The School as a Staging Area

I offer you an example from “Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City” by Elijah Anderson (1999), Chapter 2 (Campaigning for Respect), pp. 93 to 98.

In my view, any discussion about reform in inner-city schools that does not overtly refer to an understanding of Anderson’s observations and conclusions will miss the target and be pointless. A full internalization of the message in the body of his work will be needed to comprehend the situation, before any reformer even attempts to develop a truly useful strategy.

THE SCHOOL AS A STAGING AREA

The inner-city school is an outpost of the traditions of the wider society. Racially segregated and situated in an impoverished inner-city community in which violence, drugs, and crime are rampant, it is characterized by the street/decent dynamic. During their early years, most of the children accept the legitimacy of the school, and then eagerly approach the task of learning. As time passes, however, in their relentless campaign for the respect that will be meaningful in their public environment, youth increasingly embrace the street code. By the fourth grade, enough children have opted for the code of the street that it begins to compete effectively with the culture of the school, and the code begins to dominate their public culture—in school as well as out—becoming a way of life for many and eventually conflating with the culture of the school itself. Such a school becomes a primary staging area for the campaign for respect.

In this social setting, decent kids learn to code switch, while street kids become more singularly committed to the street. Such a division, as previously stated, is largely a function of persistent poverty and local neighborhood effects, which include social isolation and alienation, but it is also strongly related to family background, available peers, and role models. For many alienated young black people, attending school and doing well becomes negatively associated with acting white. In what is essentially a racially black street-world, as shown in Tyree’s case, one develops a strong need to show others he can handle himself socially and physically on the ghetto streets, a powerful community value in and of itself. This “street knowledge” is esteemed, and the quest for it and the consideration for those who have it begin to predominate, ultimately competing with, if not undermining, the mission of the school.

With each passing year the school loses ground as more and more students adopt a street orientation, if only for self-defense in the neighborhood. But often what is out on the streets is brought into the classrooms. The most troublesome students are then encouraged by peers to act out, to get over on the teachers, to test authority by probing for weaknesses. Particularly during mild weather, many students in the upper grades attend school sporadically or stop coming altogether, because street activities effectively compete for their time. Even while in school, they walk the halls instead of attending class, and their encounters there often mirror those on the street, marked by tension and fights.

Some of the seriously street-oriented kids may have mental health issues; some have been abused by their parents; others are depressed. The most troubled may fight with teachers, bring guns and knives to school, and threaten people. The idea of deprivation and anger is important here. In this highly competitive setting, the most deprived youths, who can easily be made to feel bad, sometimes become jealous of peers. To avoid feeling bad, these kids may lift themselves up by putting others down. A common tactic is to “bust on” or “signify” at someone, verbally teasing the person, at times to the point of tears. Sometimes the prettiest girls can get beaten up out of jealousy. From so much envy and jealousy, beefs easily erupt, beginning with ritual “bumping” and ending in serious physical confrontations to settle things. Bumping rights are then negotiated, determining who is allowed to bump whom, to pick on whom, and in what circumstances. In essence, these young people are campaigning for place, esteem, and ultimately respect.

In this situation, the school becomes transformed in the most profound sense into a staging area for the streets, a place where people come to present themselves, to represent where they come from, and to stay even with or to dominate their peers. Violence is always a possibility, for the typically troubled school is surrounded by persistent poverty, where scarcity of valued things is the rule, thus lending a competitive edge to the social environment. However, the trophies to be won are not of academic kind, rather they are those of the street, particularly respect. In this campaign, young people must be prepared not only to fight, but also to take great care with their appearance. The right look means not wearing old or “bummy” clothes, or sneakers that are worn or dirty or out of style. Esteem is so precarious that it can be taken away with just a word, and kids are constantly challenge to defend what they have. Social life becomes a zero-sum scenario: “If you have something and exhibit it, it means I’m less. Who do you think you are by doing that?” The decent kids mimic the street ones, behaving in street ways that often confuse teachers (and also prospective employers and police who might be incapable of distinguishing the decent from the street). Some teachers are unable to differentiate between he two groups. Overwhelmed by clothes, the look, or the swagger, they cannot discern the shy kid underneath, which may be why teachers classify the majority of young people as “street.”

To be sure, much of the students’ behavior may be purely defensive, which requires significant expenditures of social energy. This situation intends to victimize the weakest players and certainly disrupts the business of the school. In time, when unattended, the street element (and those who would be “street”) dominates the school and its local terrain. In the most troubled schools, the street element becomes so powerful that beefs and scores can only be settled by death. Again, most of the young people in these settings are inclined toward decency, but when the street elements rule, they are encouraged to campaign for respect by adopting a street attitude, look, and presentation of self. In this context the decent kids often must struggle to maintain their credibility, like the fifteen-year-old boy I observed who typically changed his “square” clothes for a black leather jacket (thereby adopting a street look) after he got around the corner from his home and out of his mother’s view. In order to preserve his own self-respect and the respect of his peers, he would also hide his books under his jacket while walking to school, bidding to appear street.

