The Washington Informer
Let’s bend public schools toward justice
By Donald Hense
Thursday, February 18, 2010
As we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this week we are aware of the tremendous strides our nation has taken toward racial equality and justice. Indeed, the day after Martin Luther King Day saw the anniversary of the inauguration of our first African-American president.
But as different as our nation is from that dark day in 1968 when Dr. King was taken from us, we know that African-American children remain subject to a public education system that will likely fail them. The shameful reality is that millions of our children will not graduate from high school. Because of that they will likely fail to escape the burden of poverty that will exclude them from America's mainstream.
That we face this crisis 56 years after Brown v. Board of Education is an indictment of our public schools. Nationally, the high-school graduation rate for African-American children is 51 percent, according to research by the journal Education Week. In our nation's capital, the school system does not even make the African-American high-school graduation rate public. Dropping out of high school will haunt these children throughout their adult lives as they struggle to survive in a society in which literacy and numeracy are the keys to success.
Securing an education for all of our children is a goal every bit as righteous as those for which Dr. King gave his life nearly 42 years ago. Failure to graduate from high school denies children access to college, the passport to the middle class.
The Department of Labor estimates that high school graduates earn $600,000 more during their lifetime than high school dropouts. And an adult with a college degree makes 73 percent more over a lifetime than someone with only a high school diploma, the education nonprofit The College Board reports. These are lost opportunities not only for our children but also for our nation. The achievement gap separating black and white students cost our country up to $525 billion in 2008, management consultants McKinsey & Company found.
Tragically, dollar amounts don't begin to count the cost of failing our children. High school dropouts' lives are shorter because they are more likely to be victims of violence. According to research out of Northeastern University in Boston, the unemployment rate for African-American males aged 16 to 24 who dropped out of high school was 69 percent in 2008. Male high school dropouts are 47 times more likely to be incarcerated than their peers with college degrees. Their young female counterparts are nearly nine times more likely to become single mothers as those with college degrees.
Here in Washington there are worrying signs that the student achievement gap between black and white students is widening. The Washington Post reported last month that from 2007 to 2009 the gap grew from 53 to 58 points, using test score results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Even the much-publicized improvement in fourth-grade NAEP math scores in the District was largely the result of improved scores among white students in city-run schools.
But there are signs of hope, and they come from the District's public charter schools. Did you know that D.C. charters-publicly funded but independently run-have a higher proportion of African-American and economically disadvantaged students than the city-run school system? Charter schools have closed the citywide achievement gap between black and white students by 25 percent in three years, according to an analysis by D.C.'s Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.
Did you know that D.C. charter high-school graduation rates are eight percentage points higher than the U.S. average? The national average includes affluent counties and suburbs that are a world apart from the vulnerable communities in which nearly all D.C. charter schools operate. The hard work of charter teachers and students has paid off: 85 percent of charter high school graduates are accepted to college.
The introduction of public charter schools to the District of Columbia is a 14-year old school reform that now educates 38 percent of D.C. public school children. It is improving the odds for those children whose parents previously lacked school choice: children whose parents cannot afford to pay tuition or buy a home in an exclusive suburb with good public schools.
Charters are reshaping the tragic topography of America's urban landscape. In neighborhoods that once contained only the lowest performing public schools there are now thriving public charter schools offering a high-quality public education.
To paraphrase Dr. King, the arc of the moral universe is long but with our help it can be made to bend toward justice.