What Obama's Education Speech Was Missing

In President Barack Obama's speech on education today to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, he outlined four pillars of K-12 school reform:  Investing in early childhood initiatives; encouraging better standards and tests; recruiting, preparing and rewarding outstanding teachers; and promoting innovation through charter schools and longer school days and school years.  These are mostly very good and important ideas, worthy of support, but I was left wondering about a fifth pillar -- the need to attack the fountainhead of unequal schooling:  our system of educating low-income and minority students separately from middle-class and white students.  Especially before an audience of Latinos, whose children are more segregated in schools even than African Americans, why not address this question head-on?

Of course, Obama is rightly leery about being associated with the old notion of compulsory busing from the 1970s, which was politically toxic and in many cases was counterproductive, feeding white flight.  But he recognized in his famous speech on race during the campaign that segregated schools are still unequal, and there are lots of examples of highly successful school integration programs that are voluntary and politically popular.

One important example is Metco, Boston's longstanding program that allows urban minority children to attend better performing schools in Boston's affluent suburbs.  According to a new report by Amy Stuart Wells of Columbia University and Jennifer Jellison Holme of the University of Texas, Metco students see their test scores increase at a higher rate than those who don't participate in the program, and there is no negative effect on the achievement of white students in receiving districts.  The vast majority of Metco graduates say they would participate again, and there is a huge wait list of 13,000 students wanting to get into the program.  

It was surprising, therefore, that a front page story in Sunday's Boston Globe chose to emphasize the gap in the types of colleges that Metco students attend compared with their more affluent peers in suburban districts.  The article, "Metco grads lag on college choices:  More likely to enroll in less-selective schools," focused on the glass one tenth empty rather than the portion nine-tenths full.

The Globe found that nearly 90% of Metco students go on to college -- compared with 67% of Boston public school graduates -- but that they attend "decidedly less selective and prestigious colleges than their classmates" in affluent white districts like Wellesley, Belmont and Lexington.  I think everyone of good will would like to see 100% of Metco students go to prestigious colleges, but let's consider how well the program is working as a whole.

While 67% of Boston public high school graduates (of all races) go to college, 40% of black students and 50% of Latino students fail to graduate from high school in four years, so the overall college going rate of black and Hispanic students in Boston is likely somewhere in the 30-40 percent range.  Virtually all of Metco students, by contrast, graduate from high school and of those almost 90% go on to college.  So the overall college going success rate of minority Metco students is two to three times the rate of minority students in Boston public schools. 

President Obama has called for replicating what works.  He's called for 20 Promise Neighborhoods, modeled after the Harlem Children's Zone, providing pre-K programs, and extended day charter schools in a 97 block are of Manhattan.  What about calling for 20 Metco programs too? 

The critics will note that Metco is not perfect.  It needs to be opened up to include low income whites in order to remain legally sound.  And as the Globe story suggests, it could do an even better job of getting its students into selective four year colleges.  But here's a program that in the larger scheme of things is producing outstanding results.  Why is it not even part of the national dialogue on education under the most progressive administration in memory?

Comments

[Washington Teacher]

It is difficult for me to take your opinion seriously when you missed the fifth pillar. It was, "providing every American with a quality higher education."

[Richard Kahlenberg]

Dear Washington Teacher,
I know that the speech has a fifth pillar on higher education, which is why my post said Obama outlined "four pillars of K-12 school reform."
Rick Kahlenberg

[College Educator]

Good point! My expression of a fifth pillar would have been the need to stress more personal responsibility on the part of low-income African-American youth for their education; at least in terms of preparation. Many minority and poor white teenagers in the urban areas seem to find ways to finance expensive cell phones, clothes, and other material things; but don’t seem to consider going to the library and reading a book of value.

[John Tiernan]

What everyone is missing is that there will be no equal educational opportunities until funding of primary schools is removed from property taxes. Right now kids in the wealthiest communities have unfair advantages over those in poor inland towns and indian reservations. Greedy suburbanites are there for 12 years till their kids qualify for top colleges--while not even paying their fair shares of the kids' school costs--and then move away. Meantime kids with enormous potential in poor towns suffer poor schools and stay poor. Someday we'll get it that property taxes are the wrong way to fund schools, and will admit that the funding must come from federal taxes spread across the land.