Our "Social Justice" Moment Missed a Spot: Education
Since the reawakening of Black Lives Matter, we had a major opportunity to aggressively address a horribly racist K-12 education system. But, we keep missing it.
Publisher’s Riff
It is increasingly frustrating to watch the headlines pile up: one story after another about racist teachers in virtual classrooms creating hostile “learning” environments targeting Black K-12 students. The headlines keep surfacing. If it’s not Cobb County School district in Georgia …
… it’s the Black 5th grader in Pearland, TX rightfully injecting that enslaved Black people built the nation’s economy only to get snapped at by the offending teacher.
… or, it’s members on North Carolina’s state school board putting up a fight to reject new standards for public schools to create curriculum on the origins, impact and consequences of racism
These clashes over Black history in the classroom have been ongoing for decades. The larger war over the education of Black children has been declared since the enslavement and terrorizing of Black people in the United States (where, at one time, it was illegal for enslaved Black people to read).
What’s more frustrating is the reaction to this phenomenon as if it’s recent and new. Yet, anyone who is either familiar with the inequities in the American education system or has lived through the violent realities of it knows this isn’t true. We’ve known for generations of school systems and educators leading coordinated strikes on Black youth in an ongoing effort to undermine their academic achievement and long term success. Yet, as significant a core structural conversation as the education of young Black people in K-12 education systems is, this was the biggest hole in the Black Lives Matter reawakening sparked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Every aspect of systemic racism was voiced, projected and unpacked over the past year … with the exception of what’s happening to Black students in school systems that were abusive long before pandemic.
That conversation has been hijacked by a current pre-occupation over when (and how) to re-open schools. But, we need a major conversation and a major counter-movement around racist educators, and what’s the plan for keeping our young people from enduring hostile academic environments. This is particularly worrisome when the vast majority of teachers are White women. These aren't isolated incidents. this isn't just a case of "a few bad apples." This has been a long-time, entrenched trend by design. As EdWeek points out, the average public school teachers is White and female …
Persistent achievement gap problems, leading to other social costs, will continue so long as the teacher workforce looks like this …
That can lead to emphasis on other crucial topics: curriculum, lack of diversity in teaching, unequal funding schemes that disadvantage predominantly Black school districts, and how to build new learning systems and modules that are equitable and anti-racist. The longer we avoid this discussion is the worse learning gaps among “students of color” persists …
Stride attempted an ambitious jumpstart of these issues in one of the first comprehensive discussions on the state of K-12 education to take place thus far with its National Forum on Education Equity. “We must have a full quality education for everyone if we are to ever achieve full equality in this country,” said Nate Davis, Stride Executive Chairman of the Board. Public discourse has not yet shown any sign of, at least, first acknowledging that point and then moving forward with a plan for sustained advocacy and action.