I understood what former APS Superintendent Beverly L. Hall meant when she’d proclaim that poor children could learn. Many times they do.
Too often, though, they simply don’t — not to 21st-century standards at least, as learning succumbs to troubled lives and families.
When Hall would riff on this theme, sometimes I’d hear verse from an old Negro spiritual, “My soul looked back and wondered … how I got over.” As in I wonder still how I survived my own high school, which managed to graduate only about 1 of 2 entering freshmen.
So I’d often think, “yeah, right!” when Hall made full-throated protestations against a mounting stack of evidence – much of it unearthed by this newspaper — that strongly suggested something was deeply wrong within the district she commanded.
I’ve sat in classrooms similar to those common within APS, surrounded by kids with wildly varying amounts of ability, social cues, street smarts, raw drive or family and community support and stability.
APS took me back four decades. To a kid who loved reading amidst too many classmates who were functionally illiterate, even in high school. Again I was sitting in an 8th-grade classroom of more than 40 students, two of whom were pregnant. I recall the taunts of “smart people go crazy!” that stung me and a girl who went on to graduate law school . Left unsaid — but understood — was that it was normal to be a non-achiever.
And at the front of such classrooms then and now was a teacher who had to deal with all that rocky mix entailed. And, at APS, also survive a Hall-era administration that was relentless in ramming the results needle ever-higher, bellowing “No excuses!” in a manner that would cower military drill sergeants.
Human nature being what it is, what happened as a result at APS and elsewhere should have been predictable. It wasn’t. Which speaks to our collective gullibility. We wanted to believe the implausible — that there really were fast, relatively easy ways to unwind problems that, in some cases, took lifetimes to create.
As Atlanta struggles still to make sense of it all, Beverly Hall has been irrevocably summoned to the highest of all courts. One that’s made final assessment of her role in what transpired at APS. Which leaves Atlanta to see through the work that death often tosses to the living – somehow making sense of it all, adjusting course and moving on.
This week, closing arguments are expected in the epic criminal trial of 12 APS staffers.
Yet the challenges of educating children in poor urban and rural school systems will continue long after courthouse doors close on the APS case.
The quagmire that is substandard student achievement can seem insurmountable. Really, it is not.
At core, Beverly Hall was correct. Poor children, for the vast part, can learn. But only if the society around them itself learns from past mistakes and becomes smarter and more-focused in applying the kinds of sustained effort that can make a real difference.
It’s not offering faint praise to the dead to note that APS did notch legitimate gains under Hall. Sadly, the cheating scandal overshadowed such improvements.
We must find ways to continue genuine progress. I have to think dedicated educators — held to high standards, yes, yet embraced and not habitually flogged by the broader community — are a key part of success’s formula. We all have a part to play in seeing and fixing the tough reality inside struggling schools. To do otherwise is to ignore factors that can fuel failure and starve success in its cradle.
For starters, a school is not a nuclear family. Meaning students with shaky – or worse – domestic situations will need extra help and resources. That can mean feeding hungry kids after school. Or providing an evening place for them to study. And finding ways to let them see, touch and feel success. That means putting the likes of both bioscientists and Georgia Power linemen before students. The value of role models can’t be overestimated, not when they’re nearly nonexistent in too many places. The Good Book is dead-on accurate in noting, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he … .”
Yes, such efforts are nothing new. But they should be stepped up.
Georgia should also honestly weigh the impact of ill health on schoolchildren and their families. That’s a worthwhile prism through which to view the cry that the state cannot afford expanding Medicaid to more of Georgia’s poor. It’s not a fallacy to compare that cost against the $19,000 annual tab for one prison inmate.
In my mind, Gov. Nathan Deal is a gateway figure here because of his efforts to both reduce the numbers and cost of incarcerating nonviolent offenders and his new plan to create a state takeover mechanism for failing schools. Each cause has substantial merit, but only if solutions are comprehensive and implemented well.
Deal and lawmakers must shun promises that seem too attractive. We’ve been there before.
Merely bringing in new school operators won’t automatically fix all the problems. It won’t necessarily fill in for parents who aren’t their children’s first teachers. It won’t bring books to homes that have none. It won’t provide eyeglasses for poor kids squinting to see classroom smart boards. It won’t offer up able-bodied adults to meet kids at bus stops.
Conservatives have a point in asserting that society can guarantee only opportunity, not end results. At this point, in Georgia and elsewhere, too many kids don’t have an adequate chance at either.
Changing that requires sustained efforts by business, government and the rest of us. Only then can we can turn the past’s mirage into reality.
