Executive Summary
Changing Mainstream Education
We clearly understand that our education system does not meet Congress' promise of providing "every person an equal opportunity to receive an education of high quality..." Nor can it do so while we continue to sort our children between a "mainstream" education for some and inferior and peripheral school offerings for others. We must finally recognize that diversity is a defining characteristic of our society and, therefore, of the nation's student mainstream. We must finally admit that a very large proportion of our children are girls and boys who are poor, or racially, culturally, ethnically and linguistically diverse or who have physical disabilities, and we must finally recognize their rights within the educational "mainstream." Only when we recognize the real needs of an educational system responsible for all of our children will we find the will and commit the resources to make schools places where all of our children have real opportunity to learn the new levels of math, science, language, thinking and problem-solving skills that tomarrow will demand. The United States cannot afford to regulate any of its children to the periphery of educational opportunity.
Excellence in education must be understood to include the ability to draw on and integrate information from varied sources; to analyze and solve problems; to know and appreciate one's own and other cultures; to learn and work cooperatively and collaboratively as well as competitively; and to understand and respect the diverse domains of human endeavor and performance. New concepts of intelligence must inform our curriclula. Gender, race and culture biases must no longer shape school and teacher expectations and skew student assessments. All parents must be welcomed as school partners and empowered to support their children's learning. To make an excellent education the birthright of all, systemic reform must be conceived and structured to align resources with needs. We must end the pattern of providing the least to those who need the most. Educate America examines several of education's structural elements which today constitute the institutional framework of an inequitable and unjust American system of education. Each element is examined separately - but to achieve equity in education, all must be reformed together. Allowing any one of our education system's support structures to remain inequitable will ensure continued inequity of opportunity in our schools.
The Schools We Want
The schools we want will provide real opportunity to learn for all children of both genders, including the poor; the racially, culturally and linguistically diverse, and those with physical disabilities. They will practice what has already been proven effective in empowering the "failing 40%" of public school students. They will embody specific principles of equity to ensure excellence of educational opportunity for all students.
Opportunity To Learn Standards
Past education reforms have targeted the "mainstream" and have largely ignored children most in need of real educational opportunity. Today, reform that does not deliberately address what Jonathan Kozol calls the "savage inequalities" in school resources and programs will not transform our national system into one of opportunity for all. National standards may improve the quality of education in schools atttended by the relatively advantaged, but we must be equally concerned about the schools that are already failing to meet such standards as have been set for them. To achieve the national systemic reform that we need, all schools must provide all of their students with real and equitable opportunities to meet whatever new learning and performance standards may be set. To ensure opportunity to learn for all, schools must have the resources, the commitment and the instructional capacities to assure equity of opportunity and treatment for all.
School Finance
Today, substantial funding differences exist among school of the same district, among districts of the same state, and among states - and the differences are linked to 1) racial, ethnic and economic status, and 2) inequities in eductational resources and in student achievement. "Separate but equal" schooling was declared unconstitutional in 1954; in the 1990s our funding formulas create schools that are not only separate but decidedly unequal.
Equitable school financing must recognize that differing needs and circumstances require different interventions and incur different costs. Funding should consider what dollars actually buy in different settings, the extent to which programs and services are provided to all groups, and the degree to which all students benefit from public education services.
Local, state and federal governments share responsibility for equity in school finance. Current systems deny equal educational opportunity to children in property-poor districts where poor, racial minority and limited English proficient children are overrepresented. State and federal "categorial" funding meant to supplement presumably equal "regular" programs fails miserably to make up for inter- and intra-district funding inequities.
Federal and state governments must accomplish significant school finance reform and empower neey schools to giver their sutdents an opportunity to learn. State and federal governments can: 1) shift the focus of assistance from remediation for individually disadvantaged children to structural improvement of whole schools; 2) enforce compliance with "supplement, not supplant" requirements of categorial assistance programs; and 3) enact national and state finance equity legislation that requires equitable financing among states to ensure a high-quality education for all children.
Family Empowerment
Poor nutrition, poor health, emotional stress from neighborhood violence, unplanned pregnancy and unprepared parenthod are some of the povery-connected inequities that can severly decrease students' real opportunities to learn. Seeing that all children enter school with a fair chance to succeed is therefore essential for successful systemic reform in education. Schools can accomplish much through parenting programs, early childhood programs and comprehensive health and health education programs. They can do even more through collaboration with other community entities to impove the quality of children's lives and increase family suppport for children's education.
Family empowerment requires ready access to community services, assurance that services are appropriate to children's and families' needs, and must focus on the whole family. School-community efforts on behalf of families must be made in an atmosphere of respect and must at all times emphasize improving the quality of childrens experiences.
We must break down traditional barriers between schools, human service agencies, the private sector and other community entities. We must change the patterns of duplicative, fragmented and disconnencted servies to those least able to integrate them. Federal and state, as well as local governments can suppoer school/community collaboration for family empowerment as an element of systemic educational reform.
