Tag Archives: African-American children

An Open Letter to President and Mrs. Obama

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Dear President and Mrs. Obama:

While the election of Donald Trump has created great uncertainty for the poor and minorities, there is no uncertainty about the impact Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Betsy DeVos will have on public schools and our nation’s most vulnerable children. If ever we needed powerful champions for American public schools, their students, and communities we need it now.

During your eight years in office, your administration had very little impact on public education. Disappointing, I know, but the facts are indisputable that millions of American children are struggling in school. Once you leave the White House, however, you will be perfectly positioned to lead public education through a transformation. All that is required is that you open your hearts and minds to a new way of thinking about the reasons why so many of our children are failing and what we can do about it.

Think about what is happening in our public schools in urban and rural communities all over the U.S. The numbers are staggering. In just two school districts in Fort Wayne, Indiana, more than 7,000 students in grades 3 through 8 are unable to pass both math and language arts components of the 2016 ISTEP+ exams (Indiana’s version of high stakes testing). While seventy to eighty percent of African-American children are among that population, that total also includes white and other minority students.

These children are not just statistics; they are living, breathing boys and girls with names and fading dreams. Multiply that total by the number of struggling urban and rural school districts in the U.S. and we are talking about millions of children. This is a national tragedy of unprecedented breadth and scope. That the percentage of children who pass both exams actually drops when they reach middle school is evidence that the longer we allow this reality to persist, the further behind these children will fall.

While many students do excel in public schools, the overwhelming majority of the students who are struggling will leave school without the skills necessary to give them choices about what to do with their lives. They will return to the communities into which they were born and will begin producing a whole new generation of children who are destined to fail in school and are doomed to live in poverty, just as their parents and grandparents have done. Many will end up in prison or die an early, violent death. This is not an exaggeration, it is incontrovertible fact.

This tragedy in public education exists because both education reformers and public school educators are wrong in their assertions about the cause of these failures and what to do about them. While public school teachers and administrators defend public education in spite of compelling evidence that the needs of disadvantaged children are not being met, education reformers promote the privatization of our schools through the use of charter schools and vouchers so that parents can use tax dollars to pay for their children to attend charter schools and other private schools.

The fallacy in this latter approach is that education reformers are doing nothing to help the public schools that are being abandoned. It is as if they have decided to help the children they can and let the rest fend for themselves. We cannot permit public education to become triage where we pick and choose to whom we will offer the opportunity for a quality education without which the American Dream cannot exist.

How many failing children does it take before we declare the evidence to be compelling? Only a fortunate few of these young people will find a good job on which they can support their families, contribute to American enterprise, and pay their fair share of taxes. The rest will continue to be an economic burden to taxpayers and a social burden on their communities and justice systems. The fact that these Americans are perceived as a burden is the single greatest factor in the chasm that divides the American people. It is this reality that solidifies the anger and resentment in the hearts of so many Americans and allows them to justify their prejudices and, in some cases, their bigotry. Donald Trump’s election is proof positive.

There is a simple axiom in business that if a system or process consistently fails to produce acceptable outcomes, no matter how hard people are working, then the system is flawed. Clearly, the educational process at work in our schools is flawed. In almost any other venue, leadership would promptly replace the flawed process with one that can and will produce the desired outcomes. Educators are not trained, however, to step back and examine what they do systematically. In public education, educators and reformers are entrenched in a ferocious battle over all of the wrong things and we keep making the same mistakes and enduring the same unacceptable outcomes.

Every once in a while, throughout history, there have been voices crying out in the wilderness with new ideas that changed the world. Consider the possibility that this appeal might be such a voice and, then, visit https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/. There, you can review the implementation plan for my Education Model and a white paper that provides an overview of the findings and recommendations offered in my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge For Twenty-first Century America. It is an education model that enables public school teachers to give disadvantaged students the time and attention they need to learn while allowing other students to move ahead at their own pace and that rejects the idea that learning is a competition with winners and losers. It is a model that is structured to support success and that rejects failure, absolutely.

Thank you for your service to our nation and for the class and compassion with which both of you have served. Then, please recognize that your work is not done. With your help we can alter the reality for disadvantaged children, far too many of whom are poor, black, and other minorities. Our nation’s children need you more than ever.

Sincerely,

Mel Hawkins, BA, MSEd, MPA

A CALL TO ACTION: A New Civil Rights Movement Focused on Public Education!

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Education is a civil rights issue today just as it was in the 1950s during the initial years of the historic civil rights movement. Back then, the challenge was breaking down the barriers that prevented black children from attending public schools. Today, the issue is virtually the same but with a new twist.

Southern public schools in particular discriminated against African-American children by denying them entrance into public schools and universities. Today, African-American, Hispanic, and other minority children, along with white children living in urban America already attend public schools. Today’s problem is that our government, both federal and state, are discriminating against public school corporations by siphoning off revenue through voucher programs that allow families to transfer their children to charter schools and other private and parochial schools.

Our government and the corporate reformers who support and encourage them are claiming that charter schools the other alternatives are doing a better job than our public schools and they cloak their advocacy under the blanket of “freedom of choice.” While they promote the development of charter schools and encourage families to take advantage of vouchers they attack our urban public schools with the charge that they are failing and that the blame for such failure rests on the shoulders of public school teachers. Therein lies the fallacy of current corporate and government education reforms.

The simple but compelling fact is that the teachers who populate our charter schools and other private and parochial alternatives are educated in the same colleges and universities and are license pursuant to the same state standards and qualifications as their public-school counterparts. How can we think that whether or not a qualified and licensed teacher will magically perform at a higher level is a function of the fact that they teach in a charter, private or parochial school rather than in a public school in the same community?

