The Effect of Providence

Any film which celebrates the accomplishments of youth of color from low-income familes and communities is one that I will always appreciate. But ever since seeing the preview to this new documentary about a parochial school on Chicago's West Side, The Providence Effect, I had an uneasy feeling. Perhaps it was the scene in which Ronald Reagan visits the school and hails it as "the way it should be done". Perhaps it was the extensive admissions requirements that I saw while visiting the school's website. Whatever it was, I knew that Providence-St. Mel (PSM) was not neccessarily the educational answer we have all been looking for. At least, not for public schools, and the communities they serve.

The movie opens and closes with the most recent graduation of PSM seniors, 100% of whom will go on to 4 year colleges and universities. It's a very touching moment and works to instill hope in us for this group of young people who have defied the odds. But that's just it, isn't it? The theme of the film is not about recognizing the roots of poverty and educational inequity in our nation, it's about giving a few lucky kids of color a competitive edge in an unjust society.

Providing youth with tools to navigate that society effectively was a popular notion during the Civil Rights Era, an era often alluded to in the film. One alumnus even uses the common refrain of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps, "and that's hard when you don't have any boots", he says. I'll bet. Some would venture to say it's impossible. And if the purpose of education is to break the cycle of poverty, how can one justify a costly education as a means to end poverty?

PSM is often referred to in the film as a miracle. What PSM did was not miraculous. Anytime you take a school, weed out all of the students who can't afford tuition (however reduced the price might be), all of the students with learning difficulties who can't meet the mandatory 3.2 GPA, and all the students who are acting up in class because of problems at home, you can almost gaurantee to have a successful school. Though I'm overwhelmingly grateful for the intervention in the lives of these 500 or so students, they are not the ones I'm most concerned about.

The founder of PSM, Paul J. Adams III, boasts that he got rid of all of the gang members in order to restore the school to its full potential. But the gang members are precisely the students I'm concerned about. Where did they go, after they were conveniently displaced? Our problems with education do not disappear when we kick out the students who we label as troublesome. On the contrary, when we try to sweep these students under the rug, the consequences of their unchecked struggles will reveal themselves sooner than we think. As Adams himself says, if we don't reach these kids now "the civil rights movement will look like a tea party".

The film's message seems to be that even though PSM is a private school, public schools can create the same atmosphere, with hard work and perseverenace (as it says in their mission statement). However, the new Providence Englewood charter school runs into red tape in the form of teachers' unions, standards, and board of education requirements; messy little things that private schools don't have to contend with. And even though the film doesn't dedicate much time focusing on the cumbersome first year of the charter school, the improvements in their test scores are shocking. So shocking that it makes me wonder how the feat was acheived. Call me a skeptic, but students with learning difficulties are pushed out all the time by public schools hoping to maintain a certain average, or hoping to hang on to their federal funding.

But that's not to say that PSM doesn't have a model that can be emulated by public schools. It does. And as they say, it's not rocket science. Their recipe? Be a powerful leader in education. Find a team of talented teachers who are masters in their subject matter. Hold them accountable to high standards of teaching just as they are asked to hold students accountable to a high standard of learning. Provide a positive environment full of opportunities to be creative and to achieve great things. And most importantly, care about students. One comment, which I found to be the most inspiring and truthful of any in the film, was a math teacher's reverie of his students. He said that you have to care about your students; that you can be the best at what you do, but if you don't care whether you are reaching your students or not then you've, essentially, failed.

The true miracle, in my mind, is that there are other schools in impoverished communities throughout the country that are accomplishing these things, that were using the Providence Method back when it was just called teaching, and they're doing it without tuition money, without millions of dollars in grants, and with their respective school boards trying relentlessly to shut them down for their "unorthodox methods". My beef, I must admit, is not with Providence- St. Mel at all, it's with school systems that try to tout the myth that kids just don't want to learn, that they're disrepsectful and unruly, that they have no concept of the importance of education. Give students (any student) endless opportunities to achieve what they want to achieve in life, and they will. Respect them as works in progress, care about them as if they were your own, and you'll see them blossom. Not rocket science, indeed.

