I watched the video The Other Three R’s with Gloria Ladson-Billings, Michael Lomax, and
Gary Orfield, they stated that the Brown v Board of Edu created equal opportunities
for all students in schools as well as colleges. At the college level work
study became available as did financial aid and scholarships. However, in the 1990s,
it was said that the desegregation was temporary and things began to go back to
the way they were before.
Gloria
Ladson-Billings stated that there were two major issues that have never fully
been solved in society; the first is that schools were never fully segregated and
the second was that there was never funding to allow them to run properly.
Schools are mostly segregated by race and poverty levels. The video states that
in the early ages African Americans and Latino students were deemed unable to
participate in society, it was even illegal for them to learn how to read and
write. Without knowing how to read and write makes it impossible to go to
school. Without schooling and today, without a college degree it is very
difficult for someone to obtain a job. For low income, high performing students
of color the chances of going to college are one in ten, but for high income
moderate performing white students they have a 90% chance. The top schools consist
of mostly white and Asian students, and the lower tier schools are mostly black,
and at these schools it is harder to graduate. This is a great example of white
privilege.
The
other point they touched on was the fact that some of the teachers that teach
in these low income areas, are not specifically certified to be teachers. Teachers
that are teaching in high performing schools are certified and understand the
importance of teaching. Some teachers in the lower performing schools do not have
a certification. For example, there could be a chemistry teacher, but they
could only have a degree in chemistry, not a teaching degree. In school,
teaching to the test is something that is being done more and more, however,
teaching to the test allows no room for creativity or fun in the classroom.
Since the test scores have a direct effect on teachers, most teachers main
priority is to teach in a place that they will be able to survive and keep their
jobs. In most cases this means teaching in a high performing school. The low
performing schools get stuck with teachers that are new to the teaching world
and may not know how to handle the situations they are forced into. If teaching
to the test was not such a big aspect, more teachers would want to teach in these
places where kids are in need of a good quality teacher willing to do everything
in their power to help the students understand the material. There has to be a
way to figure out how to make disadvantaged schools become advantaged. The
students at these disadvantaged schools are not unintelligent in any way, they
are just so deep in poverty and the schools do not have enough resources, so
they are fighting against a vast amount of problems.
