Financial Solutions to Urban Education

 In reading Anyon's (2014) Radical Possibilities more than just problems are raised about the current state of Urban Education - possible solutions are also offered. After reading two chapters, first covering income gaps in our society because of purposeful policy such as tax code and then exploring how this policy, in turn, affects our schools unequally, Anyon (2014) sums up their claims stating, "The educational success of affluent districts demonstrates to me that economic strength is the engine of systemic school reform" (p. 87). Currently, we are "putting the cart before the horse" as we "depend on school reform to create the economic resources and capital that school success already requires" (Anyon, 2014, p. 86). Many of us who work in classrooms have realized that the problems in our rooms are created outside our school buildings. Many teachers use deficit language to address these problems and lay blame on the families and communities who send their children to us every morning. The argument here in Radical Possibilities is that it is the economic policies that we should be holding accountable - not the families who suffer as a result of their inequity. A case is raised for how corporations are supposed to pay 35% in taxes every year yet the mean corporate tax was closer to 18%. The richest individual American families pay the least in taxes. Cities and urbanized suburbs have redlining policies and economic policies that encourage businesses to move to the suburbs. Taxes for the wealthy have continued to go down, while wealth has continued to increase at exponential rates for the wealthy. All of this said, teachers often hear how there simply isn't enough money. We all understand that it is tax dollars that actually fund our schools. Tax and economic policy are set by our government. All of this is changeable. Yet many continue to blame families for not being better - poverty is seen as shameful for those who are impoverished. American values say that we laud the economic success stories of the rich and deify those who have risen above our society's Hunger Games. 

In speaking more about our classrooms, I wonder how this new knowledge of better understanding poverty and economic policy will influence my teaching practices. Anyon (2014) asks us to remember that, "Poverty doesn't stunt children's cognitive growth so much as it prevents opportunities for educational achievement" (p. 84). This creates a case for increasing access to "codes of power" (Delpit, 2006) - something I'm interesting in knowing more about. I have long felt that this idea of trying to give students, especially those of color, access to "cultural capital" is a toxic concept because it can be easily conflated with a misjudgement of the value of white culture. White culture is a currency, but not the only capital. Just like with code switching (and the teaching the skill purposefully to students) being different than privileging a dialect because of its value. I'm thinking about:

- Frustrations with students when they do not know something we expect them to come to us knowing

- Frustrations with families and the values that they aren't "teaching" their kids

- Phrases like "home training" and how it is absent or perfunctory

Just as skills and standards based education requires specific and intentional practice - helping our students access the codes of power require the same intentionality. We cannot hope our students will just figure it out, or put it together for themselves. It is vital that teachers realize the "why" behind the gaps we experience - they do not exist in the child, they exist in the policies that were intentionally written to help some Americans and hinder others. Anyon (2014) writes: 

Macroeconomic policies that set the minimum wage below poverty levels, that train inner-city hopefuls for jobs that do not exist, that do not extract from the wealthy a fair share of social expenses, and that rarely enforce laws that would decrease substantially the economic discrimination of people of color, all support persistent poverty and near-poverty among minority urban populations. This economic and social distress can prevent children from opportunities to develop their full potential. Holding two low-wage jobs to make ends meet can sap the energy of a parent and make it more difficult for her to negotiate the public systems in which her children are enmeshed. Being poor in a rich country can lead to ill-placed shame, pervasive despair, and anger. Living in poverty is to experience daily crises of food, a place to live, and ways to keep your children safe. All this can be debilitating, and can certainly dampen the enthusiasm, effort, and expectations with which urban children and their families approach K-12 education.

These problems are socially obfuscated through economic policy and measures of government control - this is also intentional and a product of racial bias and racist ideas. The families I serve are much more than this - there is joy, dreams, laughter, stories, songs, and rich heritage. There are trades, skills, education, values, morals, and great humanity. Folx are doing everything they can to survive and provide their children it the best with what is available. Teachers and administrators sometimes fail to see and understand those who are in their classrooms, sitting in the desks - seeing only those who they wish they taught, or the possibility of what these students can become (rather than who they are).

At first, I thought this rabbit hole of text books and classes that are tasking me with looking at policy and systemic racism - forces that are so much bigger than what I can change which affect my students and their families in such greater magnitudes than can be reconciled with - would depress me or make me feel defeated. However, with greater understanding comes the capacity for greater hope. Because I can better understand the forces that shape our curriculum and schools, I can have an opportunity to address those forces directly. Instead of holding schools filled with overworked teachers and administrators accountable for "failing" data, we can look more directly at the policies which were designed for these outcomes. There is individual accountability. But understanding that effort and enthusiasm can be reasonably "dampened," to use a word from the above quote, is understandable and reasonable. Now, what can I do about it in our classroom, with our course teams, and in our schools? How can we continue to build relationships with our communities in meaningful and impactful ways that require less of them coming to us, and more of us going to them? How can we work to change policy, and help more people to better understand these economic policies? Afterall, this is all functioning as intended.

Anyon, J. (2014). Radical possibilities: Public policy, urban education, and a new social movement (Second edition. ed.). Routledge.