Child's Play

Una Osato's one woman play about a group of seven-year-old students in a New York City classroom is revelatory. As she voices her young characters she reveals their emotional and intellectual complexity while at the same time reminding us that these are, after all, children who are forced to cope in a very adult world. The play is both heartbreaking and hilarious as Una does spot-on impressions of 7-year-old fantasies and realities. Recess isn't just a play written by an educator who pays close attention to her students, it's a play written by someone who is socially conscious and hyper-aware of how world events, public policies, and our own grown-up choices effect kids' lives.

Between the Walls

If there is a film out there which realistically portrays the complexities of an innercity classroom, it's this one. This is not Lean on Me or Stand and Delivery or (god help us all) Freedom Writers. This is Entre les Murs (Between the Walls), a film that tells the story of a diverse group of high school students in an underfunded French school and their put-upon teacher. Except the teacher in this story is far from a savior. Watching the film, you come to see how educators can fall into the trap of stigmatizing the very students they try so desperately to reach. And how suspensions and expulsions provide temporary solutions at the price of a student's education. There are no concrete answers here. But the question is this: how often do youth of color become the scapegoats for our personal and institutional failures?

Re-Defining School Safety

This is a video of a report highlighting schools in NYC that practice alternatives to metal detectors and zero tolerance. The report is called Safety with Dignity: Alternatives to the Over-Policing of Schools.

The Harry Potter Pipeline

Riding on the dragon tails of the current Harry Potter hype, I've decided to reveal something I've long believed to be true: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is all about the School to Prison Pipeline. My hand to God. Take Professor Umbridge, for instance. Umbridge, a veritable puppet for the administration, replaced nurturing Headmaster Dumbledore because of his unwillingness to stand by while his students were mistreated.

Umbridge endorsed the government's irrational fear of young people and applied it to the school's code of conduct. She appointed herself Hogwarts' High Inquisitor. (I assume "Inquisitor" was in reference to the Spanish Inquisition, but for me it suggested the heavy-handed interrogation tactics that police are using in schools.) And it only gets worse from there.

Umbridge's answer to student misbehavior was overly-harsh discipline. She implemented new zero tolerance policies called Educational Decrees which not only gave her absolute power over the school system (Mayoral Control?) but under these decrees students were expelled for minor, low-level infractions. They weren't even allowed to excercise their first amendment right to read a leftist newspaper (Educational Decree #27). But Umbridge couldn't personally monitor every student's reading material. She needed help.

The Inquisitorial Squad was a group of hand-picked Hogwarts students who acted as the enforcers of Umbridge's inconstant discipline code. Ambitious young Draco Malfoy and his pals could have easily been budding School Safety Agents, run amok in a system of thinly disguised chaos, frequently abusing their power. Part of that abuse consisted of targeting certain students because of their beliefs or their heritage. A school culture of discrimination developed in which students from wizarding families were favored over muggles (those from non-wizarding families). Now, Umbridge was a wicked one, but she alone can't be blamed for the systemic bias against Muggle-born students that existed within their school system anymore than Principal Duch of Hillcrest High School in Queens can be blamed for the disproportionately high arrest rate of students of color. Members of the group, The Order of the Phoenix, understood that there needed to be a complete overhaul of the system. For a real-world example of The Order of the Phoenix, please see Student Safety Coalition.

Umbridge also had students arrested. She even went so far as to invite Dementors (Dracula meets the Bronx Task Force) into the school. These loathesome creatures feed on anger and dispair, increasing a Hogwarts student's chances of being arrested or detained at Her Majesty's pleasure. Dementors, like police officers in our own society, suck all the happiness out of the room. Therefore, instead of establishing order, they only cause students to become even more angry and rebellious. Twins Fred and George Weasley even dropped out of school in order to escape the negativity.

Now, these are only a few examples of how J.K. Rowling addresses the problem of over-policing in public education. I'm sure that there are others examples. But here is why the books are, if for no other reason, profound: the students practiced freedom-schooling. They took it upon themselves to assert their own power in opposition to an oppressive power structure. They taught one another, learned from one another, and formed a community of unlikely friendships in a world that was working to divide them. With Book 5 Rowling reminds us that, when young people have an opportunity to be creative critical thinkers, a shift in the educational paradigm is possible.