In school as in the neighborhood, adolescents are concerned with developing a sense of who they are, what they are, and what they will be. They try on many different personal roles, and they experiment with many scripts. Some work, others don’t. How do the roles of decent and street play out in their search for an identity, and what parts do others play? What stages do the young people go through? What is the “career” of identity as this career takes shape?

Observing the interactions of adolescents in school and talking with them reveal how important school authority is to young people, but too often the authority figures are viewed as alien and unreceptive. The teachers and administrators are concerned that their own authority be taken seriously, and claims to authority are always up for grabs—if not subject to out-and-out challenge.

Young people, of course, do not go about developing their identities based solely on privileges and rewards granted by teachers, but this dynamic does exist to some degree. Often students perceive (more or less accurately) that the institution and its staff are utterly unreceptive to their street presentations. Mixed with their inability to distinguish the decent child from the street child, the teachers’ efforts to combat the street may cause them to lump the good students with the bad, generally viewing all who display street emblems as adversaries. Here, their concerns might be as much with teaching as with controlling their charges.

In response, the decent children place ever greater stock in their ability to code-switch, adopting one set of behaviors for inside the building and one for outside. But, as indicated above—particularly in the heat of the campaign for respect—the two roles often merge, and what is considered proper in either setting can become one and the same. When this confusion goes unchecked, discipline in the school situation becomes elusive, particularly for those children who seem “to get away with it.”

When students become convinced that they cannot receive their props from teachers and staff, they turn elsewhere, typically to the street, encouraging others to follow their lead, particularly when the unobtainable appears to be granted only on the basis of acting white. The sour grapes attitude notwithstanding, a powerful incentive for these young people then emerges, especially for those sitting on the cultural fence, to invest themselves in the so-called oppositional culture, which may be confused with their ”black identity.” Such a resolution allows these alienated students to campaign for respect on their own terms, in a world they control.

Impacted by profound social isolation, the children face the basic problem of alienation. Many students become smug in their lack of appreciation of what the business of the school is and how it is connected with the world outside. In addition, they seldom encounter successful black people who have gone through school and gone on to do well.

Education is thus undermined because the mission of the school cannot equal the mission of the kids. To accept the school would be to give in and act white, to give up the value of the street for some other thing. And the value of that other thing has not been sufficiently explained to the children to make them want to give up the ways of the street and take on the ideology of the school. So the outpost of mainstream society tries to deliver its message to kids in an environment that has little regard for that society. In fact, the code of the street, and by extension the oppositional culture, competes very effectively with traditional values. As the young people come to see the school and its agents are unreceptive to them, embracing the oppositional culture becomes more important as a way to salvage self-esteem. The mission of the school is called into question, if not undermined.

Alienated black students take on the oppositional role so effectively that they often become models for other disaffected students. They do it because they are profoundly at odds with the with culture and can see themselves as visibly different. But other alienated students may mimic them because they are such strong models.

The culture of the street doesn’t allow backing down. When the boys at the Youth Study Center (Philadelphia’s juvenile detention facility) saw a video on conflict resolution as an alternative to fighting, they just school their heads. They knew that you never back down. That is to set you up as a doormat. You have to be tough. If you show fear, others will exploit it. So you always have to give the impression that you are strong, that you are a “thorough dude.” Even a teacher who shows fear becomes vulnerable and can be emotionally undone by the kids. When that happens, the kids know they’ve won. So there is an adversarial relationship between the teachers and the students. The teachers’ role is to keep the kids in line. The students’ role is either to behave or to try to get over on the teacher.

The school is a microcosm of the community in a sense. Although police and disciplinarians are on patrol, kids are parading up and down the halls, socializing, even buying and selling drugs. The same things are going on inside the school as outside it. Yet it remains a haven, a place where one can go and expect relative order.

The Big Nut to Crack

Dear Ms. Mitchell,

I am writing to you from Oakland, California where I am longtime public school parent and public school activist. I have a deep interest in urban public school issues and read a great deal about them. Today I discovered your recent piece about Arne Duncan on an education blog called “This Week in Education.”

I want to let you know that I am grateful for your article and for posting the video of your interview with Mr. Duncan. I am particularly appreciative that you asked him why his focus is on test score data rather than on quality of life issues at schools, such as improving school climate, focusing on children's social and emotional issues, and developing ways to counter early expressions of urban violence. From my point of view, his response clearly demonstrated a simple lack of understanding.

I firmly believe that today’s education reformers are missing the mark because they are not addressing these things first. And I also believe that perhaps the reason for this is because they have never personally experienced the schools attended by children of the underclass, nor are they much willing to tap into the substantial body of knowledge of people who have. Too many of them have attended private schools and Ivy League colleges, and are only willing to send their children to the same. They're in charge of education for the masses, but are very much out of touch.

There is no doubt in my mind: the conditions relating to urban violence, and how they impact urban school climates, are the most pressing problems in our nation's inner city schools. They are the main barriers to better student performance and higher teacher retention. And as charter schools draw off the strongest families in our cities, the concentration of students from less-able parents – who are also the ones who present the greatest challenges – is becoming higher and higher at the traditional public schools.

