New Year, Same Dangers

During recent weeks, millions of children returned to school to start a new academic year.  Unfortunately, this early into the new school year, we already have another report of a gunman entering a school threatening students and educators while making parents and the community at large worried and anxious.  The recent event in Georgia thankfully ended without any fatalities, which l presume is one reason why we did not witness the point-counterpoint ranting in the national media about gun control that developed in the wake of the Aurora theater shootings, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, or other similar headline-making events.  Regrettably, it takes a single massive loss of life for gun violence to enter the national consciousness.  In this way, sadly, loss is relative.  Nevertheless, gun violence in Chicago – which has become an all too regular way of life – is an important local issue with greater significance at the start of this school year.  The recent shooting of five people brings this into sharp relief.

Over the summer, Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed through his plan to close 50 Chicago Public Schools, arguing that it was necessary in order to, among other things, save money on underutilized schools and have students in so-called failing schools attend quote-unquote better schools.  Emanuel further aimed to ease parental and communal concerns of how the school closings jeopardized the safety students who had been displaced from their traditional neighborhood school and now had to cross boundaries claimed by rival gangs in some of the city’s more dangerous neighborhoods.  The Safe Passage program deploys police and fire department personnel augmented with recently hired part-time city employees to intersections along the routes students travel, escorting them to and from school.

Image from The Chicago Tribune, August 08, 2013; available at
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-08-08/news/ct-met-cps-safe-passage-20130808_1_safe-passage-program-elementary-schools-cps

A shooting along one of these Safe Passage routes, however, calls the entire enterprise into question.  On August 19^th – on the eve of the first day of school - five people were shot in front of the Uptown Baptist Church, with one victim later dying from his wounds.  While early reports described the incident with the catch-all label of “gang related,” it now seems that the victims were innocent bystanders, participants in some of the Church’s outreach programs for the homeless.

Now with the first weeks of school behind us, Chicago Police Commissioner Garry McCarthy calls Safe Passage a success.  Still, two interrelated questions linger.  These are: how long before another shooting of innocents along a Safe Passage route occurs, particularly when asking how long can Safe Passage survive.  Even now, stories are emerging of Safe Passage personnel abandoning their posts or out rightly quitting.

I have written before that schools should be welcoming environments in which students feel safe, but a safety not created through militaristic elements or authoritarian practices.  I wonder, however, what hope is there for school children to feel safe in school when they cannot feel safe on the way to school?

Back To School

The Labor Day weekend traditionally is a seasonal milestone - and the end of this year’s holiday weekend also marks the return of The Mexican Intellectual following a summertime hiatus.  Labor Day also usually marks the return to classes for American school children, which provides an opportune moment to take a closer look at those students and consider how best to teach them.

America’s school systems aim to meet the educational needs of an ever increasingly diverse student population.  A cursory examination of available data from 2011 about the city of Chicago (from where this blog originates) and the nearby village of Winnetka provides some insights into not only how diverse the student population is, but also the degrees and types of disparity between districts within the same state of Illinois.

The table below shows percentages of the three largest racial or ethnic populations in Illinois schools along with the percentages of students who are of Limited English Proficiency or bilingual (LEP); who have Individual Educational Programs (IEP) that provide for students with physical or mental disabilities to receive accommodations or additional resources, and who come from households that meet the federal designation of Low Income and thus are eligible for federally subsided or free lunch programs.  (You can find more details about Chicago Public Schools here, and more about the Winnetka school district here.)  With such diversity, the question arises: How can we best teach our students?

Student Demographics	%White	% African American	% Hispanic	% LEP	% IEP	% Low Income
State-wide	51.4	18.3	23.0	8.8	14	48.1
Chicago	8.8	41.6	44.1	15.81	12.23	85.92
Winnetka	92.8	0.1	1.7	1.0	12.3	0.2

For better or for worse, there is no shortage of supply of vested parties or other interest groups who think they have the best answer to that question.  These include parents; residents without school-aged children; labor unions for the diverse workforces within the schools (in addition to teachers there are teacher aides, facilities and housekeeping, administration, and administrative support staff, to name a few); corporations; academics; non-profit organizations; private foundations; and local, state, and national politicians.

Given the cultural and learning diversity of student populations allow me to suggest that the question itself is misguided.  There is no one best way to teach our children, just as there is no one solution to the problems with American education, whether they be real or perceived.  Unfortunately, those claiming to be interested in reforming education seem to lock onto the most politically expedient solution.

That question of how best to teach students is not answered solely by reforming teacher education; by corporate-sponsored curricula; by school take-overs and other efforts to privatize public schools; by accountability through test scores; or by any one reform being pushed as a “magic bullet.”  Instead, we should be discussing the best ways (plural) to teach students or reform schools.  Given the ever increasing diversity of student populations, the methods of educating them should be no less diverse.