How To Suspend A Special Education Student

As if there weren't enough ways to violate a student's right to a quality education. A group called Common Good (cue the hissing) seems to have found yet another. They label themselves a 'non-partisan' legal reform coalition dedicated to restoring 'common sense' to America. What they've done is provide principals and school leaders with a step by step guide on how to skirt a system designed to protect students with special needs. This chart is actually labeled "How To Suspend A Special Education Student for Up to 45 Days". Students have the right not to be punished for behavior caused by their disability, even if it is inconvenient for schools to provide them with the services they need. And even if it seems more cost effective to push them out of schools, "common sense" tells us that students who aren't given an equal opportunity to succeed will cost the society much more in the long run. Or if you're like me, and believe that common sense is often used as a tool to suppress our natural bend toward compassion, you might say that we all have a moral (if not legal) obligation to be inclusive of ALL students and to search for ways to address behavior through a nurturing lense.

Speaking of Movements...

Don't Make No Sense, Zero Tolerance

From the folks who brought you Teaching the Personal and the Political and Race Course: Against White Supremacy, bring you this: a collection of thoughtful narratives which illustrate the problems in our school discipline system. These stories help us to re-imagine what it means to keep students safe. Zero Tolerance explains how the policy was hatched after tragic school shootings in the suburbs and took flight in urban schools with predominantly students of color. Our schools have become so over-policed that it's difficult for us to picture safety without metal detectors and uniformed sentinels. This book argues that we must, or else we face losing another generation to overincarceration. What the authors also do is create a dialogue among the various essayists in the book; something that we must do if we're to create a movement.

"If it's all about perspective, sometimes we have to step back to see how ridiculous our actions are. But at other times, we have to move up a whole lot closer."

The Facts of Life

Educators and activists work hard to advocate for the rights of young people and have ventured to speak for youth in marginalized communities. But too rarely are youth of color given the opportunity to speak for themselves. Who better to help adults understand the kinds of changes we must make in order to build better communities and educational environments? What better way to teach youth about the essence of learning than to learn from them? This book, a collection of stories by eight young women growing up in New York City, provides us with this opportunity. It's more than just a day in the life of Tootie, Jo, Blair, and Nat under the benevolent auspices of Mrs. Garret. When these young women tell us about their lives and communities they get down to the brass tacks, revealing the emotional weight that they carry in each fine detail. They tell us about the schools that they've attended: some like houses of detention, others like second homes. They have a lot to say and, finally, a medium through which to say it. Let's listen.

Benetta Breaks It Down

Indymedia interviews Benetta Standly from Georgia ACLU who answers our question, "What is the School to Prison Pipeline?" The interview is a bit long, but you gain an understanding of the problem from the very beginning of this video.

Hard Times

I've spoken with Safety Agents who have tried to justify the handcuffing of these children. But something in their faces gave off a hint of doubt. Perhaps they were thinking of how enraged they would be if these were their own kids. What could those arresting officers have possibly seen in these children that would make them want to hurt them? The image is so austere it's Dickensian.

Opting Out

In Detroit, kids aren’t dropping out of school, they are ‘opting out’, no longer willing to tolerate being depreciated and dehumanized. Students sense, if they can't actually prove, that their schools don't really want them there. So...why should they stay? Post-industrial Detroit no longer needs factory workers, so where will these young people go once they leave their schools, underserved? How can they define their place in the world when they are being systematically displaced? Through hip hop, spoken word, and audio interviews, youth from the Live Arts Media Project begin to answer some of these questions.

Undereducated, Overincarcerated

Here is a preview for a short film that youth in Connecticut created. It's called Book 'Em: Undereducated, Overincarcerated. In their own words, youth explain the connection between today's school system and the criminal justice system.

Schoolhouse to Jailhouse

Here is another video created by youth from an organization called Make the Road New York. Students articulate how schools are preparing them for prison.

The War on Children

Imagine what you were like as a student. But put away the rose-colored glasses. Think of all the times that you rolled your eyes when a teacher reamed you for not having your homework. Reminisce on all the wonderful artwork you created on the surface of your desk with your favorite ballpoint. Bask in the memory of skipping school with friends to go to the corner store for junkfood.

Now imagine being arrested for doing all of those things.

Last year I was speaking to my mother about the incarceration epidemic sweeping a nation of young people. She poo-pooed the notion, saying that if students were being arrested, then it was probably for a good reason. Even when I told her that Black and Brown kids are being arrested more often than white kids and for the same offense, she said that kids of color are out of control and need to be disciplined harshly. Even after her own son, my brother, was arrested as a teenager for hanging out in front of a convenience store, she still couldn't see the connection between the personal and the systemic.

This is the prevailing attitude among many everyday people. Whether it's because the lack of solutions to all the injustice is paralyzing, or whether it's because they've been endoctrinated by a system which breeds on miseducation, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's a fear of consequences if they actually did take to the streets; perhaps it's a fear of failure if they tried. Who knows.

All I know is that young people have become unwitting political prisoners in a very dirty war against them. Some say that the war started when the Bush Administration implemented the No Child Left Behind Act, which presented schools with the incentive to push students out who didn't meet with academic standards.

Here are a few plausable hypotheticals:

"Hi Andre, you've been socially promoted for the past three years now. If we let you take this standardized test, we're worried that your score will bring down our overall average, thereby jeopordizing our funding. Maybe you should leave this place and get your GED."

"Hi Elisa, you've been acting up quite a bit lately. But because of low test scores, we don't have the resources or man-power to get to the root of your problems. Instead, we're going to suspend you for as many days at the department will allow. Have fun on the streets. Watch out for those Truancy Officers."

"Oh, Carlos, you're back! And even more pissed off than you were when you left. We don't want your behavior to reflect badly on our school incident rate, so we're going to issue you an involuntary transfer to another school, where you will have to awkwardly integrate yourself into a new atmosphere. Careful of those gang recruiters. They can be very persuasive"

I'll admit that some adults are unconsciously participating in the systemic marginalization of kids of color. But others... others are completely aware of what is happening and try to enlist the support of the masses using a "protect the many at the sacrifice of the few" philosophy, cloaked in bigotry and reaking of the social darwinist's racist view of hierarchy.

There are no lost causes, only causes which we choose to abandon. What ever happened to Father Flanagan's homily that there are "no bad boys"? Does that also apply to Black boys and Latino boys? If so, then why do we put them in handcuffs for giving us an angry look? Why do we try to silence them by locking them away? Is it our own failures as a culture that we are trying so desperately to ignore?

Truth is, the war on children began long before Bush, and it is still being waged after his dictatorial reign. Now we must understand the reasons why it was waged in the first place and what it is likely to cost us as a culture. My guess: a generation of sad children who will grow to be unemployed ex-cons, as lost and melancholy as they were when they left; coming back to communities and familes who have had to struggle without them. Is this really the sacrifice of a few?

Play the School to Prison Pipeline Game

Thanks to Chloe Dugger, NYCLU and Nicole Kief, ACLU for creating this game.

They School

Even if you don't subscribe to the whole of Dead Prez's proclamation against undemocratic and underresourced schools, you must admit that he is speaking for many young voices in this country's educational system. Young voices who feel silenced and demonized by a fear-mongering adult world.

The tone of the video is intentional. What some might view as chaotic classrooms full of violent and out of control youth of color might just as easily be seen as the voice of the unheard.

Young people are not idiots. On the contrary, they often see the world through unfiltered lenses. They see the racial and economic divide, even if they can't articulate it in the way that adults would understand. But they see it, and the necessary anger that comes with that, not to mention their understanding that adults are at just as much of a loss as they are, should be expected.

If we are to make any long-lasting meaningful changes we must first admit that the students who we view as most troublesome are the very students that hold the answers to better schools. And we must also admit that many teachers in urban classrooms have socially imbedded attitudes toward their students. And this attitude plays a major role in the discipline process, the level of expectation, and the number of opportunities we allow for mutual understanding, communication, and respect.