Bigotry, Expectations, and Leaf-Raking
What we wish, when we wish, is the world were just.
The soft bigotry of low expectations — a powerful phrase crafted by Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson — describes a patronizing and dangerous attitude, cloaked as kindness, that assumes certain people are capable of less because of their race or background.
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.
I. The District 6 School Board Forum
I wanted to move on and spend the day raking and grading and planning and vacuuming but here we are. Today I received an email from the councilperson of my ward, Ward 13 — the wealthiest and whitest ward in the city, with the greatest percentage of home-owners of any ward — sharing her endorsement of a school board candidate. I want to state up front, that this candidate, Lara Bergman, is not the focus of my argument. I think Lara’s heart is in the right place and her passion and tenacity are inspiring.
My critique is of the flawed reasoning used to denigrate Lara’s fellow school board candidate, Greta Callahan. I’m addressing this claim — that Greta is suggesting poor kids can’t learn — as this is not what she said or suggested, and as it’s been repeated across social media platforms, referenced IRL, erroneously repeated then corrected by a newsletter that aims to be seen as a source of unbiased, objective journalism, and now shared by an elected. We are living in the Age of Disinformation, and this is a prime example.
Let’s get into it. On a too-warm evening at the end of September, southwest neighborhood associations hosted a school board candidate forum for District 6. The reader may be aware that District 6 is comprised of the neighborhoods of Ward 13 and the neighborhoods immediately north, i.e. still fully ensconced in the southwest corridor, gently abutting the famous southwest lakes of Harriet, Isles, Cedar, and Bde Maka Ska. At the forum, the candidates were asked about standardized test scores and the achievement/opportunity gap in Minneapolis Public Schools. Greta replied that the tests were/are racist and biased, are most strongly correlated with household income, and don’t reflect the brilliance of our students (a recording of the entire forum can be found here; the issue in question begins at 54:10).
What I think people heard when Greta said ‘our kids come to school with their whole selves’ and ‘the standardized tests will show their race and class and zip code, not their brilliance and true ability’ — I think people heard: we shouldn’t expect things from the students living poverty, and we can’t fix this so let’s lay off the kids.
But this is not what Greta said, nor what she intended, regardless of what someone heard. Please listen for yourself. Greta was condemning the billion dollar testing industry, not testing in general, and how it harms specific students, narrows curriculum, and punishes and devalues the work and joy that fill our schools on the daily. She didn’t say: no tests. She specifically named teacher-created assessments as a viable tool; these assessments, while imperfect, are exponentially more-reliable and valid than a multiple choice test made by a cohort of education professionals (?) who as Dr. Bettina Love said, have one objective: to make a profit.
Marc Lamont Hill: “There are people who would say to you ‘that’s why we want to hold everybody accountable; that’s why we have accountability measures; that’s why we want these tests so that we can show that the schools aren’t treating your kids right and your kids right. And once the tests show that they not doin it right we can have some reforms to fix it but we need good data, we need accountability, we need testing that’s uniform so we can have standards and standardization and good standards for everybody.’ What say you?”
Dr. Bettina Love: “First, whose standards? When you come up with these standards will black folks and folks of color be anywhere in the room? Will our curriculum — will our history and our culture — And if Gholdy Mohammed’s not in the room don’t talk about standards with me. And second of all I’m not against testing. I think kids should be tested. I think we should know where kids are standing. But what I don’t want is Big Business in testing. That’s what — this shouldn’t be a billion dollar industry where you are profiting off of … Urban Legend is making prisons off of … So we need tests; these tests maybe should be in house. Maybe they should be district wide. And yes should lead to teachers being informed about what students know or don’t know.”
The reality of tests not providing useful data was brilliantly illustrated by Heather Anderson, a Southwest resident who leads a nonprofit called Advancing Equity Coalition. (FYI I think Heather Anderson is phenomenal, smart, motivated, thoughtful and reflective.) Anderson drafted a piece for Southwest Voices, a neighborhood periodical, in which she described the flourishing, vibrant, dynamic community of Lucy Laney, an elementary school in North Minneapolis. Laney and its community were featured in the award-winning documentary Love Them First (2020). Laney’s scores do not reflect this brilliance, never mind the joy and the love and community that are hallmarks of this school. The test scores, if we take the “students need higher expectations” school of thought, would go up if the teachers raised their expectations and didn’t saddle the kids with ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations.’ And, in truth, the scores may reflect some of Michael Gerson’s chestnut, as we each are subject to capitulating to over-mothering, so to speak, to wanting to protect, mollify, coddle.
