During an Oxfam Hunger Banquet experiential learning workshop I led for my students several years ago, I explained to a group of middle schoolers who were complaining about their lunch options after being relegated to the group that was served just bread, peanut butter and mayonnaise for lunch, that being a “picky” eater was a luxury; you can afford to turn up your nose at unappealing choices because, even though you insist you are “starving”, you know there will be other options as soon as you get home from school that day and you don’t truly have to eat the lunch on the bread you don’t like with the peanut butter brand you don’t recognize. Options allow us the luxury of choosiness. Lack thereof means we focus on what will ensure that we take in sufficient calories to allow our bodies and minds to function and don’t fuss about whether this is our favorite peanut butter brand.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow diagramed a hierarchy of needs in 1943 that illustrates that a person can only begin to think about her preferences or desires after her basic needs have been met. That same hierarchy evidently applies when considering educational priorities. In the debate over the value of high stakes testing and the challenges to the metrics highlighted by No Child Left Behind, opinions seem to line up along socio-economic lines. As cited in a recent LA Times article (http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-pol-schools-poll-20150412-story.html#page=1), a majority of Latino voters, 55%, said mandatory exams improve public education in the state by gauging student progress and providing teachers with vital information. Nearly the same percentage of white voters said such exams are harmful because they force educators to narrow instruction and don't account for different styles of learning.
Once a family has achieved a certain level of financial success, they have the luxury of worrying about their children's stress levels," said Dan Schnur, head of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. "For families who haven't yet made it, they see the stress that comes with testing as an acceptable trade-off in order to more precisely measure progress.”
This distinction may account for some of the appeal of charter schools that target and attract families from financially challenged backgrounds. Many of those schools emphasize frequent testing to ensure that students are meeting targets and display student grades to motivate lower performers, arguing that meaningful high self esteem will come from accomplishment, not from shielding students from their lack of success or progress. What parents from far more comfortable socioeconomic status may label as “shaming” students, parents who sow a much harder row may label this practice as holding their students accountable for their failures as much as their successes. No trophies for participation because that’s just not reality.
Nearly every day, more voices and theories are added to the conversation about the achievement, or opportunity, gap. Some advocate for more testing and insist on high rigor for all. Others call for less testing and greater attention to social-emotional learning to address the underlying causes of lack of academic success. Some traditional public school champions argue that poverty is a major contributing factor to the achievement gap and as such, is beyond the public schools’ ability to neutralize. Charter school advocates insist that the disadvantages associated with poverty can be overcome in the right academic environment with strong discipline and unrelenting focus on achievement. Both make valid points; public schools cannot neutralize all of the impacts of poverty and not all students can or will thrive in the charter environment. As with most subjects, the best solution lies somewhere between the two extremes and educators should be working with one another to find the sweet spot.