Honestly, despite all the money and energy being thrown at urban school reform, we’re really not seeing much of an effect, because the path which has been taken is not correct. Frank public recognition of the biggest problem, and finding ways to address it, is nowhere to be found in typical ed-reform discussions.

The best source I've discovered for learning about the behavioral dynamics in the inner-city setting is Elijah Anderson, sociology professor at Yale, formerly of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of "Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City" and is also the editor of an insightful new book, “Against the Wall: Poor, Black, Young, and Male.” Both President Obama and Arne Duncan – as well as policymakers and America's citizens – would learn a great deal from Anderson’s work.

And on a related note, last winter I read a blog comment by a professor at Chico State University (Tony Waters on Bridging Differences) in which he referred to America’s “incarcerated class.” His phrase immediately rang true for me. The tragic and exponential rise in African American incarceration rates over the past decades is both causing, and resulting in, damage to many, many children. An increasingly tragic cycle is being produced.

This is a comment I posted yesterday on The Education Report:

On nearly every post here at the Education Report, people will eventually make comments that relate to the chronically intolerable/near-intolerable conditions caused by student misbehavior and its effects. Has anyone else noticed?

The in-hospitability of urban public school climates is NOT solely an OUSD issue, it’s present nationwide. The amount of student misbehavior that schools are expected to cope with these days is a big, widespread problem and has come about as a result of complicated and tragic societal forces, and decisions that seemed right at the moment but produced negative effects over time.

Does anyone know an entire school district with similar demographics that’s managing these challenges extremely well? Which specific schools in Oakland have this issue totally under control? How much do the student, teacher, and principal demographics influence their practices? How much can the techniques be replicated at other sites, and how can that be done?

Do some schools boast about their accomplishments, but then operate by rules or in conditions that can’t be transferred on a wider basis? Is the exclusive enrollment practiced by charters (like refusing to deal with the types of students in Special Day Classes or those who are more defiant) the only way to go? If so, where then should those many more difficult students be educated? Just how much of the difficult student behavior can be suppressed? What are the legal and civil rights issues that need to be considered?

I once heard a sociologist refer to America’s “incarcerated class.” Looking at the African American incarceration rates over the past decades, and thinking about the families those rates affect, maybe he’s onto something. So is it time yet to publicly admit that we probably have an established caste system in the US, and that the problems we’re talking about just might be connected to that?

The issue about school climate is THE “big nut” to crack. Finding strategies to deal with this difficult issue should have been placed at the very top of the urban educational reform list.

Unfortunately, educational reformers from the corporate world — who don’t understand or care about what is really going on in the trenches — are in control right now. They’ve been leading us down the path where everyone fixates on test scores, and scapegoats teachers, etc. because those are strategies that will eventually lead to the corporate world making a buck. Education entrepreneurship in a wide number of forms (tutoring, test materials, coaching, etc.) is now a huge, and growing, billion-dollar business, which developed from specific intent. In the 1980’s these people realized that the billions spent on public education was an untapped well of profit, so they made their political connections and have taken charge ever since. And so far we have let them.

If both OUSD and the City of Oakland would set its main focus on improving school climates, and if the school board and our superintendent addressed it at every turn, we could become a model for the rest of the nation — we’re a district of manageable size. But they will need firm pressure AND help in the form of fresh ideas and feedback. Constant put-downs and abandonment of the public schools don’t do anything to help our community as a whole.

How about more people writing letters to demand that the district turns its attention to school climate? How about asking the district to form a task force &/or department that compiles research, generates ideas, makes recommendations, monitors progress, and keeps up an exchange with the community? How about demanding that charter schools take their fair share of more challenging students? How about asking charters to use some of their innovation potential and extra funding to develop special programs for managing the more difficult students?

At any rate, these are the issues education reform needs to be dealing with, and I am certain you know this, too -- because of the questions you chose to ask Arne Duncan. How sad that his best response was “It’s crazy, it just doesn’t make any sense to me” and that his friend, John Rogers, said basically the same thing.

If these powerful people deeply understood the message in Anderson’s work, they would have been able to move beyond just describing things as “crazy.” They would know that the antisocial behavior exhibited by urban youth these days is, oddly, an adaptive and very human response to chronically horrific economic conditions. To understand urban violence, people need to read Anderson's explanation about the issue of "respect."

And if more people were aware of all these things, then maybe there would be hope for developing the plan for what needs to be done next.

Sincerely,

S.H.

Duncan, Robber Barons, and Victims

Clay Burrell over at Change.org is bothered by Arne's Duncanisms. Scary Duncan has been out and about saying all sorts of things. As Burrell excerpted:

In a recent interview, Secretary Duncan discussed how he went about assembling his team, targeting people like Ms. Melendez who came from modest backgrounds, had a passion for the work, and showed an entrepreneurial spirit—and were willing to take what was likely a big pay cut to work in a federal job. No education policy or district superstars with big egos were welcome, he said.