But I don’t think low expectations are why Laney’s scores on standardized tests are low. And I don’t think any metric that uses such scores to rate a school, or any org that describes schools as “high achieving” understands anything about education, never mind children and young people. (The more sinister perspective is they do understand but that’s too horrid.)
II. Caste, Meritocracy, Isms, and Absolution
It’s hard to talk about race and wealth. Or, well, it’s hard for some of us. If we acknowledge that whiteness and white supremacy are real, that wealth is real, that home-ownership is real, that health coverage and investments and Roth IRAs and safety nets in the form of family-assists or readily available low-interest loans — never mind vacations, music lessons, language camps, classes and activities and sports and immersion in communities where that wealth is spread in a variety of iterations — is real, perhaps we feel a tad defensive. Perhaps we feel tempted to pushback and say that this is SBLE talk. It can’t be the wealth. Maybe we feel comfortable talking about race because we see ourselves as active antiracists who are dismantling white supremacy — but the money thing… that’s tricky; that’s a bit personal. Is it?
(I’m starting to freak out about the lawn and those student papers so let’s get to the point.)
Saying race is real and race matters isn’t racism. Saying income and wealth are real and income and wealth matter aren’t classism — or patronism (sic), or soft bigotry. While it is absolutely true that deficit-mindsets exist, that all of us are prey to them (including about ourselves), and that stereotypes and stereotype threats have real, demonstrated effects on how people perform and how people are expected to perform. Saying wealth matters does not mean ‘and it should’ or ‘and there’s nothing to be done so let’s give up.’ To see it thus is either denial, willful oblivion or true ignorance to the power one’s SES has not only on standardized test scores, but on the future earning potential of poorer students when compared with students of privilege who earn the same degree. To wit: “Places with greater ‘lower-tail inequality’ (the ratio of income at the 50th percentile of the income distribution to the 10th percentile) show the lowest wage gains to education for those from low-SES backgrounds.”
Or, perhaps the reality that wealth matters hits a little too close to home. Maybe we feel implicated or targeted. See, if it’s *just* a matter of low expectations, of mindset, then we can keep everything we have (without guilt) AND we can put our guilt and shame back onto someone else (i.e., the teachers). Poof. Done.
I relate to this desire to be absolved. I’ve felt the need to tell anyone who will listen that while I live in Southwest, and I do, my house hasn’t undergone a reno — we still have a gas stove, though thanks to Buy Nothing we scored a free electric range and my husband is going to install it as soon as I stop tip-tap-typing away and start watching the kids (while grading papers and raking). I’ve explained that due to being a public school teacher, with (soon to be) three masters degrees (embarrassing, frankly) I made enough money to qualify for economic assistance from the city; hence, why we were able to amass a down payment. (I’ve added that I learned of this program from a teacher at MPS, a smart, savvy, hilarious friend and a person of color in a white-dominated profession; this person, for those keeping score, left the profession two years ago as they couldn’t afford to stay.) But when I’m being honest, I am constantly trying to shed my privilege — to show the world that I’m as regular as they come. That I don’t own expensive handbags or jewelry; that I grew up being told ‘sorry, no’ a my requests for designer clothes when I was a kid, or cool camps when I was a tween, or spring break trips to islands when I was a teen. Today, things haven’t changed much on the wealth tip. Now. Why do I feel the need to tell people I am working class, have abysmal health benefits, and have $0 in savings? What is that about? I don’t remember actively choosing to live here; we needed a new apartment because the one in uptown had a rodent infestation and I had a newborn; there was a duplex on Sheridan for 1400/month; this was still a lot, yes, but it had parking and a yard. In any case, I live here. I landed here. Why is that? Why is this the whitest place I’ve ever lived, been, or seen depicted — outside of Nick at Nite reruns of The Patty Duke Show?
But all of the above is a kind of procrastination. As Kendi says, though he is talking explicitly about race: racism is denial; antiracism is confession. So all of the above aside, I confess, I am middle-class, and I live in a neighborhood that is known by some, aptly, as “White Dream.”
