More on the Essential Profession

Abstract

LAST MONTH I reported that 34% of respondents to a survey from Recruiting New Teachers agreed somewhat or agreed strongly that educational opportunities are equally available to poor children and rich. Maybe this will qualify them all for a share of the Savage Inequalities Deep Denial Award or something similar. I wondered last month what a breakout of these data by income and ethnicity might show. David Hasselkorn of Recruiting New Teachers has now sent me the data. And the results astonish me. It turns out that people with low incomes believe that educational opportunities are equal more often than people with middle-class ($50,000-$75,000) or affluent incomes (greater than $75,000). Forty percent of those with incomes under $15,000 and 39% of those with incomes between $15,000 and $25,000 agreed that educational opportunities are equally available to the rich and the poor. Twenty- nine percent of those with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 and 26% of those with incomes above $75,000 held the same views. When looked at by ethnicity, 27% of blacks, 34% of Hispanics, and 35% of whites agreed strongly or somewhat that educational opportunities are equally available. If this were the 1960s, we might say that these folks have undergone a process of mystification. But they are not alone in denying the impact of poverty on opportunity. number of years ago, I gave a talk at an Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development conference to which all states sent delegations. In discussing the impact of poverty on achievement, I mentioned that some science textbooks in Alabama predicted that humans might one day walk on the moon. After the talk, an animated Alabama delegation accosted me and assured me that I was wrong. science texts in Alabama were current, they said. I had heard the information I shared on All Things Considered, and with the help of ATC's Robert Siegel, I located the person who first uttered the words, a history professor at Auburn University. He directed me to a brief for the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Alabama. And I had been wrong. Things were not as I said; they were worse. Consider a few examples from the brief: * One math class meets in a vocational education building in which the din of power tools sometimes drowns out their lessons. At times, the teacher told students to wear radios with headphones to muffle the noise. * Even as basic an item as potable water is not available in all of Alabama's schools. At one school, the drinking water has a terrible chemical taste and is undrinkable. . . . Teachers at [another school] tell the students to wait to drink the water until the end of the day because it is so highly chlorinated. * A number of schools in Alabama are infested with termites and other insects. At one school, termites have eaten through library books and shelves, classroom shelves, and school records in the principal's office. . . . Other schools report infestations from rats and fire ants. * Although most Alabama schools are in session in August, not all classrooms are air conditioned. The board of education [in one locale] passed a resolution allowing teachers who could do so to buy their own window units. The brief reports that one teacher didn't turn a window unit on because the noise was worse than the heat. And the brief goes on in this way for 125 pages. We might hope that conditions have improved in the decade since the brief was filed, but consider these passages: * Young children are picking up beer bottles, condoms, and bullets on school grounds. The students are taken out of reading instruction and assigned to this 'beautification' work in rotating shifts, the teachers say. * Other problems: Rats in cafeterias, one carrying fruit in its mouth, others scurrying around a bread rack. Chemistry labs with no chemicals at all. Literature classes without books. …