Why Are Kids Getting Left Behind?

Richard Cohen (whom I don't always like, but whom I usually read) makes an interesting point in his recent column. Despite all the money being tossed down the drain of DC's public school system, kids aren't getting any better-educated.

We can blame all this on institutional factors, but only up to a point. The problem with public education, and indeed with any education, is that in the absence of locks, chains and other illegal restraints, it's impossible to keep students in a building they are determined to leave. It's impossible - in the absence of laws allowing teachers to cane students - to force students to do their homework. It's impossible to prop kids' eyelids open with toothpicks during lectures. The results of an education depend on a student's desire to be educated.

Therefore, whence comes the desire? What inspired Abraham Lincoln to walk 20 miles to borrow a book, assuming that in fact he did? Why are some people insatiably motivated to learn, while others skip out of class to chain-smoke behind the bleachers? Because I have seen this same effect take place in the classroom. Having been through an IB program in a regular high school, I was occasionally (rarely, but occasionally) in mixed classes, and I can tell you that the IB students came to class every day and always set the grading curve. Meanwhile, plenty of other kids just didn't show up. Ever.

Here are the factors we've looked at for the disparity: race, wealth, parental education, parental involvement, early intervention, etc. And with the exception of race, I think these are only somewhat important factors (race being important only in as much as it is correlated with wealth or family influences). In terms of wealth, it's true that richer parents have access to greater resources. But plenty of rich kids pay poor kids to do their homework, plenty of other rich kids snort coke in their best friend's Maserati in the high school parking lot. (It's true, if you don't believe me, ask the CDC) Money doesn't change a student's desire to learn.

What about early intervention? Studies show that programs like Head Start can work, but that in certain students, early gains dissipate with time.

Which leaves parents, the anti-drug but also, in so many ways, the great unknown. There is no scientific consensus on exactly how parents affect student behavior. What we can all accept is that those of us with great parents know how lucky we are, and so my evidence is going to be anecdotal. Yes, I think my parents pushed me on to great academic success. I chose all kinds of magnet and GT programs, I spent hours holed up in my study with books and magazines. But my sister - equally brilliant - did none of those things. And the pressure fell equally on both of us. My dad grew up poor in a poor country. His parents had no money and no schooling. But he has been an educational success. Meanwhile, his siblings - many of whom had much greater opportunity - chose not to educate themselves.

The theory that we have trouble accepting, liberals and conservatives alike, because we are Americans and it's against our American ideals, is that some students are born behind. They don't get left there. Not everyone has the "Abe Lincoln" factor. I'm not saying the "Abe Lincoln" factor correlates with professional or emotional success. But it rules the classroom.

The question that remains is, why doesn't the "Abe Lincoln" factor occur equally in students of all races and classes, in all locales? Why are the poor black kids of DC less likely to succeed in the classroom than the upper-class Asians of suburban Montgomery County, or the rich white kids of Laguna Beach? The CDC has no answer - they didn't even include Asians in their so-called 'landmark' study. This is where we turn to cultural and institutional factors, because we know - in our hearts and our educated heads - that we are all genetically the same. The "Abe Lincoln" factor is a learned behavior. Maybe it has something to do with how we measure our success when we're young. Maybe it has to do with role models, with access, with histories of oppression.

And maybe - and I say this as someone who did face unpleasantness when she was younger - we just have to accept that the future is the only territory we can rule. The past is not our country, and we can't always claim it. It comes down to, in my opinion, a teacher who at some moment actually convinced you that you could achieve something. But this moment wasn't about the past. It was always about the future. And anyway, how can it be recreated on a mass scale? That is the question. You can't force students to prop their eyes open during a bad lecture. And you can't force the lecturer to care that somewhere, in his classroom, students are falling asleep. And this is the institutional cycle that matters. The continuing whirl of people not caring to be taught by people who don't actually care to be teaching.