Do teachers need to utilize more culturally responsive pedagogy? (Banks et al) Do kids and families of group X need to start acting more like the kids and families from group Y, and like, y'know, get their act together? (Cosby & the staff lounge) Do we put our efforts into wide-scale social transformation, because schools are not powerful enough to overcome such a pervasive inequity? (Rothstein) Do we stop talking about poverty, because it's not about poverty, but about innate factors out of our control? (silly race-based IQ-gap people)
Or do we say, here is School A which has the same demographics as School B, but kids at School A learn and those at School B do not -- just why is that exactly? (Folks who scribble the word educator in front of every published utterance of the phrase "achievement gap.")
That's my thing. Don't engage an endless debate that may or may not get us closer to bringing a better education to more kids.
For those of you who don't read his blog, Teaching in the 408, TMAO teaches in a low-SES, high-percentage-of-English-Language-Learners (ELLs) district in the Silicon Valley.
We must reject the ideology of the "achievement gap" that absolves adults of their responsibility and implies student culpability in continued under-performance. The student achievement gap is merely the effect of a much larger and more debilitating chasm: The Educator Achievement Gap. We must erase the distance between the type of teachers we are, and the type of teachers they need us to be.
1 comment:
this is a terrific find;
thanks for bringing it to my attention.
TMAO is an inspiration:
if one could only find this kind
of honesty a *little* more often,
i might even find myself willing
to participate again in politics
and committee work and suchlike
abhorrent grownup-like duties.
okay, not really. but, still.
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