“If they’re scared off because they won’t make more money ... or if they wanted a certain job title, ... that’s not the kind of person we want,” Mr. Duncan said. “We want people for whom this is a real passion. This is mission-driven work. Everyone is taking pay cuts.”

To which Burrell responded

Call me crazy, but you'd think people who were "education policy superstars," who spent their lives in classrooms and later in research, would qualify as "passionate" more than the "missionaries" with an "entrepreneurial spirit." People like, you know, Linda Darling-Hammond, who's devoted her life to knowing through research how to improve education, rather than taking a left turn from entrepreneurialism out of some "money + passion = change you can believe in" zeal.

... Duncan's rhetoric smacks of a sort of anti-intellectualism and pro-entrepreneurialism, and his staff picks reflect that as well. His DoE staffers are overwhelmingly connected more to Eli Broad and Bill Gates than to universities and classrooms.

To put this all into perspective, it's time to review how Duncan got his position.

Duncan earned a B.A. in Sociology from Harvard. That is pretty much the extent of his intellectual foundation. After graduating, he immediately went to Australia to play professional basketball for four years.

When he returned to Chicago, Duncan needed a job (Wanted: employment for a not-particularly-go-getting, perpetually grinning, newly married, only-bachelor-degree-earning Ivy League graduate). Fortunately John Rogers - a fanatic basketball-playing, longtime friend and private high school co-alum - had become extremely wealthy and needed someone to run a new, small, local education-related non-profit he was starting. He slipped Duncan right in to that position. One of the enormous benefits of attending elite private schools is making these sorts of useful connections; it's probably more important than the education itself.

Duncan's only accomplishment in working in urban education at this point was that he had tutored poor kids in high school. We all know how much he likes to tell this story over and over again. By the way, his mother forced ALL of her kids to tutor at her center; she also wouldn't ever let them watch TV.

After a few years of running his friend's non-profit, this mushy, likable bureaucrat got a job in Chicago Public Schools as Deputy Chief of Staff, most likely because of his great connections. A few years later, Mayor Daley appointed the malleable Duncan as CEO of Chicago Public Schools. This was just after the public-school-system-hating, Broad-connected, education reformer-destroyers had settled down in town. I'm sure they immediately recognized that Duncan would be perfect to work with, and be the sort of perfect blank they could mold.

Meanwhile, having never attended public schools, nor be willing to use them for his own kids, Obama really didn't know all that much about public education. However, for years he had been regularly playing basketball with Duncan, who he met through Michelle's brother (a close friend, and former Princeton basketball teammate, of John Rogers). This is a tight foursome, folks.

And that's how our nation is now stuck with a cheerful, but bumbling, average bureaucrat who Obama has assigned authority for running the whole show. I repeat: one of the benefits of attending elite private schools is making these sorts of useful connections. Did I mention that the Obama's sent their girls to the same Chicago private school that Duncan and Rogers attended?

Duncan's presence at the Department of Education is not because of an incredible intelligence, a wide range of experience, or an exceptional level of knowledge; it's because he provides the White House with a level of comfort and familiarity (and honors mutual friend Rogers for his years of Obama political $upport, and who knows who else). By the way, Rogers’ ex-wife is the White House social secretary.

Mr. Casual "call me Arne" Duncan wouldn't select cabinet members with more intellectual gravitas than he has because he is fundamentally insecure about his own. He certainly realizes his status would be challenged by the presence of someone who is actually distinguished in the field of education, and who may not agree with him on every point, and who would probably win all the debates.

The fact that Duncan signed on to both the Broader Bolder Approach and the Education Equality Project (manifestos with two VERY different points of view) demonstrates to me that the mutable Duncan wasn't sure where to stand. He makes a perfect puppet for the corporate edu-schemers.

By the way, Alexander Russo recently blogged about Arne’s weighing in on a number of issues including raising the driving age in Ohio (against), a split lunch at Patterson Elementary next year (for), and changing monthly board meeting locations for Chattanooga public schools to the Denny's on Dalton Boulevard (against). Why would he do this? Sorry, but it makes me wonder about his level of intellect.

On the recommendation of Elijah Anderson, I am now reading Blaming the Victim, a classic work by William Ryan. As someone who is paying attention to the methodology of the corporateer-led destruction of public education, all in the name of doing "good," I couldn’t help but be struck by two lines on page 20:

In order to persuade a good and moral man to do evil, then, it is not necessary first to persuade him to become evil. It is only necessary to teach him that he is doing good.

This explains the disconnect I sense between the rhetoric spewed by the corporateers and Harvard MBA-type reformers, (“Education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century!”), and the fact that they never make a peep about the extent of our nation’s poverty and how it affects impoverished families, or our growing class divisions. Fervently believing that what they are saying and doing is good, they bristle and aggressively confront anyone who challenges their position. They declare that those who disagree with them is 1. a racist and 2. a traitor to the cause of wanting to help poor, disadvantaged children. Only their perspective is "good."

