tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2836584065506164163.post548423958402091760..comments2023-04-24T23:09:57.655-04:00Comments on All Things Education: I'm so DC that. . . Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2836584065506164163.post-27069981579740338052014-07-31T15:34:24.217-04:002014-07-31T15:34:24.217-04:00I see. So, the way to stop discrimination on the b...I see. So, the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race? That's a very seductive line of reasoning. It's even been made by the United States Chief Supreme Court Justice! But it doesn't seduce me. And it's offensive to suggest that saying there should be more teachers of color = reifying/ embracing one of spurious planks that supported slavery.<br /><br />Derek, this is not about winning an argument high school debate club style; it's about having a conversation.Rachel Levyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06844728669493681943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2836584065506164163.post-27865613668010415952014-07-30T19:44:18.867-04:002014-07-30T19:44:18.867-04:00Rachel, everything you write is correct. But the p...Rachel, everything you write is correct. But the problem is, in the end, the equal protection clause demands just that, including in the hiring process. Again, I support a whole host of programs to address this problem, maybe quite left-wing (if we could tax the rich to support scholarships to broaden access to teaching, great), but not hiring based on skin color. .. Separately, it's an interesting argument to suggest that because the social construction of race was use to justify slavery, we should therefore continue to reify it. Perhaps. Or we could work toward getting away from one of the spurious planks that supported slavery. Derek Hoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13788619739997805477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2836584065506164163.post-75420856836370502292014-07-30T15:47:11.555-04:002014-07-30T15:47:11.555-04:00@L. Jablonski: Thanks for sharing this. We (meanin...@L. Jablonski: Thanks for sharing this. We (meaning my husband and children and I) actually lived in Oakland, just for two years, and sent our boys to OUSD for kindergarten.<br /><br />Anyway, yes, what your friend describes I am worried is happening to a whole generation (or two) of black education professionals in DC. I am working on a follow-up post as we speak that takes a look at some of the teacher and student demographic data out of DC. <br />Rachel Levyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06844728669493681943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2836584065506164163.post-57348334803905149022014-07-30T14:57:59.264-04:002014-07-30T14:57:59.264-04:00Rachel, your last paragraph is most salient for me...Rachel, your last paragraph is most salient for me. It brought to mind frequent conversations about politics and ed reform I had over the past decade with a recently-retired colleague and friend, a black foreign language teacher, who logged a much-celebrated 30-year career in public schools, first in Oakland then in Sacramento. Among his most important points, which he came back to over and over again, was that in majority black communities like the Oakland where he grew up, black teachers, especially black women, were indeed present in significant numbers. Both his mother and grandmother were public school teachers. He had black teachers as role models from elementary through high school (always crediting his parents and teachers with charting the path that got him from Oakland to UC Berkeley just up the road). Despite obstacles I will never know, black teachers and admin built long-lasting professional, respected middle class careers with good benefits and retirements. And since the 60s and 70s, many were unionized. He warned from the early days of ed reform, that the focus on standardized test-based improvement metrics, neighborhood school closures, charters, a business school approach to "closing the achievement gap," and de-unionization -- all occurring as an outgrowth of relentlessly shifting American political, economic and social structures --would undoubtedly hit the black teaching community the hardest. In fact, he brought this up at his retirement party, telling some of us that he really believed there would be very few like him or his mother or grandmother ever again in the public school teaching corps going forward...it was a poignant and revelatory statement. L. Jablonskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07816573634500120041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2836584065506164163.post-37954829180412992202014-07-30T00:48:55.569-04:002014-07-30T00:48:55.569-04:00@Derek
Thanks for reading ad for commenting. The ...@Derek<br /><br />Thanks for reading ad for commenting. The thing is that the practice of "we need to evaluate on teaching, not skin pigment" is a "colorblind" concept.<br /><br />Yes, race aka skin pigment is a social construct. But unfortunately, that was what was used to justify slavery and to justify all that has followed. In the process of racism, experiences are shared by certain groups of people even if the groups were arbitrarily assigned by skin pigment.<br /><br />Hence, experiences vis a vis racism have become part of who we are, and what we have to share with students as teachers, whether we mean to or not. And also, relationships between teachers and students can be (though are certainly not always) key in the learning process. These things become part of what kind of teachers we are and what kind of teaching we practice. And I want my children and all children to learn from people of all of these different perspectives and cultures and I want students of color to be able to learn from at least some people, or some more people in some places, who might share their perspective and culture.<br /><br />And I think that's what so many of the current reformers miss; they think that good teaching (maybe pedagogy?) and what you have to teach (maybe curriculum?) are things that exist in some objective, un-biased, baggage-less, quantifiably measurable vacuum, and they don't. <br /><br />Perhaps it's different or less intense in larger college lectures, I don't know.<br /><br />But doesn't it kind of seem like, when you look at the numbers (and I will present some on DC soon), that the reformers who came into DC and New Orleans pretty much decided that "My school district hires too many black teachers"? That's what it kind of looked to me and I think that that's what it might have felt like to the people there.<br />Rachel Levyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06844728669493681943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2836584065506164163.post-38865445139235429372014-07-29T13:48:35.443-04:002014-07-29T13:48:35.443-04:00Rachel, imagine if the headline read "My scho...Rachel, imagine if the headline read "My school district hires too many Black teachers" instead. I guess I'm with the conservatives a bit on this one. Of course we need to do all we can to improve access to college for minorities, and to promote teaching as a career, and I absolutely love the idea of working to increase the amount of Black teachers in White schools, and of course anybody who talks about a "color blind" society is most likely stupid and even more likely white and privileged. But in the end -- at the point of the hiring, not all the prior stuff you correctly write about -- we need to evaluate on teaching, not skin pigment. Regardless, it's not so easy to identify who is "white" and who is "black." Derek Hoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13788619739997805477noreply@blogger.com