I’m often reminded that even well-intentioned people regularly fall into the trap of blaming teachers, students, & parents in low-income communities for the academic gaps those schools face, without at all accounting for the larger social ecosystem in which those schools operate.
ppl are quick to cite low test scores w/o citing closing hospitals. ppl are quick to cite chronic absenteeism w/o citing chronic unemployment. ppl are quick to cite dropout stats w/o citing eviction data. these aren’t peripheral concerns to low-income schools, they are central.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote from Jean Anyon lately:
“Attempting to fix inner-city schools without fixing the city in which they are embedded is like trying to clean the air on one side of a screen door.”
“Attempting to fix inner-city schools without fixing the city in which they are embedded is like trying to clean the air on one side of a screen door.”
This is not to say that you wait until everything in the broader society has been fixed before you address the problems that schools in low-income communities face. Of course not. But it does prompt us to think more holistically about what “solving the problem” even looks like.
