London Herald Titanic Sinks
Have you ever asked yourself how many are too many? I am not referring to how many French fries are too many to ruin your figure or how many pieces of your favorite candy are too many that you worry about getting cavities or even worse becoming diabetic. Instead, I wonder when you read or hear about the educational results of the K-12 students of your state or your local school district if you ever pause and ask yourself how many are too many?
HOW MANY ARE TOO MANY?
How many students in your state or local school district who fail to master basic skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics are too many? The above is a question that deserves greater reflection – far more consideration than education experts and political leaders seem interested in giving.
Pick a state almost any state. Choose a school almost any school especially where Black, Brown, and poor students are the majority, and you will find a school district, public servants and school leaders celebrating those students who meet the minimum benchmarks while simultaneously pretending that the number of failing students is not multiple times higher.
Perhaps it’s time we focused our attention on the number of students who fail to meet the minimum educational criteria, rather than continuing to pat ourselves on the back for the limited amount of students achieving the minimum benchmarks. After all, aren’t the lives and the future of the students who fail to meet the minimum standards as valuable as those who do? Shouldn’t states, school districts, school leaders, politicians and the like be judged by the average educational outcomes of the community, not by the successful educational outliers alone?
THE TITANIC
On April 15, 1912, the Titanic sank. The report of the Titanic parallels America’s educational system with one small exception. Unlike the delusional story that educators cling too, one that celebrates the minority of students who meet minimum educational standards, the Titanic account is different.
The focus on the story of the Titanic is on those who never made it to safety. Of the nearly 2,200 passengers and crew on board the Titanic, more than 1,500 people died. The legacy of the Titanic is not the 700 plus survivors nor is it the romance between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. No, history remembers the Titanic primarily because of the enormous loss of life.
AMERICA’S EDUCATION – A SINKING SHIP
According to the 2017 ACT College and Career Readiness Report, only 27% of America’s students met all four of the minimum academic proficiency benchmarks (science, math, reading, and English). Thus, if we ethically turn the statistic above upside down, like the hull of the sinking Titanic, we would not be able to ignore the underlying truth. The truth that seventy-three percent of America’s students do not meet all four of the minimum academic proficiency benchmarks.
Without question, America is a nation with more passengers, students, drowning in educational failure than it has survivors, students reaching academic proficiency. Ironically and sadly, the percentage of students who sink annually on the modern version of the Titanic, America’s educational system, is nearly identical to the ratio of crew and passengers who died on the Titanic.
If this nation were honest, instead of the disingenuous education reporting, we would write narratives about education comparable to the 1912 Titanic news headline, “Nearly Three-Quarters Of America’s Children Will Not Survive America’s Educational Iceberg.”
TO TELL THE TRUTH
Given our current process of reporting academic outcomes, it seems that State’s, school districts, school leaders, and political officials find telling the truth about education as challenging as the Nation’s role model in Chief finds merely telling the truth.
President Trump during a recent ABC news interview noted the difficulty he has telling the truth:
“I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth. Moreover, sometimes it turns out to be where something happens that’s different, or there’s a change, but I always like to be truthful.”
While I realize truth-telling is out of fashion in America today, I remain hopeful that someday soon we can speak frankly about the state of the Nation’s educational system the very way we are able, to be honest about the history of the Titanic. When we do, we will agree that America’s education system crashed into an iceberg long ago, and our children are drowning in educational inadequacy.
Moreover, the next time any of us are asked “how many are too many failing children,” we will all respond in unison – one!
How many children statewide fail to meet your state’s minimum academic standards? Do your children exceed the minimum educational benchmarks as prescribed by testing agencies, i.e., ACT, SAT, NWEA, and PARCC?