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Students and parents together can close the achievement gap

Re: Judges bolster students' lawsuit, Sept. 29.

I have been a teacher for eight years. I, unlike the lawyers and most everyone else involved in this lawsuit, see every day the real reasons for the achievement gap.

I can honestly say that the majority of the responsibility for the achievement gap lies with the student and their families. Those students whose families stress the importance of education by and large tend to perform well. Those students, regardless of color or background, whose families just ship their kids off to school and think that is all they have to do, generally don't do well.

Because I am the type of person who likes to solve problems rather than just complain about them (or sue someone) I offer the following nuggets of wisdom to all families of school-age children:

1. Come to school each day (parent and student responsibility).

2. Have the proper supplies (parent responsibility).

3. Pay attention in class (student responsibility).

4. Complete all assigned work (student responsibility).

5. Study for tests (student responsibility).

6. Read and practice language skills with your child each day. Turn off the television for a while and have a conversation with your children. Yelling at them does not count. Read a book with them every day. This starts when they are babies (parent responsibility).

7. Become involved in school activities (student and parent responsibility). At our recent Back to School Night I had a total of 18 parents show up. That is an average of 3 per class.)

8. Before you decide to pursue a lawsuit, ask yourself, "Am I doing everything I can to make sure my child is successful in school?"

I can promise you, that if all parents were to adhere to these simple guidelines, the achievement gap and discipline discrepancy would disappear.

A nonsensical lawsuit

Re: Judges bolster students' lawsuit.

I read with interest reporter Thomas Tobin's article about the class action filed on behalf of black students against the Pinellas County School Board. The fourth paragraph of the piece says it all: "The case is thought to be a one-of-a-kind attempt to get the courts to resolve a complex issue that educators historically have tried to work out in the classroom."

So Guy Burns, the attorney for the students, wants a single judge to determine how to "correct" the grade disparity between black and nonblack students when the combined expertise of the entire school system can't do it? Of course Burns, when asked what the remedy would be, said he was not sure. This is the first time in 17 years of practice that I have heard of a lawyer bringing a suit and not knowing what relief he was seeking!

The simple matter is that until the parents of black students take an interest in what their children are doing in school and at home, the grades of black students as a group will continue to lag behind others. On the other hand those black students whose families support their efforts in school have always done well and will continue to do so. Unless, of course, Burns is allowed to take too much money from the education system through his nonsensical lawsuit.

It takes a village

Re:Judges bolster students' lawsuit.

I read the article about the black students' class-action suit against the Pinellas County educational system, and it reminded me of my experience as a boy growing up in an isolated, rural community in Appalachia. So many adults there saw education as a threat to the familiarity of the world they knew, in that case geographical, but isolation can be racial or ethnic as well.

Your readers have an idea of the place I once called home, through the stereotypes so familiar in cartoons and pulp fiction - rumors of incest and illiteracy and a 50 percent dropout rate by the eighth grade in order to continue in the comfort that isolation allows. I felt that comfort, too, but left because of a teacher's encouragement for me to attend college. I worked and borrowed to finish. Although I left, I returned as soon as I could, not because I missed the old culture, but because of a mission to help change it.

I'm exhausted, which is why I retired after 34 years in the classroom, but I don't regret the time I gave, for I have the letters from salvaged students who went on to become doctors, physicists, engineers, educators. Repair in the county system is needed, but I am compelled to say that the greatest resistance I faced was the parents in the isolated, rural communities, a resilient subculture that did not want change or identification with what they called "city slickers," as if virtue somehow existed in remaining different.

Substitute the color of the skin and any word you want to identify difference, and you will find the same struggle here that public educators continue to face in rural Appalachia. The African expression "It takes a village to raise a child" is so true. I encourage teachers here not to give up, for a handful of their students will someday return to say thanks. But these students will be the ones who developed a mind of their own, freed from the insistance on a single identity. I have learned that high educational achievement is possible only if the parents in any isolated "village" encourage it.

Putting findings before facts

Re:Judges bolster students' lawsuit.

When I was first drawn to the civil rights movement back in the '60s, it was all about seeking guaranteed equal opportunity for all races, not about equal outcomes for all individuals. After more than 40 years of lawmaking and trillions of dollars in social program investment, I think it is fair to state that external reasons for failure to advance have been functionally eliminated within our society.

