November 22 was a historic day that was the 50th anniversary of the deaths of three great writers: C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, and the one who was also president, John F. Kennedy. Lewis is now honored in Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey.
Much has been made recently about the historic nature of the tentative agreement reached on that day that will conclude many aspects of the desegregation case in Pulaski County. This is appropriate because it is a historic point. But this is not the end, but the closing of one chapter leading to the beginning of a new chapter.
We as a community and, in particular, we as a school board, now have the responsibility to help write this next chapter. I do hope we have carefully read and learned from this closing chapter. As Lewis said: “What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.”
I have pondered some of the many things we have learned and should apply going forward. Neither the problems nor the solutions can be oversimplified. Some have tried to simplify all of this by saying, “One billion dollars has been spent and we have nothing to show for it.”
But there are lessons to learn. A few of these lessons follow.
There has been tremendous progress. We don’t have a good measure that goes back 30 years, but in the past 15 years, we have the criterion-referenced test results. Let’s take a look at fourth-grade math from the 1998-99 school year to the 2012-13 school year. The percent of those testing as proficient has increased from 22 percent to 72 percent; black students from 8 percent to 62 percent; the “gap” between white and black students has decreased from45 percent to 31 percent.
The fourth-grade reading result is even more encouraging. The percent proficient has increased from 32 percent to 78 percent; black students have increased from 20 percent to 73 percent; and the gap has decreased from 32 percent to 20 percent.
We still have a long way to go to have 90-plus percent of every race and socioeconomic group proficient, but if we continue the path of the last 15 years, we should get there.
Quality magnet programs work. If you plot the success of our students against their socioeconomic standing, our magnet schools are ahead of that curve.
Assignment programs that are closely monitored can be used to ensure that children from all parts of town can have access to magnet or magnet-type programs. There are waiting lists from all over the county for our various magnet schools.
We have learned that successful schools are not announced or titled “successful,” but grown and nurtured and promoted.
We have learned that specialty programs, like magnet schools, are not successful because they cost the district more; they are successful because the students are engaged. And when students are engaged, it reduces the costs of remediation. Not counting transportation, our magnet schools are not our most expensive schools on a per student basis, but are some of the least expensive.
So as we now enter this Brave New World of post-desegregation and hopefully redevelop our schools, I hope we have learned from our experiences.
I hope that we enter into any new projects with the philosophy that we can make this available to all parts of our district, and with the ultimate goal to make all schools in our district to be viewed as excellent choices. This will be difficult practically, but it is doable. Because, in the words of Kennedy at American University in 1963: “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”
And, as he told Congress in 1961: “Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.”
I have high hopes and a positive attitude, but I know there is much work to be done. According to Lewis, that work is: “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.”
Let us work together as a school district, a city and a state to irrigate every remaining desert that exists in our education system.
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Jody Carreiro has served on the Little Rock School Board since 2008.
Editorial, Pages 17 on 12/03/2013