The Call: School Reform Now
My parents, dirt poor people, were sharecroppers, picking cotton in rural dirty Oklahoma. My parents never wanted their children to live as they did. My dad often said that the next generation should live better than the previous generation.
This is part of the mission that I bring to my work as President of Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley. I want to be a part of helping the next generation live better than my generation. To move more of our people into middle class America with a keen awareness of creating wealth and passing it on to future generations, ending cycles of poverty and shame for many.
Currently, I am sad and frustrated at seeing too many students coming to MCC Penn Valley and leaving after one or two semesters because they are unprepared for the rigors of college work, and ultimately unprepared for the global workforce.
When I arrived at MCC Penn Valley almost three years ago, the Metropolitan Community College District was considering how to increase student enrollment on all five campuses. My staff at Penn Valley pushed back immediately and said instead of spending time and effort to get more new students we should improve our efforts with the students we have. In analyzing the data, it didn’t take me long to realize that MCC Penn Valley was in fact a revolving door. Too many students from the urban school district were on campus one semester and off the next. To make this point further, I looked at our RN graduation data. In the 1960’s and 70’s, over half of our graduating class of more than 70 nurses were African American from the urban school district. By 2005, we graduated maybe 5 African American students from this school district.
We are failing to educate the students in the urban core of this community.
I believe the educational system is the most important institution we have in our society. Being educated is essential for a productive life and for a stable democracy. Failing to educate all of our children puts the future of this community at great risk.
In the emerging knowledge economy, a high school diploma is no longer an adequate entry-level credential for the world of work. For front-line, high-skill work in today’s world, technical credential in the form of certificates or associates degrees are the minimum required for productive entry in the nation’s economic life. People without advanced skills run the risk of being economically disenfranchised. What is required is that the US raise education levels across the board—among high school and two-and four-year college students alike (Winning The Skills Race, The college board).
The occupations predicted to grow the fastest between today and 2018 require a bachelor’s degree (or higher) and promise very high earnings. These jobs emphasize the need for training in science, technology, engineering, and cutting edge work in electronics and health care. These are the seedbed occupations spurring new frontiers in innovation and economic growth. These jobs require more college graduates in high-demand STEM fields and more technologically competent frontline workers explains recent estimates of a degree gap hovering over the urban community, especially in such areas as biotechnology, nanotechnology, genetics, environmental engineering, energy, health care, and new manufacturing technologies (Winning the skills race, the college board).
Currently, the majority of KCMSD students who come to MCC Penn Valley begin their academic careers retaking courses they should have mastered in late elementary, middle and high school courses. They are retaking 7th grade math, English, and developmental reading courses. They are using their financial aide eligibility to try to get caught up so they can begin studying in one of our health programs. They are taking courses that do not count toward college graduation. Many of them will spend one to two semesters in remedial courses. Frustrated after a year of hard work and no college credit to show for it, they leave frustrated, angry, and dejected.
Our present system of educating our children is obsolete. Why do we keep patching up an obsolete system with reform effort after reform effort? Because we as citizens are not demanding higher standards and not holding officials accountable, we are creating an enormous underclass of citizens who will prevent the Kansas city region from competing in the world economy, and perhaps more importantly, will put our community at further risk of carnage, crime, and unrelenting pain and suffering.
Our parents and grandparents were able to survive the industrial economy with little to know English, math and science. Many of them have existed in the lower class strata of our economy. They got by.
As I see it, we must take this serious, with a great sense of urgency. If not our children will blame us for creating an underclass of urban people. Not another lower class, but a unskilled lower class of people.
The underclass of the future described by certain sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert may be the most disenfranchised socio-economic demographic with the least access to scarce resources America has ever seen. The vast majority of persons in this class will, for a variety of reasons, not be active participants in the future labor force. The underclass is, therefore, distinguished from other social classes by its reliance on what it is given by the upper classes or what it takes from the upper classes. Only a few members of this class will have graduated from high school and two-year community college. We see them today, but they will be in larger numbers: the hostile street criminal, low class prostitutes, alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless bag people, and their children standing on street corners begging for food and money.
Imagine parentless children roaming the streets of Kansas City, scrounging through garbage looking for food, like they do in the streets of Sao Palo. Or young boys and girls being sold in to prostitution by their mothers for needed money, like uneducated mothers in Bangkok. Or imagine the scantly clothed bodies of uneducated homeless people wandering aimlessly like they do in Samolia, Ethiophia, or the Sudan. We have only seen how the uneducated peoples live in other countries. If we are not careful, we will see it in our neighborhood.
Because we are not considering the real future, we are allowing a failing system to continue the destruction of human potential. We allow leaders to feed us insufficient data that does not adequately represent the damage being done to our children.
No one can deny that today's urban schools are facing an uphill battle. These schools confront a number of challenges that their rural, and even suburban, counterparts do not. Problems include over-crowded classrooms, dilapidated facilities, lack of equipment, teacher shortages, and low student achievement. Furthermore, students in inner cities must often deal with the stresses of poverty and violence outside of school. The consequences reveal themselves in tragic statistics: one high school student drops out every nine seconds, according to the Children's Defense Fund.
To sum up, our schools need gifted leaders, competent teachers, and effective governance. With these ingredients in place, a great school system can emerge. Without them, we will continue to fail our children.