Ryan’s book was originally published in 1971. A revised edition was released in 1976 with a new introduction. By then Ryan says he had enlarged his vision of who the “victims” in American society really were.

In fact, everyone who depends for the sustenance of himself and his family on salary and wages, and who does not have a separate source of income through some substantial ownership of wealth, is a potential victim in America. He is vulnerable to the disaster of catastrophic illness in a private-enterprise medical-care system; he is vulnerable to the deliberate manipulation of inflation and unemployment; he is vulnerable to the burden of grossly unfair taxes; he is vulnerable to the endemic pollution of air and food and to the unattended hazards of the factory and the highway that will likely kill him before his time; he is vulnerable to the greed of the great oil companies and food corporations.

The victims in American society are not simply the 10 percent of us who are Black, the 15 percent or so who are officially below the “poverty line." The majority of us who are non-Black and, officially at least, non-poor, are also victims. At least two-thirds, perhaps three-fourths of us are relatively poor compared to the standards of the top 10 or 5 percent, and relatively vulnerable. Others own America, we’re just workers, whether we realize it or not. Some of us may think we’re flying pretty high and are much better off than those below us, but in the end, we’re just ‘house niggers,” allowed better food than the “field niggers” and wearing fancier clothes. But none of us owns even a corner of the cotton field. Massa owns it all and Massa – the two or three per cent who essentially own America—is the real problem.

It's probably good to be clear about who is really running things; it is Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, the Wal-Mart family, and other millionaires and billionaires along that line. If you are under the impression that we live in a democracy, this will bother you, or perhaps not.

Where Sociology, Criminology, and Charter Schools Converge

From his ethnographic studies in inner-city Philadelphia, sociologist Elijah Anderson identified two types of inner-city families/people, “decent” and “street.” He did not invent those terms; they are used by the residents in that community.

With the skyrocketing incarceration levels of recent decades, I believe that Anderson’s “street” population has now grown so large that it constitutes an entire class of Americans, our “incarcerated class.”* By “incarcerated class” I mean those who are either pre-, currently, or post-incarcerated (many times a never-ending cycle), AND their offspring. Read Marian Wright Edelman's Column: "The Cradle to Prison Pipeline: America's New Apartheid."

So for instance, Edelman says that “a poor Black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison.” However, a closer look would most likely reveal that it is something more like a 90%+ chance for a certain set of those boys, and much, much less for a different set of boys (depending if they are from a street/incarcerated class environment or from a decent one). The high-at-risk subgroup describes the incarcerated class. Parents in the community know exactly who is who.

The extreme numerical escalation of this group is what feeds the interest in charter schools. The non-I.C. parents who live in areas where members of this class are numerous are desperate to separate their kids from the offspring of the incarcerated class. For instance, read this recent, emotional pro-charter opinion piece in the New York Post and some of the response comments. One said, “A good kid going to school with kids that were not raised in a good household is like putting a kitten in the middle of a pack of wolves.” Now we're getting to the meat of things.

Over the past few decades, the number of these kids has been increasing and thus their enrollment in the public schools has been climbing higher and higher. Because of the sheer numbers, their presence at some point became overwhelming, thus all the “bad” urban public schools.

David Berliner’s recently issued report, “Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success,” describes the effect of family relations and stress on schooling, pages 24 to 29. It says:

Children from families that suffer from violence, from whatever income group and race, often display social and emotional problems that manifest themselves in the schools they attend. Too often these children show higher rates of aggressive behavior, depression, anxiety, decreased social competence, and diminished academic performance.

He continues:

“…such families [the above described] are overrepresented among the poor and in the African American community, increasing the difficulty of the instructional and counseling missions of schools that serve those populations…the effects these troubled children exert on others in the classroom is strong.”

More details, with citations, are given. (Intelligent people will read this sort of information and absorb it, and then fashion a response that is appropriate and relates. The supposedly brilliant venture philanthropists like Eli Broad and Bill Gates, I'm afraid, are not in this group and will never do the same.)

This large set of kids is tremendously difficult to manage and they make the school life miserable for everyone else. The teachers in the schools who aren't getting driven away are at risk for getting totally worn down -- thus the apathy which is sometimes described.

My first guess is that our ongoing inability to acknowledge that this is occurring, reasonable legal arguments and important civil rights concerns have all restrained public schools from developing the strategies that would be necessary for dealing with large numbers of kids from this group. Unlike special education or English learning, there is no extra-funding offered to schools that must manage large numbers of them. I believe this is something that could be considered as a disability of a social nature – the behaviors and the symptoms are very extreme.

My second guess is that charter schools don’t deal with too many of these kids. The parents in this social class are extremely alienated from any mainstream and aren’t as inclined to seek charters. If they happen to enter the charter school world (because a relative did, for instance), their children will be more likely to get kicked out for bad behavior and non-compliance.

Bad school climates are what drive parents away. Public schools will need a great deal of help to manage their increasing numbers of this most-difficult-to-educate population.

How does this theory sound? I invite you to poke away.

