Urban Schools: Problems, Problems Everywhere
Friday, June 30, 2006
U.S. Freedom Foundation  www.FreedomFoundation.us
David W. Kirkpatrick Senior Education Fellow

The nation's public schools consistently claim that they need more money but they never say how much.  Whatever they have, and it varies greatly among the nearly 15,000 school districts, it isn't enough - they need more.   As an alternative to naming a specific amount that would do the job, they might identify a district that thinks it has enough money and see how it conducts its business.           

There are two problems with that approach.  First, as noted, there doesn't seem to be such a district.  Second, and worse, there doesn't seem to be a district that is truly effective, that is, one that can educate all students, not just those who have a socioeconomic background that promotes their capacity to learn almost irrespective of what the school district may do.          

Someone once said that a bank is a place that will loan you money if you can prove you don't need it.  Similarly, it might be said a public school is one that can teach you if you can prove you can learn with minimum help.          

A few years ago, John Anderson, president of the New American Schools Development Corporation, who would have the experience to know, said, "After a lot of years of trying to improve schools, we don't have one district of any size or diversity of population where good schools are the norm not the exception."          

Nor will a claim of "the good old days" do.  They never were.           

In a 1930 presentation at Harvard, The Inglis Lecture, Thomas H. Briggs noted that "Children of the lowly are in large numbers discouraged from entering our high schools or are forced out of them chiefly because they do not have the peculiar aptitudes, interests, and capacities necessary for success in the limited curriculum so commonly offered and emphasized."          

By 1969 it could be argued that this desperate situation was even worse.  In that year, M.I.T. Professor Jerrold R. Zacharias, expressed his belief that "The cities have been murdered by their schools.  If the schools were good, we could handle the other problems."         


 In 1971 Douglas H. Heath concurred, writing, "No significant improvement in the education of black children in large city schools will occur until most of the schools are abandoned."  The one correction that might be made to his comment is that he shouldn't have limited it to just the education of black children.  The situation applies to other minorities as well, plus low-income and disadvantaged children and even to others as well.          

This was demonstrated in just the past few days with the June 22 publication of a special edition of Education Week, "Diplomas Count," which looked at high school graduation details. One chart, on page 15, gave the graduation rates of the 50 largest school districts.  Fourteen of them graduate fewer than half of their students.  This would be bad enough if they were the fourteen smallest of the fifty but, no, they included four of the five largest - New York, Los Angeles, Miami-Dade County, and Broward County, Florida - 1,2,4,and 5 respectively.  Third largest Chicago just missed the cut, with a graduation rate of 52.2%.           

The worst record, incidentally, is held by Detroit, which graduates only 21.7% of its students.  By doing so Detroit is almost in a class by itself since its rate is only marginally better than second place Baltimore City, Maryland, with graduation rate of 38.5%          

Collectively these districts have millions of students, 1,000,000 in New York City alone.  This means that millions of students in just these few districts will fail to graduate from high school.  And while figures were not given, a significant number of those who do graduate will do so with minimal skills and may never function as truly productive members of society and will live their lives at a barely adequate economic level.

Unfortunately, such findings are neither new nor unusual.         

 Colin Greer, in 1969, noted that, "In virtually every study undertaken since that of Chicago schools made in 1898, more children have failed in school than have succeeded, both in absolute and in relative numbers."  Numerous studies since then have only confirmed that view.          

When will we decide enough is enough?                                                   

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 "But surely the most insidious message of abandonment comes from teachers and school officials who communicate to inner-city children that they are not capable of strict discipline and strong achievement, nor worthy of the same high expectations as suburban kids."  National Education Association President Bob Chase, p. 20, Education Week, Sept. 11, 1996

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