For the first time in our nation’s history, public schools are required to demonstrate that all of the students they serve are learning. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) passed in January 2002 is a significant achievement in advancing the discussion about public education. It begins to address the national crisis in which one-third of the children in the United States are enrolled in urban public schools—many of which are regarded as some the worst schools in the nation. NCLB will significantly increase the Federal government’s role in failing local school districts but it is unlikely, as written, to provide the help that is needed. The legislation does nothing to address the abhorrent conditions present in and around many failing schools today.
I believe that it is impossible to improve public education simply by applying greater pressure on schools. The NCLB act primarily identifies the problems within our schools as internal issues, where, it is implied, teachers are not working hard enough. The Act also contributes to the myth that if these schools just tried harder they would succeed. Schools need help, not humiliation. External issues such as inadequate housing, inaccessibility of basic health and dental care, and few employment opportunities for parents, profoundly impact the quality of our children’s lives and also of our public schools.
Children cannot learn at school if they are hungry, ill, homeless, or lack adequate childcare in their earliest development. Those charged with educating low-income children generally agree that it is impossible to address their academic needs without simultaneously addressing their basic need for health, safety, and stability. Memphis students often come to school with a variety of unmet social, material and emotional needs that affect their ability to learn. Addressing these needs will require the development of a more comprehensive social policy because it is neither fair nor reasonable to expect schools to serve these needs on their own. I maintain that until there is a genuine commitment to address the “social context” of education and until we confront the issue of poverty, any significant improvement in public education will be impossible.
The intractable issues of poverty are complex. They involve families, communities and peer relations and, as such, are generally beyond the scope of our schools. To be ready to learn and meet new academic standards, some children need much more than a typical school can provide.
We must devise school-based policies that respond to the nonacademic problems, which ultimately impact the academic performance of our children. A debate is waging over the appropriate role of the Federal government in our local public schools. I believe that the Federal government has the primary responsibility to identify the national interest in education. It should also help fund and support efforts to protect and promote that interest. It must provide the national leadership to ensure that the Nation's public and private resources are marshaled to address the problems identified with the urban condition in America as it relates to the education of our children.
Local governance of public schools is an important means to insure that our schools are responsive to the needs of students, parents and the community. Yet, inequities among school districts are often extreme as is the case in Memphis and Shelby County where officials have great difficulty addressing the problems of our neediest children. Local financing of public education intensifies educational inequality when the community is unable to generate sufficient revenue and support for the special needs of urban schools.
A genuine commitment to public education will require redirected Federal and State dollars and well as significant private investment and local philanthropy. Heretofore, social policy to address poverty has proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of compounded problems including substandard housing; lack of job opportunities at a living wage; fragile family relationships, and inadequate health care to name a few. As a result, programs have been designed to attack each of these causes one by one. Hence housing programs to transform public housing projects, workforce investment to address employability and training, case management to strengthen families, and programs to address access to affordable healthcare have been designed. In combination these initiatives are intended to remove the causes of poverty. And while none of these solutions are in and of themselves flawed, all have an insurmountable disadvantage. The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at a similar rate of development.
The most successful national model of coordinating federal, state, and local dollars to stimulate private investment and philanthropy in restoring urban neighborhoods is the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOPE VI Program. The Memphis Housing Authority under the leadership of Robert Lipscomb has successfully attracted over $100 million of federal funding to Memphis to transform and rebuild the neighborhoods surrounding two public housing projects. A third $20 million proposal to revitalize the Lamar Terrace neighborhood with a strategic connection to the Memphis Bio-Tech initiative is pending approval. Hope VI effectively coordinates the efforts to fight poverty of the Federal and State government, private investment, public and private philanthropic services with our local housing authority and the residents themselves.
Lipscomb’s vision for the future is to replicate the HOPE VI model into other neighborhoods and expand the emphasis to include public education. He hopes to accomplish this by bringing together three key federal agencies: the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education, as well as local investment partners and lead nonprofit organizations like the Women’s Foundation to create a new model of cooperation between all available resources.
We must understand that the future of our society will ultimately be determined by the quality of our public schools. There is no single approach to “fixing” the problems of our public educational system in the United States. Only when we address the total needs of the child, will our public educational reform efforts be effective and sustainable. In the life of every child, the family, the school and the community play a crucial role in shaping its future prospects. It is these relationships that socialize, inculcate values and norms, as well as anchor the child. They educate, train and shape the young both formally and informally into a valuable adult. Our nation, our democracy, and our public interest depend on the education of every child. Finding ways to fulfill the great promise and potential of American education is the task before us.
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