* To my knowledge, the term "incarcerated class" was first used on March 31, 2009, by Tony Waters in his comments on ”Bridging Differences.” He is a faculty member of the Sociology Department at California State University, Chico.

Seeking Your Perspective Re: K-12 Education Reform + Update

Dear Dr. Anderson,

I hope this note finds you well and staying warm enough!

Perhaps you remember our few exchanges by email last April. Since that time I have continued to spread the word about your work because of its extraordinary value.

Today I am writing to you to seek your opinion. I have been trying to process an idea, and I hope that you will give me your perspective.

For the past several years, I have become increasingly involved with trying to understand inner-city issues as they relate to the current education reform movement, as well as to the situation at my local public schools. From the research and thinking I have done, I have come to believe that the most recent reform approach, one of NCLB penalties and the installation of charter schools, will never be enough to get to the root of the problem for the young people in those communities.

In discussions about “what is wrong,” the profound impact of decades of underemployment, as well as the extent of the damage and suffering which it has caused to families, are nearly always ignored. The focus of the current crop of education “reformers” has been narrowed exclusively on the supposed inadequacies of inner-city public schools and their teachers, and this is where the blame is most often assigned. I have come to believe that teachers and schools are being made the scapegoats to avoid discussion or correction of the true, enormous underlying issues.

One reason "Code of the Street" was so fascinating to me was because of your insights about "decent" and "street" families. I recognized the two types immediately. Here in Oakland, I suspect the charter schools are being sought out by decent-oriented families in part in an attempt to provide their children an escape from street-oriented school mates and the havoc at school which they often cause. The resulting effect is the increasing stratification of students, school by school.

My notion is that the low-income Black parents who seek out charter schools for their children are a specific type, the type who is more likely to stress the importance of education to their children and to support the mission of the school in their homes (= “decent”). I believe that their children are more likely to end up with greater academic achievement than the children who happen to have been born to parents who lack enough of that focus.

To enroll a child in a charter school requires more forethought, effort, research and consideration on the part of the parent. This makes the population of charter school families a self-selected one. Charter schools prefer to deny this, but I know for certain it must be the case. I have learned from personal experience that some parents, through no fault of their own, have very extreme limitations in regard to supporting their children’s educations and complying with the mission of their children's schools.

Once the parents who are willing to invest the energy in seeking out a charter school are separated from those who won’t, there are additional features about charter schools which separate the nature of their families even more. Many charter schools are permitted to have stricter policies which require minimum levels of parental involvement and compliant student behavior. Families must sign contracts and their obligations are monitored.

Also, some of the schools are known to place pressure on students with low-performance or problems with behavior, sometimes just before state testing. Sometimes this pressure is so great that students will leave the charter school, in which case it is justified as not being “a good fit.” Then those students arrive at the regular local public school to enroll. Those schools are required, by law, to accept every child despite any poor academic and/or behavior records.

There is no reciprocity between charter and regular public schools. The regular public schools must accept and serve all students, even the most-difficult-to-educate ones, but charter schools are not required to do the same. In addition, regular public schools cannot require parent involvement, and have no teeth for enforcing it either.

So, I am beginning to envision an inner-city school landscape where charter schools appear more and more successful simply because they collect and concentrate the children of “decent” families. Additionally, they become the recipients of large donations from philanthropists because they appear to be educating inner-city minority children more effectively than the regular public schools. It is rarely admitted that the charter schools and the regular schools have an increasingly different population of families.

While all this is happening, the regular public schools end up becoming less and less successful, because the concentration of the more challenging “street-oriented” kids is getting higher and higher. And as the percentage of challenging students grows, these schools appear to become worse and worse. Discipline problems and truancy percentages increase, and any remaining “decent” families who use the school begin to reject them. Community support for these schools languishes.

So, Dr. Anderson, these are my concerns. I greatly hope you will have time to respond to me, and confirm, rebut, or expand upon them from your point of view. Feel free to reach me by email or by phone.

Gratefully yours,
S. H.

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!

Within two hours I had received a call from Dr. Anderson. We talked on the phone for nearly an hour.

From his perspective as a sociologist who has spent a lifetime studying the inner-city Black community, he confirmed my notion on this post.

According to Anderson, it is the more enterprising parents who will move their kids out of the public schools and into charters because they think the charters provide more opportunity. They are parents who monitor their kids closely. Of course, one of the main opportunities charter schools also offer is the ability for each group to self-segregate, the impetus of which, he explains, seems to be human nature.

This is bound to create a situation where the kids who don't have anyone to advocate for them – and who have weaker educationally-minded parents – will indeed all be stuck together in the regular inner-city public schools, without peers from any other groups to associate with. I described a potential situation caused by the current mode where the public schools will become filled with “untouchables” that nobody wants to be around or really cares about. We discussed how this scenario has parallels to the incarceration situation for Blacks that currently exists.

So it is obvious that one day, the question will be, “What is this nation going to do with all those children next?”

