Back to the drawing board

A renewed commitment to educational parity and equality — not overly simplistic letter grades — would better address problems in public education

Remember that now-famous United Negro College Fund slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”? Suppose we apply that as a sort of metric for public education. We set aside Oklahoma School Superintendent Janet Barresi’s much-maligned A-F grading system that, theoretically, allows us to gauge our public schools’ effectiveness, and take a look at how we’re really doing enriching the minds of our students.

The answer depends on whom one asks and, to a great extent, the demographic about which one inquires. How students fare within our educational system too often depends on their individual backgrounds — race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and more. These demographic criteria too often become predictors of student academic achievement.

Yet great things are happening. For example, Tulsa Public Schools can boast gains in capacity-building, mentoring, and performance evaluation for teachers and school leaders; wrap-around services in some schools (i.e., community schools); and the infusion of young, robust teachers through programs like Teach for America and City Year. Still, at least in the short term, the gulfs between high-performing and low-performing schools, and between the highest-performing and lowest-performing students within those schools, remain remarkably persistent.  The deficits are too great and the gaps too wide to be overcome instantaneously or with simplistic, unsustainable approaches.

Too many young people continue to fall through the cracks, drop out, and leave schools ill-prepared for work, citizenship, and life. The problem is especially acute among students of color.

Our future depends on supporting initiatives that will right our listing educational vessel and steer her toward parity and excellence for all. We — educators, parents, students, and concerned citizens — must expect better, do better, and be better.

Education has been called one of the “essential amenities of human progress.” The African American experience is illustrative. Slave masters withheld formal education from enslaved Africans in an effort to keep them under control. Still, our African American forebears took great risks to educate themselves. Jim Crow segregation created a system of underfunded, underequipped black schools. Yet, those schools managed to produce some remarkable results. Staunch segregationists impeded the drive to desegregate our schools. Nonetheless, the African American civil rights movement produced reforms that led to increased educational access.

Potential excuses abound. They always have. But they do little to propel us forward.

And so here we are today, still searching for equity and parity, and still disappointed by disparities in educational achievement in our community. How do we recapture the longing for and love of education that is our legacy? How do we diminish the educational disparities that still bedevil us?

Some of the best minds in our community are wrestling with those very questions. Let’s join them. Let’s support them. Let’s re-commit ourselves to excellence in public education: no excuses; no exceptions.