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Del.
Rosalyn Dance, D-Petersburg, is my new hero.
Her
bill, HB 377, begins: “Upon petition, the
Petersburg Circuit Court may remove from office
all elected members of the Petersburg City School
Board for neglect of duty, misuse of office, or
incompetence in the performance of duties …”
The
bill goes
on to define “neglect of duty” to include,
“but not be limited to, serving on the
Petersburg City School Board at a time when 75
percent or more of the … public schools” in
Petersburg fail to meet accreditation.
It
takes courage to take on the city leadership.
But
Del. Dance is clearly fed up with an establishment
that is better at making excuses than finding
solutions. And she’s willing to clear out the
whole crowd and start again.
No
wonder. According to a report issued by the
Harvard Civil Rights Project and the Urban
Institute, the graduation rate for black students
in Virginia is 13 percent lower than for white
students – a figure reinforced by a Manhattan
Institute study showing an even more pronounced
gap in “college-readiness.” While 46 percent
of whites graduate ready for college, only 27
percent of black students do.
Last
year, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot examined
grades in its distribution area and
determined that while 30 percent of all seniors
finish their high school careers with a B average
or higher, less than 15 percent of black seniors
in South Hampton Roads earn a B average. Only 16
black males in Norfolk (that’s total, not
a percentage) graduated with at least a 3.0 GPA,
and only 35 black males in Portsmouth achieved a B
average.
More
than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education,
the statistics demonstrate with clarity an old
educator’s axiom: “If you always do what you
always did, you’ll always get what you always
got.”
It’s
not surprising, then, that a frustrated Del. Dance
and other members of the General Assembly Black
Caucus are moving in new directions. Del. Dwight
Jones, D-Richmond, has introduced what amounts to
a charter school expansion bill, giving the State
Board of Education new ability to authorize
colleges to create K-12 “lab schools”
fostering innovative educational strategies. In
doing so, he notes, “I have voted against every
charter school bill that has come to the General
Assembly, but my thinking is evolving, and we need
to do something now.”
State
Senator Benjamin Lambert supports a bill offering
the parents of students with disabilities a
tuition assistance grant, enabling them to select
a private placement of their own choosing when the
school system is unresponsive to their needs. In
casting his vote, Sen. Lambert noted, “I’m
doing this for the children (with disabilities)
who spoke here today, because they deserve the
best chance they can get to succeed.”
Del.
Algie Howell, D-Norfolk, a former Norfolk School
Board member, put it into perspective when he told
an interviewer, “I have always been interested
in school choice. I was interested in school
choice even back during the 1950’s when I
didn’t have a choice, when schools were totally
segregated. I wanted to go to the school of my
choice then, but I couldn’t because of
segregation laws.”
In
each case, these leaders challenged those who
would “do what we’ve always done,” in favor
of trying for dramatic change to help the most
at-risk students in our midst.
If
black Democratic leaders are willing to take steps
towards greater parental empowerment, white
conservative Republican leaders need to take steps
toward understanding just how difficult that
decision is.
National
parental choice leaders are always surprised to
hear that Virginia once had school vouchers …
but ones that were available only to white
students whose parents sought to remove their kids
from desegregated public schools. And they are
astounded to learn that from 1959 to 1964 one
local school system simply closed, giving most
white students vouchers for private academies and
leaving black students to fend for themselves.
Two-thirds of blacks in that county received
absolutely no formal education during that time.
It
takes a while for an ex-New Yorker like me to
understand that this isn’t a tale from some
distant past: It’s something that happened
within my lifetime. And to understand just how
bitter the taste would be if my neighbors and I
had been ousted from school simply on the grounds
of race. It’s a bitterness that is awfully hard
to overcome.
So,
when the Virginia teacher’s union president
throws out the charge that parental choice would
lead to a return of “Massive Resistance,” it
understandably resonates among black Virginians
with memories.
Trouble
is, it simply isn’t true. There is a huge
difference between the fear-based choice programs
of 45 years ago, and the opportunity-based efforts
promoted today. For starters, programs based on
race are simply illegal. And many of those most
vocal about finding alternative options are black
parents trapped with only one option by virtue of
their income and zip code.
More
importantly, today’s reform efforts focus on
providing additional opportunities for students
who aren’t getting the educational program they
need to become productive citizens. Whether they
are children with autism or low-income children
with extra challenges, some children need a more
individualized education program than a “one
size fits all” system can provide.
As
the song goes, “The times, they are a changin’.”
Increasingly, leaders are realizing that it's time
to level the playing field for those children by
going beyond what we’ve always done in the hopes
of doing better than what we’ve always got.
--
February 13, 2006
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