Why poor students will always be behind

In our current system of education (and well, also society)

We are designing schools for poor students to catch up with rich white kids (RWK), while they have already moved on to the next big thing. At this rate, poor students will always be behind.

Some examples —

While we teach poor students to code websites and video games, RWK are working on virtual reality and drones.

While we teach poor students to be obedient, RWK are learning to be autonomous and self directed.

While we prepare poor students for college, RWK are going to Silicon Valley to live in hacker houses, creating companies in the Thiel Fellowship, and making money while learning in Praxis.

While we raise the stakes on standardized testing for poor students, RWK are opting out of state tests and attending schools that value making, socio-emotional learning, and play instead.

While we make students wear khakis and polos and ask them to pull up their pants, RWK are wearing hip hop style clothes. (While notably also not getting shot in their hoodies)

If school is a microcosm of society, what are we saying to students with this approach? That keeping up with RWK is all there is to aspire to? That what rich families have is the goal and what poor families have is of little value at best?

At what point do we stop this cycle? Poor students have yet to catch up because the marker of “success” continues to move. Yes, more poor students go to college, but are they graduating? Are their degrees leading to careers they’re passionate about or just loading them down with debt? Yes, more poor students are exposed to computer science, but are they doing anything with that knowledge after that weekend program? Are they being hired by tech companies or starting their own?

At what point do we empower all students to set their own bar for success and work towards that? Regardless of what other students are doing in their communities, on TV, or in the mythical stories we tell of RWK who “have it all”.

If we want students to go to college because they can say they have a bachelors degree or because they’ll expand their personal and professional network, how do we give them that opportunity without also loading them down with debt and an inferiority complex? What might a new college experience look like? Or, more broadly, what might a new postsecondary learning community look like?

What might high school look like if the goal wasn’t college? Could students make real money while they were in school through professional internships (not just making copies or getting coffee) or starting businesses. Could students go home without homework because we know they might have to take care of their siblings in the evenings or because they might not have reliable Internet at home — or because, after being in school all day, you just need a break to do something different in order to be recharged for the next day. Could they travel regionally and internationally, and begin building the network and seeing the world we think college will expose them to.

How do we empower students truly? How do we “make (someone) stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their rights”? Forgetting about that old adage of knowledge being power because we’ve taken that to mean that we should teach them about Shakespeare and World War II and Calculus, but not teach them about paying taxes or professional networking or having safe sex.

Preparing students to participate in “the system” assuming that it will work equally well for everyone is foolhardy. How do we work individually with each student and family to give them the practical skills, sense of self, and sense of the world that will ensure their success in whatever they do? We’ve thought for years that getting them top SAT scores to get into the most selective colleges and then on to careers (not just jobs) was the key to success and happiness in life. But is it working and how do we know?

I have a student who has hated school for as long as I’ve known him. He powered through high school, graduating by the skin of his teeth. He made it into college and found a part time job that gave him a taste of the freedom he’d always longed for. He started traveling and networking, and realized that he actually had talents and interests outside of the classroom. So he dropped out of school and started working full time in a role where he gets to connect with some of the wealthiest folks in Silicon Valley. Does he want their lives? Nope. He wants their connections and access so he can build his side business and travel to the parts of the world he has yet to see.

His friend, a great student, loves school and believes the system will save him from poverty and launch him into the world he’s only seen through the eyes of his teachers. So he’s in college toiling away, pursuing the dream, but also hitting a wall of “why am I doing this? I worked so long and hard to get here and now I still have to wait a few more years to take classes that are actually interesting”. From reviewing his 4-year college plan, we think we’ve found a way for him to take more interesting classes sooner. What does he want to do with this education? Not sure yet. He just knows that he wants it and that he’ll keep pushing until he has his degree.

When I met them, I pushed both of them towards college as hard as I could. But then I realized that they were different people, passionate about different interests, with different needs and personalities, different experiences in schools. They needed different (personalized) approaches. But ultimately they needed to be treated like adults who could make their own decisions and would need to learn from their own mistakes. All I could do was talk through their decisions with them and offer additional considerations as they moved forward in their lives.

We can’t force poor students, or any students, into an “ideal” life. Well, we can try, but at some point, their life is their responsibility and we need to support them in developing meta skills like setting realistic goals, researching opportunities, weighing options, reflecting on decisions, and jumping out on faith. By the time students graduate high school, whatever their next step is, they should, if nothing else, be able to trust themselves, not just us or our ideas about the world, and they should know how to get back up if they fall down. This isn’t grit, this is self efficacy.