The problem is not “choice” and no right thinking American would deny the importance of giving families choices. The problem is that while luring students and their associated revenue away from our public schools our government is making no effort to address the real challenges that such schools face. As they heap more and more blame on teachers and schools for low scores on state competency exams and reduce the revenue upon which these schools depend, more and more teachers are leaving the profession. In many cases it is the most experienced and most capable teachers that are fleeing the field of education making it that much more difficult for the abandoned schools to meet the needs of their students.

Right now African-American citizens and other parents concerned with the quality of their public schools are in possession of a wonderful opportunity to change the reality for their children. Community leaders from each of these groups, working separately and in concert, need to rally their communities in support of their public schools and teachers.

Concurrently, public school teachers, both individually and collectively, need to reach out to the leaders of the local communities and offer to work together to rise to the challenges facing public education. Make no mistake. A partnership between public school teachers and the parents of their communities working together to serve the best interests of children will transform public education as surely as rain will make the flowers grow.

At the national level, we need high profile leaders of all of our minority communities to link together and take a stand on the issue of public education with the same commitment that we witness anew in the movie Selma. We beseech these leaders from business, government, entertainment, and professional athletics to come together on this most important issue and to reach out to the American Federation of Teachers, to the National Education Association, and to such groups as the Bad Ass Teachers Association. At the same time, we need the leaders of the AFT, NEA and BATs to reach out to community leaders.

Not since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his colleagues and supporters marched to Selma has there been an issue as important to the future of our nation and its children as exists today with the crisis in public education. Never has there been an opportunity to bring about such transformational change as exists right now, in cities across the United States of America.

If you are reading this message, today, please pass on this call to action to everyone you know. It may be the most important thing you can do for your country.

Black Kids, White Kids, Asian and Hispanic Kids, All Kids Can Learn!

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Let’s clear up any confusion, misconceptions, or lingering doubts about whether or not there are certain groups of children who can or cannot learn. The fact that so very many children do not learn has nothing to do with whether or not they can. What we have seen in public schools all over the U.S., as well as in private, parochial, and charter schools, as well as in experimental schools, is that kids from every racial, ethnic and cultural heritage can learn, irrespective of their economic circumstances.

The question is, what do we as a society do to insure that all children do learn; each and every one of them to the full extent of their unique genetic capability? Notice that I did not say what “can” we do. The use of the world “can” suggests that something may or may not be possible.

We have the power, individually and collectively, to create a reality in which every child learns to the fullest extent of their capability. Given that we have such power, it is absolutely intolerable that we allow the existence of a reality in which so many children are allowed to fail.

Please ask yourself what you can do, whether you are in a position to reach out to a single child or to an entire generation. And then, make a commitment to do it.

In my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America (REHAD). I wrote:

“. . . the mathematical and scientific laws of the universe care nothing about the color of a man or a woman’s skin. The only reason children of any racial or ethnic group are not masters of the sciences and mathematics is that their fathers and mothers do not insist that they learn these things. The only reason girls and boys, whatever their lineage, do not read and write proficiently is because their mothers and fathers do not insist that they become proficient.
The only time children of any cultural heritage do not become loving partners in the process of rearing their own children and teaching them these values is when we, as parents, do not teach them by our example. The only time any child grows up with an unhealthy self-esteem is when we do not teach him or her, each and every day of their lives, how very special they are; because we do not demand that they learn responsibility and self-discipline.”

Conveying this message as part of a coordinated plan of action is, I am convinced, the most important thing any American can do for our country at this point in our history. In REHAD, I outlined a blueprint for action that involves two components.

The first component is to fix an educational process that is more than a century old and that no longer meets the needs of children of the Twenty-first Century. It was a system that sets children up for failure and humiliation and that has left full generations of American men and women not only bitter and resentful but also hopeless and powerless that they can effect the outcomes in their lives. These men and women no longer believe in the American dream and no longer teach their kids that an education is important and offers them a pathway to a better life. As a result, the children of these men and women show up for their first day of school poorly prepared and with precious little motivation to learn.

The performance gap that we refer to so often is simply an illustration of that fact. That the most disparate performance gap is between white and black students is not proof that African-American children are less able to learn rather it is proof that the culture of much of the African-American community is one in which this disdain for education is most pervasive. In fact, this disdain for education transcends culture and is growing more pervasive each and every day that we stand by and do nothing.

The real performance gap exists between children reared in an environment where belief in the American dream is real and abiding and where families are hopeful and believe they possess the power to create a better life for their children, if not for themselves; and between children raised under a shroud of hopelessness and powerlessness.

Fixing the educational process is just the first step.

The second component of my blueprint for transformation is that we must come together as one people, in all of our diversity, united by a common purpose. That purpose is to repackage and resell the American dream and then take that message to the people. It requires that we ask every American who is hopeful and powerful to reach out into every nook and cranny of our community and engage the hopeless and the powerless.

We want all of our neighbors to believe that they can create a better life for their children and that they need not do this alone. We want them to understand that their entire community, across the full cultural panorama, is available to help them.

We want them to understand that the most important thing they can do is to partner with the teachers of their sons and daughters; teachers that offer a new educational process that is focused on helping each and every one of our children learn how to be successful and acquire the knowledge and skills that will enable them to control the outcomes in their lives. Knowledge and skills that will enable them to create their own future.

This is a plea to each and every one of you who is reading these words to make a commitment to action. That action begins by sharing these ideas and your commitment with everyone in your sphere of influence.

What are you waiting for?