There’s no way to end this section except to say if I don’t start raking I am going to be in trouble with not only my family, but also my neighbors, and also myself.
III. Raking, The READ Act, and Radical Candor
Raking is lovely and simple and has an immediate effect. I see a problem. I act on it. I feel important. Relevant.
Raking is elegant. But understanding, never mind dismantling, the role and effects of systemic factors like race and wealth/income/class are time-consuming, endless, emotionally exhausting, convoluted, and scary. We live in a deeply unequal society. This didn’t happen overnight, and to return to the message sent by my councilperson, a phonics-based curriculum — an underpinning of a Science of Reading curriculum, which I one-hundred percent support and have advocated for since 2018 — will not rewrite the odds of a stratified, winner-take-all society. Does literacy matter? Of course. No teacher would argue with this. Will the READ Act — legislation that mandates all schools use a curriculum based in the Science of Reading — ensure all students thrive in school, and outside of school? I think that’s a bit wishful, though of course I’d love to be wrong. As it’s currently written, the number of interventions students will need to receive surpasses staffing at such a rate, that in order to be in compliance, schools will need to hire many additional staff (my building would need to hire 6.5 FTE (full-time teachers) and our reading scores are fair. There is also the matters of the 200 hours of training necessary for teachers to be certified. Edina Schools did a gofundme in order to provide for this training. My district is building into PD and paying for time outside of the classroom, though that may change. My understanding — and correct me if I’m wrong — is MPS was originally not going to compensate teachers, but has agreed to pay teachers below the minimum wage for these hours.
Speaking of the minimum wage — this is a fascinating thing to trace — the minimum wage declined by about 40 percent in inflation-adjusted value during the same time fast food restaurants were proliferating (Schlosser). So an industry that attracts the low-income, young, and otherwise vulnerable, also engineered a pay rate that would keep them economically and socially hobbled. In the words of Paul Tough, a long time believer in the power of resilience and grit, “It took me years of reporting to fully grasp the flaws in that premise, and in some ways, this book is the story of that gradual realization. It eventually became clear to me that the greatest obstacles low-income Americans face as they make their way to and through college are not psychological or cultural. They are economic and structural.” And it’s worth looking into the multitude of reasons students have for not seeing school, academia, book-learning as a means to an end. What end?
We want to believe in mobility. Mobility indeed is a defining feature of the United States. We want our teachers — “the staff” as some refer to them — to keep this dream alive, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. And education has a role in keeping people above the poverty line, as well as keeping societies stable (though this research has been challenged). We want a lot from our teachers. And, honestly, I think we should. But we cannot ask the impossible and then punish them for not delivering. We cannot think of schools as a business that needs to generate a return. We cannot try to remake schools in an image that suits our vanity and costs us nothing. That’s not how schools work. Schools are sites of some of the most radical acts of hope and love and encouragement and safety and learning that we can imagine. And this is, in no small part, thanks to the teachers. And when the administration supports and loves teachers, the building really thrives. When the community says, how can we help? Now we are talking. Greta is supported by the people we want to fix the sins of society: teachers. We say we love them. We love them. We LOVE them. “I don’t know how you do it.” “I wouldn’t last a day.” And we say, “I don’t know why those scores aren’t going up.”
Test scores on decontextualized standardized tests are great for measuring the ‘hidden curriculum’ but not great for assessing much else. I googled Advanced Placement (full disclosure: I teach two AP classes) and ETS: Educational Testing Services to see how their revenue was doing and ended up in a rabbit hole. A couple gems below:
Further, the teacher-created tests are actually useful and student-centered. A good example of what I’m talking about is the ACT Reading Section being used to gauge literacy of secondary school students. (This is worthless data.) FAST testing is a different thing, in that many educators worked on this tool, and it is given one-on-one, ideally, with the teacher and student already in relationship, and, early-on, no digital interface to distort the student’s performance. How we measure someone affects how they perform. How we treat someone affects how they behave. How we talk to someone affects how they talk to us. AND. If structurally, the money flows in one direction, the power flows in one direction, then we will continue to see the problems we see.
Well, I’ll leave it there. Actually no, I’ll leave the last word with Anthony Abraham Jack. He will talk about the real phenomena of disparate levels of success, of haves and have nots, then he’ll keep going:
Peace and love and hard conversations and learning and more love to all.
