The Errors of Well-Intentioned Adults (in Indiana)

I’m back after some time at the lake – tanned, rested, and ready.

While away, I saw an article in The 74 titled “Allies Rally Behind Indiana NAACP’s Black Student Achievement Proposal.”

The 74’s Jo Napolitano reported that:

“Four months after the NAACP State Conference released an aggressive plan to close deep and persistent gaps in Black student achievement – and with the state’s 1.12 million children returning to school – leaders in the civil rights group continue to build momentum around that road map.”

“The Indiana Black Academic Excellence plan, released in April, seeks to make Black student success a top priority for the governor and state education department. It also calls for equitable educational funding statewide and for the elimination of the digital divide, among a dozen other strategies.”

“It provides clear action steps in a state where Black students trail their white and Hispanic peers on virtually every educational measure, as evidenced by test scores out of the Indianapolis Public Schools: Last year, just 5% of Black 10^th graders in the district passed both the math and English sections of the state exams.”

“NAACP Education Committee member Carole Craig, who co-edited the report, said substantive change requires a new way of thinking about this group.”

“’First, we must agree that all Black children can succeed,’ she told The 74. ‘If we don’t make a serious difference in the next couple of years, we are crippling the ability of this state to have a viable working class, to be a part of a global economy for all of its citizens.’”

Napolitano goes on by writing:

“Russ Skiba, professor emeritus at Indiana University, praised the NAACP’s proposal for its concrete answer to an educational crisis that has gone largely unaddressed for decades.”

“’What is so impressive about this plan is that it’s a blueprint,’ said Skiba, former director of The Equity Project at Indiana University, which provides evidence-based information on school discipline, school violence, special education, and education equality. ‘It says, essentially, that if we are serious about addressing the gaps in our schools which grow into gaps in our society, make no mistake, then these are the things that need to happen.’”

For the record, here are the 15 recommendations contained in the Indiana NAACP’s report to improve academic conditions for young Blacks in the state:

1. Establish Closing the Academic/Opportunity Gap as a Strategic Target for the Governor and the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE)
2. Address the Needs of the Whole Child in Preparation for Learning and the Creation of Resilience
3. Provide Equitable Funding for Academic Success and Adequate Support Personnel in Schools
4. Acknowledge the Impact of the COVID-19 Disparities on the Health and Well-Being of Students and Families
5. Eliminate the Digital Divide Which Limits Access to Learning
6. Mandate Full Day Kindergarten and Offer Full Day Pre-K
7. Provide Appropriate Professional Development for IDOE Staff, Districts, Schools and Pre-Service and Practicing Teachers to Create Culturally Responsive Learning Environments
8. Empower Teachers to Cultivate Academic Success
9. Engage Parents, Students and Community Voices
10. Place Highly Effective Teachers with High Needs Students
11. Hire Underrepresented Teachers of Color
12. Eliminate the Use of High Stakes Testing as the Sole Measure for School Accountability
13. Prioritize District and School Policies that Address Equity
14. Create Equitable Communities through Collaboration
15. Support District and School Cultural Competency Planning for Academic Success

Wow. There is a lot to digest here.

I tip my hat to all the folks who had a hand in putting this plan together, and I have some news for all of you.

It’s not going to work.

The reason it won’t work is that there’s too much to do here. And many of these strategies are really, really challenging, especially since Indiana is controlled by a ultra-conservative, Republican-dominated state legislature.

Reading this list of strategies reminds me of my experience with strategy generation when I worked as a region superintendent for a large urban public school district. Once the strategy generation process commenced, it was difficult to say “no” to any group who had money or political influence. Therefore, what happened was, instead of coming up with a strategy that would work for kids, those responsible for strategy generation accepted nearly every idea shared. At the end of the process, the adults were happy because everyone got what they wanted, but the strategic plan usually failed for kids.

Let me give some advice to Indiana and what I’m sure is a very committed and supportive group of NAACP leaders and others. If you want to improve Black students’ academic, social, and emotional well-being, then teach them how to read, and offer the necessary support systems to compliment the reading learning process.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But if Indiana and all of their well-intentioned reformers, trying to improve the lot of Black kids in their state, would take all of the energy, money, and political favors and apply them to a reading program that would insure all Black, Brown, and poor kids in the Hoosier state knew how to read by the time they were 9, and then continued to support their reading beyond that age, then the state’s NAACP and other leadership groups would have something to be proud of.

Don’t believe me about the important of reading skills? Listen to Emily Hanford, a senior education correspondent for American Public Media and producer of “Sold a Story,” a new podcast about how teaching kids to read went so wrong in this country. Hanford writes in this past Sunday’s New York Times, “The most important thing schools can do is teach children how to read. If you can read, you can learn anything. If you can’t, almost everything in school [and life] is difficult. Word problems. Test directions. Biology homework. Everything comes back to reading.”

But Hanford points out that learning how to read is not easy for most kids. Hanford writes that “G. Reid Lyon, a former chief of child health and human development at the National Institutes of Health, told Congress in 1998 that learning to read is ‘a formidable challenge’ for about 60 percent of children. They need direct and explicit instruction. Lots of children weren’t getting that kind of instruction in 1998. And they’re still not getting it.”

So Indiana, scrap your sexy 15-point, politically correct, all inclusive, high expectation set of strategies and go with one – teach all of your little Hoosiers, especially those little Black, Brown, and poor Hoosiers how to learn to read and read to learn. If you do that, then I’m guessing a whole bunch of other stuff you want for those kids will start falling in place.

Good luck!

Til tomorrow. SVB