Anderson is so wise about these issues. He sees layers and layers of racial dynamics. By that I don’t mean just the usual ones that people generally talk about (black vs. white), but the many ranges of black group vs. black group dynamics in between.

He does see great hope with Obama being president, but also sees how everything Obama does is totally loaded with complex, and potentially politically-deadly racial booby traps. Obama has to proceed so very carefully.

I urged him to consider writing some of his thoughts about the way that racial and educational reform issues tie together, and if he does so, to please let me know.

(E.A.: If you read this, I hope it is okay. It is important to me to keep extending the conversation for everyone, so I wanted to reveal a few of the things we talked about.)

Expulsions, student behavior, and the shortcomings of principals

Recently I've been extremely busy with assorted, big projects at my daughter's high school. They have absorbed a great deal of my time so I haven't posted for over a month. Here's something I sent out via the Oakland Public School Parents Yahoo group this morning. It's length qualifies it for a Perimeter Primate posting.

The community needs to be aware that when a student is suspended from their school for a serious infraction and is then recommended by the school's principal to be "DHP'ed" (submitted to an expulsion hearing), if the Disciplinary Hearing Panel decides to expel the student, most of the time they are simply assigned another equivalent OUSD school.

Students are rarely expelled from the district, only from their original school. Very few students are sent to alternative schools. For instance, a student who has committed a serious infraction, and then is DHP'ed from Bret Harte, will be directed to enroll at Frick, or Montera, or some other middle school the following week. All school year long, these DHP'ed students play musical (classroom) chairs.

Of course OUSD charter schools will never be directed by the District to accept the DHP'ed students, nor be expected to take part in providing any of their resources to them. Even though those schools declare themselves to be "public," they are allowed to be exempt from accepting ALL students. This means, too, that problematic students of the charter schools must always be accepted back into the general system when they get kicked out of the charter. For all the popular talk about equitability, this is not equitable.

After students have been DHP'ed, they arrive at the attendance office of their new school to be enrolled by their frustrated, discouraged, ashamed, and/or angry parents. For a little while, the kids are generally subdued and on their best behavior from having been submitted to the DHP process. The schools have case managers who are supposed to follow the DHP'ed arrivals. They have varying amounts of experience and training, and are trying to manage a huge and difficult load. Because of the nature of the kids' family situations, and the magnitude of the problems that they have, this is very tough work.

Principals are required to accept these students, but are usually not happy to do so because they know the students usually bring chronically difficult behavior with them. Although the District's method sometimes works because it separates enemies from each other, it is not unusual for the DHP'ed student's negative behavior to start up once again as soon as they are comfortable at their new school and get underway with developing new enemies.

Students who are inclined to live their educational years in this way might also have strong neighborhood turf, and/or ethnic subgroup, allegiances. The rivalries caused by the tribal outlook of some of Oakland's youth are the cause of a considerable amount of the fighting.

East and West Oakland groups dislike each other. Some Latino/Black/ Pacific Islander and Asian groups dislike each other. In OUSD there aren't simply enough White kids who are so inclined. Even subgroups within each of those groups dislike each other, for instance Latinos who are either Norte or Sur, or those from 98th Ave. vs. those from Seminary vs. those from the Dirty Thirties, etc. (all East Oakland neighborhoods) . Add adolescent behavior and weak family structures into the mix and you'll get the behavior problems seen in OUSD secondary schools. You may wish to research the increase in school violence in New Orleans as a result of forcing rival neighborhood kids together when their school system was re-formed.

Having attended Bret Harte and Skyline, my children and their friends have never been part of this type of social drama at their schools and they have learned how to keep far, far away from it. This is why they have always been safe at those schools and why I believe they are better off, and more socially aware and mature than their private school or suburban school peers. I value those qualities in young people.

I've learned that the majority of the school fighting is caused by a subset of kids who mess with each other constantly and don't know how live their lives any differently. Sometimes they have parents and relatives who actively coach them and encourage it. Elijah Anderson (in "Code of the Street") explains how schools are a "staging ground" for establishing Respect, the drive behind all "street-oriented" behavior.

Because my daughters and their friends are simply outside that sphere, they've expressed to me that most fights are simply annoying, or even amusing, rather than scary and threatening. Their immense entertainment value is why kids stop everything and run like crazy toward a fight that has broken out -- blocking adult access to the combatants. Of course some of the fights can get serious and cause severe bodily harm, but most don't get to that point.

In my opinion, OUSD schools lack a comprehensive, unified and effective behavior modification approach toward student behavior. This might well be the District’s most serious failing.

Some principals have adopted the techniques of Noah Salzman, a respected education consultant, to guide the overarching philosophy and approach to behavior management at their schools. I'm sure there are other effective and tested strategies, but they are not always considered or exploited by principals, or even seem to be required by the District. It is very haphazard. Any of these approaches -- well-implemented, discussed, made transparent, data-reviewed and constantly adjusted -- would be able to control and contain a fair amount of the negative behavior. This strategy would relieve the concerns and frustrations of many parents and teachers.

