)].
Some school administrators and teachers are fighting back, however, refusing to succumb to the racial, gender, and socioeconomic pressures that might fate students to a lifetime of academic injustice. One such school, Urban Prep, is located in the shadow of the University of Chicago in the south-side neighborhood Englewood (see www.urbanprep.org). For the past four years Chicagoans have watched closely as Tim King and a group of African-American education, business, and civic leaders developed this all-male, all-African American, public charter school filled with impoverished students [95% qualify for free or reduced lunch (Briggs, 2007)]; and most have been stunned by, and even skeptical of, its success. Whereas only 44% of African-American boys graduate from high school in Chicago—just below the national average of 47% (Schott Foundation, 2010)—and only 30% go on to college (Ryu, 2008), Urban Prep has managed to graduate 70% of its starting freshmen, and get 100% of those 107 students into over 100 four-year colleges and universities. Even more impressive, these students were randomly selected to attend Urban Prep with a lottery system, and only 4% were reading at grade level when they started (Zorn, 2010).
In an interview with Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn (2010), King attributed his school’s success to four key elements: respect, responsibility, ritual, and relationships. These four Rs have provided a foundation on which a group of lost youth can begin to build a new, more hopeful future. I would argue that it is this key virtue—Hope—that Tim King and his teachers have been able to instill in these boys over the past four years. Hope that there is more than the poverty-stricken, drug-infested, gang-controlled existence that most of these boys know as life. Hope that they will become their family’s first college graduate. Hope that they will one day be an agent of hopeful change for another at-risk youth. As one recent Urban Prep graduate reflected: “I see [guys I grew up with] doing their own thing, or hanging in the streets, just smoking and drinking all day. I try to tell them there’s something better than that.” This same young man concluded, “It’s hard to say how they’ve saved my life, but they have.” (Cohen, 2010).
Kudos to you, Tim King, and all Urban Prep faculty! You have reestablished justice in an unfair academic community and set a hopeful bar high. We would all do well to try to reach it.
References:
Bien, K. (2010, January 8). Graduation rates surge for area schools. The South Bend Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/81010482.html.
Cohen, S. (2010, June 27). 100 percent of school’s first class college-bound. The Associated Press. Retrieved from http://www.urbanprep.org/media/apArticle_June2010.pdf.
Eldeib, D. (2010, May 25). Urban Prep’s signing day: It is a big deal. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/05/urban-prep-signing-day-celebrates-classroom-achievement.html.
Ryu, M. (2008). Minorities in higher education 2008: 23rd status report. Washington, D.C: American Council on Education.
Seligman, M. (1975). Helplessness. San Francisco: Freeman.
Schott Foundation for Public Education. (2010). Yes we can: The Schott 50 state report on public education and black males. Retrieved from http://www.blackboysreport.org/bbreport.pdf.
Zorn, E. (2010, May 27).
Experimental inner-city, all-boys school gets a grade of ‘incomplete,’ for now. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ ezorn/2010/05/urbanprep.html.
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