Now we have a situation in Pinellas County where 21,000 black students are suing the school district for failing to give them a proper education. Yet, where are the white, brown and yellow students who were sitting in the same classrooms along with these black students? Were they not given the same equal opportunity to learn and succeed? A higher percentage of them succeeded nonetheless.

The fallacy of thinking in this case is that "black students failed, so it must be the fault of the (white man's) schools." This is putting the findings before the facts. The important exercise here should be finding the contributing factors behind this achievement gap, with an open mind, even if those factors also point to the home environment or to the individual student.

Schools can and should motivate each individual to succeed. Some students need different motivation than others. Just how far school should go in taking responsibility for motivating students is a question far larger than this lawsuit. But schools are not the only influencing force in a student's environment.

Sadly, the civil rights movement having successfully achieved equal opportunity in the 20th century may very well get bogged down in the 21st century, tilting at the windmill of equal outcomes. When we relieve the individual of personal responsibility, we fail that individual.

Poverty and personal choices

Re: America is divided not by race but by wealth, letter, Sept. 27.

The letter writer appears to have a healthy case of wealth envy based on his lack of understanding of personal choices that all adults are capable of making.

Examine why those in New Orleans and other parishes of Louisiana are poor: poor life choices and the perpetuation of those choices by the government and race- and welfare-pimps who feel that continuing the welfare dole will somehow raise these people out of the state they are in. It hasn't happened yet. How long are we to wait?

The writer then blasts the "rich," a term he cannot define but seems to wield with much derision. Yes, the "rich" do have the means and common sense to leave when they are supposed to. Why don't the poor exhibit the same common sense? They are waiting on their all-benevolent government to save them and we saw the utter ineptness of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco when that help failed to arrive.

Whether one is rich, poor, educated, employed, or otherwise self-sufficient is a sum of all the choices made in one's lifetime. The rich didn't steal their money or use underhanded methods of acquiring it. It was earned, just as your wages are earned.

Look at where you are now and the economic state you are in and trace back all the good or bad decisions you made in order to get there. You will realize your lot in life is more your own doing than anyone else's.

Acknowledge the reality of racism

Re: Still playing that race card, letter, Sept. 27.

"The days of discrimination are over" says the letter writer. What alternate reality is he living in? How I wish people would stop believing in the myth that racism, inequality and discrimination ended when our history books told us it did.

Can the letter writer honestly say the playing field for African-Americans is even? Does he sincerely believe that 25 years of relative equality for African-Americans has erased or eased the continuing plight of 250 years of oppression?

The race card isn't an excuse, it is a reality. The failure of the white majority to see that the "race card" is played every day through stereotypes, racism, institutionalized racism, inequalities and unintentional prejudices is one of its biggest flaws. As part of that majority I have had to realize that I, too, have held those notions. So many whites feel as if they are still being blamed for something they feel they didn't do. They aren't being blamed. They are being asked not to be ignorant of its existence.

The accepted use of the "N" word among African-Americans toward other African-Americans and the unacceptable use of it by other races are tantamount to how siblings or one's own family might address or jokingly insult each other. No one else has the permission to be familiar with you unless they have earned that through a close relationship or shared experiences. Most white Americans don't have either with their African-American counterparts. It might be freedom of speech to say whatever a person wants, but he shouldn't be shocked when those in offended group let him know they take issue.

Telling role models

Re: Still playing that race card.

The letter writer states: "It also depends on ... your role models. Kanye West or Condoleezza Rice? Kind of sums it all up, doesn't it?"

It sure does. Kanye West is a rich man living an extravagant lifestyle who saw enormous suffering and jumped into action. Condoleezza Rice is an accomplice in the deaths of untold thousands the world over, including nearly 2,000 American soldiers. She went shoe shopping in New York on that day when people were dying in New Orleans.

If a role model is someone who will inspire others to better themselves, then yes, it's no contest: Kanye West vs. Condoleezza Rice does indeed sum it all up.

Legislature responded properly

Re: Legislative leaps also make room for problems, by Steve Bousquet, Sept. 17.

In the writer's haste to blame the sexual predator legislation for both actual and invented consequences, he has made numerous errors.

"In their haste to be seen as responsive to a crisis ..." - is the writer kidding? Every legislator knew how important it was to place very tough criminal sanctions in place immediately. If the writer suggests that the legislation was merely for the Legislature to be "seen" as responding rather than actually addressing the matter, he was comfortably removed from the saddened angst of the people.

