Promises to Keep

Abstract

KIDS REALLY do say the darndest things. Thank goodness, because someone needs to. I recently listened as high school students from all kinds of Pennsylvania communities expressed their views on whether they were ready for life after high school. In the more than three hours they spent taping a program for public broadcasting, they were both apprehensive and hopeful. They blamed state policies for unequal resources that put many of them at a disadvantage. After long discussions about work-force and the skills young people need to compete for the same jobs, one young woman from Philadelphia remarked, We've been talking about all of us needing these soft skills. I think our legislators could use some, like teamwork and critical thinking. Her remark brought home the fact that, while policy makers fret over an illogical accountability system under the No Child Left Behind act, a lot of issues that are important for students and schools are being neglected. Issues like adequate resources. Issues like what is happening to motivated, highly competent students in the frenzied push to bring up those with lower scores. And issues like admitting that children and young people need their communities, as well as their schools, to be accountable. Our youngest citizens are paying a price for this neglect. Two-thirds are in jeopardy of not being successful adults, if you buy into the criteria developed by America's Promise, the youth development initiative launched by Gen. Colin Powell before he became secretary of state for President Bush. The initiative framed five promises to young People--caring adults, safe places, a healthy start, effective education, and opportunities to help others. Young people receiving four of the five promises, according to the group's research, are twice as likely as others to make top grades and to avoid violent behavior. Having the promises met also eliminates disparities in attendance and drug use between white students and minority students. Do you wonder what it must feel like to be among the 21% of school-age children who can count on only one of the promises--or even none--being kept in their lives? That's what the first national research report from America's Promise concludes: only 31% of young people have received either four or five of the promises. These findings link to a revealing article in the November 26 issue of the New York Times Magazine that questioned the claims being made by the Bush Administration for No Child Left Behind. Paul Tough, one of the magazine's editors, cited other research that tells how very deeply the causes of the academic disparities we measure are embedded in American society. More important than family income are the use of language and the habits of behavior within families, including conformity to school norms, that give middle-class children advantages that lower-income families do not provide their children. The schools that seem consistently to beat the odds for low-income, minority children tend to be charter schools that provide more than any other public school offers these children. The KIPP academies and similar networks focus heavily on basic skills, supplemented by advantages available to more affluent students, such as music, foreign languages, trips, and about 60% more time in school than most public school students. Teachers work much longer hours than the average for public schools. It is the psychological base of these schools, however, that makes them stand out. The mottos, traditions, and values of these schools stress self-discipline. Attitude is as important as ability. (Do I hear skills? …