Preparing Teachers for the New Mainstream: Pre-Service
Schools cannot provide equity of educational opportunity in the absence of a professional teaching corps equipped to teach all students. By the year 2035, 50% of the nation's students will be children of color, many of whom will be of other-than-English language backgrounds, and many of whom will be children of the desperately poor. Yet currently, the K-12 teaching profession is largely white, monolingual and female, with little direct knowledge about or experience of children of diversity. In all socioeconomic groups - in rural, suburban or urban schools - teachers formulate expectations based on economic class, gender and race. The difficulty of recruiting experienced teachers for urban, poor and diverse schools is well known.
In the absence of sufficient diversity within the teaching profession, institutions of higher education bear the burden of equipping candidates to teach effectively in settings of diversity. This represents a clear challenge, since the demographics of the teaching profession in schools of education are about the same as those in elementary and secondary education - except that a much higher proportion of schools of education professors is male - and those who instruct teacher-candidates may often lack substantial teaching experience in urban schools, training in gender-fair or multicultural teaching techniques, or substantial personal interracial or intercultural experiences.
There are teaching approaches that have been proven effective with minory students: they are characterized by teachers' own content knowledge, understanding and respect for their own and other cultures, high expectations for diverse student's success, ability to link challenging curriculum to students' cultural resources, and a strong commitment to equity. Collaborative, "connected" learning and attention to gender-related learning styles are key to gender-equitable learning environments.
Significant research has also identified key elements that predict success in the pre-service preparation of teaching candidates, but few schools of education embody them. School-university collaborations to improve the educaiton of teachers of diverse students suffer from insufficient funding, absence of diversity among key staff and limited knowledge of diversity issues among staff and principal investigators. Although national accreditation agencies have begun to incorporate preparation for multicultural education in teacher certification standards, those standards are minimally reflected in what school of education actually provide.
The federal and state governments can affect teacher preparation by encouraging the adoption of standards for teacher preparation programs that include:
- professional acknowledgement of the importance of cultural sensitivity and commitment to equity;
- development of teachers' content knowledge;
- linking content knowledge, experience with diversity and instructional strategies;
- acquisition of knowledge and experience of diversity through involvement with the diverse; and
- practicum and/or student-teaching experience in settings of diversity.
Federal leadership can also encourage coordination of teacher certification requirements; it can support recruitment and training of diverse teachers; and it can fund research on the relation of learning style to culture and gender.
Preparing Teachers for the New Mainstream: In-Service
Continuing professional development is the essential link between the realities of classroom practice and reforned educational goal setting, accountability, and curricular upgrading. Accomplishing systemci education reform for all students will require making professional developmetn an integral element of all "categorical funds" programs for disadvantaged and underachieving students as well as an integra part of "whole schoool" and other school improvement efforts.
Federal and state assistance funds committed to professional development are needed to improve regular classroom teachers' ability to provide equal learning opportunities for all students. The inadequacy of current "remedial" approaches is clear. Pullout instruction for 20-40 minutes per day has minited usefulness for students marginalized by the curriculum, instructional practices, classroom management practices, assessment practices, and other interactions in the regular classrooms where they spend most of their time. Teachers will not change their practices until they can learn new methods, adapt them to their own needs and resources, and choose from among effective programs. In-depth and ongoing in-service training and developmetn of teacher, based on the best and most current research into effective teaching and learning strategies, is essential for improving learning opportunities. In-service training and development can empower teachers as educaiton professionals, enhance their ability to share with colleagues, and increase their participation in the decisions that affect their classroom experiences.
Student Assessment and Testing
The nation's history of using tests to sort children for differential educational opportunities is a long one. Clearly, testing shapes curriculum and teaching. Biased assessment instruments, policies and practices must not be allowed to limit opportunities to learn and and narrow or dilute curricula and instruction. Standardized testing is associated with known barriers to learning - such as tracking and "ability grouping" that produce within-school segregation of minority groups - and with minority-student retention rates that are three to four times higher than for white students. Further, the pressures to improve average school scores promote neglect of higher-order learning skills, especially in low-income schools where drill is more common than the encouragement of student investigation.
Alternatives to traditional and norm-referenced testing ("authentic" testing and assessment) promote instruction for complex thinking and problem solving, and not only provide feedback about the content students have learned, but also provide feedback about what they have learned to do. Proponents of alternative "authentic" testing and assessment methods argue that they promise to be more useful measures of student learning and development. But unless teachers are adequatley trained in their use - and especially in their use as diagnostic tools for improving learning opportunity - their promise may be wasted. More importanly, no test can compensate for failure to teach. Until our educaiton system equitably reforms schools' resources and processes, our children will still be sorted for ezposure to radically different curricular content, teaching methods eand expectations, counseling practives and personal treatment.
More than 100 national civil rights, education and advocacy organizations have endorsed the "Criteria for Evaluation of Student Assessment Systems" developed by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest), which with the Council for Basic Education co-chairs the National Forum on Assessment. National adoption of the criteria would ensure that student assessments create tools for - rather than barriers to - educational opportunity for all students.
Recommendations
Educate America's final section on "recommendations" summarizes the principles necessary for equitable education for all and identifies federal, state and local actions that would integrate reform efforts to include equity as an essential element of educational excellence.
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