"... Lawmakers leap first and ask tough questions later." This gross generalization is belied by the effort and time invested in the Jessica legislation. Frankly, given the horrendous way in which those children were killed, leaping would have been justified.

The writer indicated that the legislation imposes financial and emotional burdens on people like truck drivers, football referees, and even Holocaust survivors. Wrong. The financial burden is not imposed by the Jessica Act, but is the result of individual school boards requiring multiple screenings, identifying groups - including "visitors" - not identified in the legislation as groups to be screened, failing to screen personnel which previous law required, and - believe it or not - requiring that sheriff's deputies be fingerprinted. The writer cited "liability issues" as an excuse used by districts for multiple screening. This type of sharing, however, is extensively undertaken, with the liability issue covered in Chapter 768. The cost of the checks for vendors is borne by the vendor, not the school district. And volunteers were already subject to a law requiring they be checked against the sexual predator registry.

Referees, and others mentioned, are subject to a law passed in 2004, NOT the Jessica bill. The 2004 law requires that those with contracts with the school district who have direct contact with students undergo state and national background checks. I am sure parents will not be comforted to know that law has been largely ignored.

The Legislature will ensure that its intentions are applied uniformly throughout the state and better clarified, accomplished, as usual, through a "glitch bill."

If a child sex predator is convicted today, he/she will be in jail for a minimum of 25 years. Parents won't have to worry about them either registering or living next door. No apologies. The Legislature responded accordingly.

The pledge and divisive politics

Re: Playing politics with the Pledge of Allegiance, Sept. 28.

Sen. Ken Pruitt's article makes a point better than we liberal/secularists can ever make. The pledge I recited as a schoolboy in the '40s and '50s was amended in 1954 to add the words "under God" to make a "political" point, according to the senator, of distinguishing between the Soviet and American views of the relationship of the citizen to the state. Pruitt then decries using courts by "Mr. Newdow and his left-wing liberal comrades" as their "personal political playground." If I follow the logic, it is acceptable to change the pledge in one set of political struggles but not another.

What Pruitt fails to understand is that we "left-wing liberals" love our country, have proven our devotion with numerous deaths on battlefields around the world, and have been separated from our fellow Americans by the simple phrase "under God." "One Nation, indivisible" includes all of us, saints and, if you insist, Senator, sinners, "One Nation, under God, indivisible ..." does not.

The assault must stop

Re: Playing politics with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ken Pruitt, the state senator from St. Lucie, is right on the money with his article on the Pledge of Allegiance. I would like to add, that if Michael Newdow's continued efforts to remove the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance are successful, he will no doubt also pursue the removal of the words "In God we Trust" from our various U.S. coins and dollar bills, and whatever else that he finds objectionable.

I cannot say it any better than to borrow Ken Pruitt's final words: "It's got to stop!"

Pledge has liberal roots

Re: Playing politics with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I read with interest Sen. Ken Pruitt's criticism of the legal challenges to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, words which were added during the height of the Cold War. He really had me convinced that he was a rational, thinking man, until the end, when he could not resist the urge to show his true, simplistic, partisan ideology, not to mention his ignorance of history.

I wonder if he is aware that the author of the pledge was also a "left-wing liberal," who wanted to include the word "equality," but because of the "right-wingers" of his day, had to use more socially acceptable terminology. Yes, the Socialist Baptist minister Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance for schoolchildren in hopes of promoting equality among socioeconomic classes, as well as along racial and gender lines.

Perhaps Bellamy understood better than Pruitt the "American way of life," demonstrated, in part, by respect and protection of minority rights (even religious minorities like atheists, humanists, etc.), and the clear separation of church and state that our Founding Fathers pioneered.

The same old name-calling

Re: Playing politics with the Pledge of Allegiance.

There it is, buried deep in Ken Pruitt's otherwise reasoned defense of "under God" in the pledge: the same old name-calling and smearing of liberalism that passes for conservative "thought" nowadays.

Why not skip the pretense, Ken? If the point is not to serve all Floridians but to energize your paranoid base, save some syllables and go straight to hating the people who believe in freedom from religious coercion. But don't waste anyone's time pretending you're acting from reason, not religious zeal.

[Last modified October 1, 2005, 01:45:17]