Uncomfortable convos for OKCPS: race, class, parenting
The most difficult and most emotional dispute in education is over the assessment of disciplinary consequences for student misconduct. The issue requires conversations about topics that our mothers used to tell us to avoid: race, class and other people’s parenting. Discussions are further complicated because they are rooted in the deep moral beliefs held by opposing stakeholders. All sides are sincere, and that can make it harder for people to disagree without becoming disagreeable.
Recent Oklahoma City Board of Education meetings on the district’s new Code of Conduct have become extremely angry. All sides agree that the OKCPS district has grown too reliant on suspensions. Punitive school policies feed the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Few would deny that the district needs a well-funded, aligned and coordinated set of socio-emotional student supports. How we get there from here is complicated; however, if the community could pull together to seek the resources necessary to create safe and orderly schools, it could be a major turning point for the OKCPS district and Oklahoma City as a whole.
Stresses undermine instruction
We can all agree that improved instruction and better professional development will reduce the number of disciplinary infractions. Also, as Superintendent Rob Neu says, high-stakes testing has undermined teaching and learning. The stress of the “test, sort, reward and punish” policies that have been imposed in the name of “reform,” combined with the stresses that are inevitable in a 90 percent low-income school system, have undermined teaching. Educators have been forced to focus on remediating students’ weaknesses, often to the point of blinding adults to those children’s strengths.
Neu added an especially profound footnote to the standard diagnosis of how testing has undercut engaging instruction: For over a decade, the misuse of “curriculum alignment” has forced teachers and students to rush skin-deep through the tested curriculum, making it difficult to explore the concepts that challenge students. The key to learning is loving, trusting relationships. Fill-in-the-bubble accountability has driven much of the greatest joy of learning from our schools.
‘Wraparound services’ are required
As is explained in my new book A Teacher’s Tale, Oklahoma City only has 13 census tracts meeting the definition of “extreme poverty,” but the most challenged schools in the Uncomfortable convos for OKCPS: race, class, parenting - NonDoc - Linkis.com:
