When I was in 6th grade, I remember being taken out of class in order to take a test. I don’t remember much about the test, except that it seemed kind of fun, and that it also did not seem very hard. I remember later that year finding out that based on the results of this particular test, the school system had deemed me “gifted,” and so I would be placed in other advanced level classes to go along with the advanced level classes I was now in. The system, I think, worked in the way that was intended. I was placed in an environment where I could be challenged along side others who were also “advanced.”
Almost twenty years later, I am an engineer working with NASA. I graduated with a degree from one of many prestigious public universities that exist in the state of Virginia, and I think I am a productive member of society. By many standards, I am a success, all due to opportunities that were given to me, that at the time, I was not even aware of. I thought that the way I went through school was just the way it was. I didn’t know that others were having a different experience.
In an article on USA Today’s website, http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-08-25-SAT-scores_N.htm?poe=HFMostPopular, disparities in SAT scores were pointed out based on race, and economic class. At the end of the article, the author writes:
For example, students who took an Advanced Placement or honors math course scored an average of 79 points above the national average math score. And students who had previously taken the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test scored 121 points higher on average than those who did not take the test.
But Caperton stressed that not all students have access to such programs.
“As a country we must do better at providing students of every background equal access to education, equal access to the best teachers, and equal access to the best counseling,” he said.
I was in AP Calculus my senior year. I took the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in seventh grade.
If you go to High School in the City of Richmond, just a few miles from where I lived in Chesterfield County, the same experience is not had by students, not even today. Before I go any farther, let me just say that the City of Richmond is doing more with the resources that it has available to it than any of it’s neighboring school districts, all while losing most of the affluent children who live within the district to private or Catholic schools, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32523214/ns/us_news-education/.
The reality is that the public schools in the City of Richmond simply do not have the resources necessary to provide similar experiences to all of the students they are entrusted with. So while I lived in one of the “poorer” neighborhoods in Chesterfield County, I was still given a bounty of opportunities. Today, students in many of the Richmond High Schools have very limited access to AP courses, as the school system seeks to cope with the reality that many of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, a measuring tool for the economic class of the students. The resources are simply in short supply, needed to provide many of the students with such basic necessities as meals, in many buildings that are old and outdated, while much of the higher income tax base, which jurisdictional education relies on, has moved into the suburbs and farther out, out of the city. And perhaps we aren’t still dealing with racism, but the fact that 89% of the students are black is not lost on me, nor do I think it is merely a coincidence. http://www.richmond.k12.va.us/indexnew/sub/statistics/statistics.cfm
I think many of us are naive, and perhaps intentionally so, as to the disparities that plague our system.
Here is to the hope of a new school year! And to the reality that in our children our hope for a better tomorrow rests…
