| Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Curriculum & Instruction and 2007 YWCA Woman of Distinction honoree, is a dedicated and committed woman: dedicated to family, community, church and career. She's the kind of intellectual who is in touch with the community and with the heights of academia. While it may not be relevant for the current budge dilemma before the Madison school board, Ladson-Billings has a radically different vision for the funding of our public schools. She laid it out for a group of Milwaukee businessmen several years back. "The way that you make k-12 education great is to model it after public higher education," Ladson-Billings said during an interview with The Capital City Hues. "There is no one screaming for closing down the University of Wisconsin. We don't think it is a terrible system. We think it's a great system. People want to be in the system. The things that it has that are distinctive is it has multiple funding streams. It gets money from the state, but not only the state. It has the federal government; it has private revenue; and all these different revenue streams. That means it is answerable to multiple constituencies." Ladson-Billings went on to talk about other features of higher public education that gives it continued public support. "It has a great co-curricular program," Ladson-Billings emphasized. "I don't call it extracurricular. The band isn't really extra. The basketball team isn't extra. The nation watches the basketball team. It is a co-curricular. In many ways, it is the face of the university. It is the thing that draws people to it. What would also make k-12 as strong as higher education would be a very strong alumni base. Those are the things that make the university really great. You have people who are committed to it. Yet we go to elementary school and then we forget about it. We go to middle school and we forget about that middle school. You go to high school and there is a small group that has high school reunions. But basically, people walk away from their high schools. At some level, we need to be making deeper commitments as alumni to our k-12 schools." Even in this ideal world of funding for public education, Ladson-Billings points out that the academic achievement disparity between students of color and their peers would not disappear. "Even when you hold income constant, there is a significant difference in the performance of African American middle class kids and White middle class kids," Ladson-Billings emphasized. "That is one of those things that is very complicated. One, it is because you are using a crude measure. We're using income, we're not using wealth. You can say 'Well, here's a Black kid whose parents' income is $70,000 and the White kid's parents earn $70,000. And the Black kid's performance is lower.' Well, when you get inside some of those figures, you find the $70,000 is from one person. And one of the parents is home all the time and available to schools and able to help. Whereas on the other hand, you have two people making $35,000. So in the aggregate, it's $70,000, but the two people are working like crazy. That youngster doesn't have the advantage of an at-home parent, a parent who can come up to the school and volunteer and be visible and be an advocate. So it's a little more complicated than just looking at the income." Another factor is how students receive guidance and are steered through their academic careers. And having a great leader in the school as principal is no guarantee that the end result won't be the same. "I remember when I came here that people were really bragging on the fact that Milt McPike was principal at East and he was a wonderful principal," Ladson-Billings recalled. "It was very clear that Milt's leadership helped make that school because it's been a struggle for subsequent people to replicate that. But the school was very segregated when you look at who was in the honors for the academic tracks and who was in the other tracks. It looked like every other school in that respect." According to Ladson-Billings, it isn't a matter of people standing at the doors and not allowing children of color into the advance classes and the math and science classes that will be crucial to their future academic endeavors. It's a matter of who is guiding them in. "The kids think they are making choices, but they are really being directed in certain ways," Ladson-Billings said. "When you tell some kids 'Well, that class is going to be really hard,' well my experience is that no one wants to take hard classes. I don't care what their race or ethnicity is. Kids try to avoid work because that's a part of being a kid. But the difference is when you have someone at home saying 'I don't care what you want to take. This is what you need to take because this is where we are trying to get you.' And that is versus someone who says 'Well, what does your counselor say?' One of the challenges I think the Black community has particularly been up against is that we have always been so trusting of schools and school personnel. We believed that everyone had our best interests at heart. And that isn't always the case." A third factor is the community will to deal with the topic of race, especially as it relates to racial academic achievement disparities. In a place like Madison, that community will may be hard to achieve because Madison is such a liberal community that it might be in denial that there is a problem dealing with race. "I don't want to sound cynical," Ladson-Billings said. "There is a high level of goodwill in this community; there really is. But there are limits to what that goodwill can do, if indeed, you won't act, if you won't name that thing that is really in the way. The community has all of these wonderful things to point at. It's very good at the promotion of individuals to suggest 'We did this a long time ago.' When I moved here 16 years ago, I was really surprised that there were a lot of Black administrators. I remember when Richard Williams was being considered for police chief. I think 4-5 candidates were Black. We have a woman fire chief. We have the right veneer. We really do. But it's when you start going deep down inside and seeing the reoccurring patterns that you have to say 'What does all of that veneer mean?' We still have incredible disparities." While it might be easy for one to fall into a state of despair listening to Ladson-Billings' analysis of the academic achievement gap, she is actually filled with hope for the future. She believes that anything -- including people -- can change. "I think people need permission to change," Ladson-Billings emphasized. "I think they feel they can't because that's the way they've been doing it and that's the way they feel they are supposed to do it and nobody said anything about doing it that way. We need to give people permission to do two things. They need permission to change. But they also need permission to make mistakes. If there is anything that I try to tell people new to the field, it doesn't matter what your teacher-education program did for you. When you leave, you will still be new. You will be a beginner. Give yourself the right to begin. That means you are going to make mistakes. Do you remember being a beginning driver? We didn't expect you to be an expert. Yet there is something about teaching in which we assume that someone freshly minted should be able to go out there and do great things from day one. A real teacher is always still a student; someone who is learning and wanting to learn. To the degree that we can encourage people to stay in that mode in which they feel they can learn something new and try something new and change in some fundamental ways, then that's where our hope is." In spite of the financial and academic issues facing public institutions like the Madison Metropolitan School District, it is important, as Jesse Jackson Sr. would say, to "Keep Hope Alive." And with the vision of academics like Ladson-Billings, it isn't too difficult to believe that there are brighter days ahead for Madison's public schools if we would only listen. |
| 2007 Woman of Distinction Gloria Ladson-Billings: Talking about public education By Jonathan Gramling Part 2 of 2 |
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