Talking about learning and talking about schooling are two different conversations. And I’m trying to decide which conversation is more interesting to me, and which conversation I want to be a part of.
So here we are, a bunch of people living on this land we’re calling the United States. And we're talking about ways to improve our schools. And lots of people have ideas on this. School is something we know we’re experiencing, and we have some thoughts and emotions about our experiences. Of course, these people all have different experiences with schools. Groups of people in our country have been attending essentially different kinds of schools, even public schools, even now. So everyone’s talking about school but really we’re all talking about something different.
So now millions of people who all have opinions about schools are thinking about how to improve schools. And most of them are using the same words ("school" or "public school") but referring to radically different experiences. And different experiences lead to different ideas for how to improve schools.
Innovation is the dominant rhetorical strategy that I’ve heard employed when powerful people talk about education in the 21st century in America. And when I say powerful people I’m talking about whiteness, class, money, gender, and geography, and education levels. I’m talking about essentially the constellations of social factors that lead to differential amounts of social and economic and political power distributed among individuals and groups in a our society.
When we talk about power, we're also talking about capitalism, and racism, and because we live in America that means we’re talking about slavery and indigenous rights and genocide.
A lot of times, when people with power talk about improving schools, they’re talking about innovation. And how to get better, and how to be prepared for the future. And how to be ready. And there’s this sense of forward-pressure, pressure from the future. The need to be ready when the time comes. The documentary Most Likely To Succeed is a great example of that. And charters in general are a great example of that. And so is Race to the Top, and Teach for America, and a lot of other educational philanthropy.
And other people, when talking about how to improve schools, are thinking primarily of equity. And how to expand access, and diversity, and inclusion. And in these conversations there’s a sense of backwards-pressure, pressure from the past. That we’ve been so inequitable for so long, that we really have a lot to overcome, and we need to do things now to amend what’s been going on since the past. And what are some examples of that? Black Lives Matter is a great example of that. Black Lives Matter talks about equity. And some other examples – Black Male Educators of St. Louis, another great example of an organization getting started on a regional level to increase equity and push for change in the region.
Of course, it’s not so simple, it’s not like we have these two camps. Because Race to the Top, that talked about equity and it positioned innovation as a way to get closer to equity. And these other charters, and these organizations like Teach For America, they talk about equity too, right?
When we talk about charter schools, mostly we’re talking about some kids. We’re talking about the kids who go to the charter, or we’re talking about kids who go to the public traditional school and aren’t getting the education they deserve, or we’re talking about kids who go to private school and are either getting an unfair advantage or who aren’t getting their money’s worth. And when we’re talking about public schooling – not district, or charter, or magnet, or whatever – just public schooling as a social institution, as a part of the state welfare system, we’re talking about all of our kids. All the kids, no matter where they go to school. And a lot of these conversations about public schooling are happening in district spaces, and they aren’t happening as much in my experience in charter spaces. And I’ve been working in charters in lots of settings.
And now we’re back to our initial distinction, innovation versus equity. What is the relationship between innovation and equity? How are we serving ALL kids with a high-quality education? Not all kids in our school, or all kids in our city? I’m talking about all children in the limits of our government’s power. Kids in Puerto Rico and in South Central LA and in North County St. Louis and in Chula Vista. This would be an innovation, and it would frankly be a very valuable, 21st century kind of innovation. To really center conversations about equity, and to look critically at how history informs our work, and we are part of a legacy, and we are creating the future within this social and economic and cultural framework of the past – that’s the kind of “innovation” I’d love to see. And that’s the conversation I want to be a part of.
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