There are some charismatic school administrators who are gifted with the energy and strong instinct for managing student behavior, but they are a very rare breed. Joe Salamack might be one of them. He worked as a dean at Bret Harte in the late 1990’s, then as an assistant principal at Montera, with admiration and glowing reviews by most parents and his peers. To OUSD’s loss, he was snagged by Bishop O'Dowd a couple of years ago to become their principal.

Unfortunately, some principals strongly believe in, and cling onto, their own personal philosophies about student behavior management. Those philosophies are not necessarily proactive and "best practices" driven, or derived from any serious insight or research. They are likely to be either a passive and vague philosophy, or one which is reactive and consists of repeated threats, screaming and punishment.

It's too bad that there is such a lack of sophistication on the part of some principals about these matters -- considering the wealth of human behavior research that is available. I do not believe that coaching for the principals will necessarily be able to correct their deficiencies, either. The principals need to arrive at that position of authority open-minded, sufficiently learned, and with a strong internal sense about group behavior management.

Sometimes the school's teachers have a great deal of insight and would like the principal to lead the school to adopt a strategic, effective and unified approach. And sometimes the principal is hopelessly "old school" and defensive, and the teachers' more innovative opinions are considered a threat and are squashed. The best that teachers can do under these circumstances is to manage their own classrooms effectively. A few of them create pockets of sanity -- peaceful oases for their students -- within a school wide climate of chaos. The kids always know who these teachers are.

The schools also need to be staffed with more Campus Security Officers. Ask anyone who works on any secondary school campus. Sometimes student safety at one school is sacrificed for another school. For instance, last week a CSO from Skyline was sent to work at McClymonds for two days. Then there are the sick and vacation days that come up for the CSO's (and disability days caused by the injuries they get from breaking up fights). The staffing of these valuable employees is simply inadequate.

Most parents have no idea that all of this is going on but anyone who steps on a campus can feel it. This submission has been long, but I hope it helps move us toward a better OUSD.

Sharon Higgins
OUSD parent (since 1993)
Former Parent Coordinator at Bret Harte (2001-08)

AND A DAY OR SO LATER...

If a crime is committed that involves juveniles, the name of the perpetrator or the victim is not usually revealed, but they are crimes that should be reported nonetheless. Every week we read about crimes committed by juveniles in the Oakland Tribune. Names are withheld.

Katy Murphy just posted a piece on her education blog about the student-on-student assault that injured one girl so badly she spent two nights in the hospital. Of course the names were withheld.

The community should be able to see evidence that some sort of crime data is being tracked by the school site. I would think that those numbers (type of crime and frequency in a given time period) could legally be revealed.

How many fights broke out that week? How much bodily harm was caused (simple or aggravated assault)? How many kids were the victims of a strong arm robbery on the campus, or on the bus ride home that month?

And as for property crimes that cost the school district a ton of money, how many times that year did the school bank get broken into with hundreds of dollars getting stolen? How much property was stolen or damage sustained b/c someone at the school didn't remember to set its alarm system (yet again), or b/c the alarm system is simply ineffective?

This stuff is going on all the time, but the only way we learn about it is if it leaks out by accident.

AND A TINY BIT LATER...

Hey folks, this is the elephant in the room that we're now just beginning to talk about in a real way. I hope the strong members of this group don't let it fade away.

I believe the scattered and closeted handling of these issues on the part of the schools and the district is a big reason, maybe the biggest, why so many Oakland parents are reluctant to use the schools, especially the secondary schools. If they use them, many parents are always slightly on edge wondering about the safety of their children. And they should be, because nothing meaningful, by policy, is dependably revealed by the school. Bad stories, true or false, just seep out.

There are few straightforward ways to find out what is really going on. Maybe things are better than parents think, or maybe they are worse.

As far as I can tell, this is also a big reason why parents feel the need to flee to the charters or the privates ("I've heard that there is a lot of fighting at THAT school."). It is why working in these schools for the long term is so difficult for so many teachers (haphazard discipline structures & lousy school climate). It is why many OUSD teachers living in Oakland won't send their kids to their neighborhood OUSD schools. It is how a fair amount of the crime problem in Oakland is constantly developing in the public schools right underneath our noses.

The problems need to be addressed in a more comprehensive way by the schools. The unadulterated numbers of incidents need to be tracked, publicly reported and thought-about, so the schools know where to begin and where they need to go. Think about that magic word "accountability."

Hey District people: If you aren't willing to step up and be strong leaders who will be innovative with these issues and attack them head on for us, can you at least create a venue that will pull people together to make a task force, or workshop, or some way to put our heads together to devise a new strategy? Then we might be able to make some progress with getting into the nitty-gritty of this in a more meaningful way. On one hand it seems hopeless, but on the other it might be possible to start heading in a direction that will make more sense.

This topic affects parents who live in the flatlands, traditional zones, and hills schools alike. Unlike so many of those who work at Second Ave., we parents live in Oakland and we are using your schools, ugly warts and all. I wish you would trust us and consider us as worthy partners, and let us help you chart a new course.

THE END.