Black Learning Pods are Growing

Recently, I was able to watch a webinar, hosted by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, focused on black families and their increased interest in creating and launching learning pods for their children instead of sending them to their neighborhood public schools. Before Thanksgiving, Linda Jacobson, a reporter for The 74, summarized the webinar by writing,

“White families may have embraced pods and microschools as a short-term fix to cope with the pandemic. But for many Black parents, they offer something more permanent: an alternative to traditional schools where their children have historically faltered.”

“’Our motivation for building outside of the system is because we saw our system crumbling in the midst of the pandemic,’ said Lakisha Young, founder and CEO of The Oakland Reach in California, which in the early months of the pandemic launched a virtual hub for students who lacked internet access. Now, the nonprofit is training Black and Hispanic parents to work as math and literacy tutors – ‘liberators,’ they call them – to help students thrive in local schools.”

“’Not only are we putting caring, committed people back into our communities,’ Young said, ‘the system now has to re-engage with us in a different kind of power dynamic.’”

“As they look to build a movement, however, leaders are grappling with some thorny questions. Are they contributing to school segregation? And to what extent do they want to remain connected to the very public schools their families left?”

“[The Center on Reinventing Public Education’s] research showed that Blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to report that their children were happier in pods – 52% to 25% – and also that they had more trust in the educators leading them than they did teachers in public schools.”

“The majority of Black children still attend traditional public schools – 85%, according to federal data. But CRPE researchers wanted to see whether Black pods and microschools connected to broader trends, such as the increase in Black homeschooling, the decline in public school enrollment and the growth in legislation supporting such models.”

“Are such policies ‘paving the way for an explosion in self-determined alternatives to public schools?’ asked Jennifer Poon, a fellow with the nonprofit Center for Innovation in Education, which contributed to the research. ‘And if so, what would that mean for the families in Black pods and microschools? One the flip side, what would that mean for the majority of families who are still served by public schools?’”

“Introducing a topic often debated in the first year of the pandemic, moderator Chris Stewart, CEO of Brightbeam, a nonprofit that focuses on improving educational opportunities, pitched another question to the panelists: Do pods and microschools contribute to school segregation?”

“Speakers rejected the idea. Janelle Woods, founder of the Black Mothers Forum in Phoenix, said Black students are already segregated within public schools because they are suspended and expelled at higher rates than white students.”

“Maxine McKinney de Royston, an associated professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, formed a small pod for middle school students in cooperation with the Madison school district. She said ‘it’s a particular form of gaslighting’ to blame Black parents for resegregating schools, which she chalked up to predominantly white, middle class communities seceding from urban school districts.”

Is it really resegregation if families that have been under-served by a system for decades chooses to go somewhere else so that their children can become smarter and stronger learners? And, if they do decide to go elsewhere, isn’t that decision worthy of public dollars to support?

Several years ago I was having a conversation with a nationally-known African-American leader in the public education arena. This African-American leader was raised in segregated schools as a young man, but attained national prominence leading a large urban school district as its superintendent and then serving in a national leadership position advocating for our current public education system. When I asked him what kind of education he received as a youth, he said,

“You would think that the education I received was less than that of whites in my state, but that wasn’t really the case. I had caring teachers, all African-American, and I had strong principals and school administrators. My coaches were some of the finest. I really couldn’t complain about the education I received except for one factor – receiving equal funding for that education. That was the real difference between white and black education back in my day. If funding would have been more equal, I’m sure most of us would have been more than happy to stay in our African-American schools with our African-American teachers, coaches, principals, parents, and fellow students.”

Tomorrow, we’ll explore an article written by Kenneth B. Clark, an African-American psychologist, professor, and social activist, titled “Alternative Public School Systems,” which was referenced during the CRPE webinar. The article was published in the Harvard Educational Review in the winter of 1968. In the article, Professor Clark suggests our public school system’s attempt to provide equitable opportunities to poor families had largely failed. And, even though the article is now more than fifty years old today, it raises questions about whether African-American, Hispanic, or other poor families will ever receive a fair shake in these places we call our public schools.

More tomorrow.

Til tomorrow. SVB