Schools Matter: Urban Schools: Failure by Design

Schools Matter: Urban Schools: Failure by Design:

Urban Schools: Failure by Design

by Douglas Storm

GUEST POST: John Harris Loflin, Education-Community Action Team

Urban schools are not broken: Moving to a 21^st century vision of urban education

The crisis is not about education at all. It’s about power.

                                                                          ~ James Baldwin

The idea that the Indianapolis Public School System (IPS) is broken and needs fixing is the basis for the current local school reform debate. (See Indy Star 03.16.12, “A broken system” by Kelly Bentley.) This assertion leaves unchallenged facts showing wealthier communities have better educational opportunities than low-income. It doesn’t make sense then to compare schools across these communities and then pronounce IPS as failing.

Urban schools produce academic failure at alarming rates. Yet, this happens inside a system designed to essentially predetermine winners and losers: one set of schools has the resources that ensure success and