Legislative action to put all third-graders on equal footing will never work. It can help a little, but it won’t substitute for the life experience that gives other students an enduring advantage.
In 2005, I asked Dr. Ann Jackson, formerly the Indianapolis Public Schools curriculum facilitator/coordinator, why the gap between some third-graders and others was so big and predictable. My question related to inner-city districts around the country. Ann wrote me the following answer:
“As I see it, it is very complex, but simple: lifestyle. There is so much going on in these families — violence; basic needs not being met; poor health, i.e., lice, malnutrition or improper nutrition, dental needs, vision needs.”
I knew the families and so I knew right away that Ann’s words were exactly right. Parents play a complex and gigantic role in their children’s development that the state can never play. For instance, no legislation can offset violent experiences in early childhood that shape children’s responses to people and events in any environment they’re put in.
Many kids learn to respond to conflict at school with physical violence or shouting out profanities and threats. Children who don’t come from such a background will keep a distance from these volatile peers, and that social distance will have a continued effect of greater and greater separation in almost every way that matters — academics, good citizenship, social fitness, eventual job readiness, and relationship and parenting skills.
Do those areas sound like something really important? Of course they are, and the foundation they are built upon begins at home very early in life.
Ann went on: “… poor parenting skills; not enough knowledge to help kids with school work; single mothers working two jobs and rarely seeing or interacting with their kids; no reading materials or trips to the library; no money or time to take kids to the zoo, museum, parks; frequent moving and changing schools. The list goes on and on. Mostly social issues that can’t necessarily be fixed by schools.”
That’s why parents are important. That’s why a whole lot of traditional things are important. Stability matters. And where stability rules, human beings have a strong tendency to explore and learn and to share life together more agreeably and more widely than you will find in homes that are ruled by chaos, stress and unmet needs.
I used to talk to the parents of kids who had long veered away from their third-grade peers. The two groups are almost nothing alike. By the time they’re in fourth grade, the performance distance between them is frightening. The stress and chaos in the homes of the lower-performing ones only grows. By fifth grade, these kids have strayed into the outer orbit of parental influence.
By sixth grade their behavior under stress — and when they are given free time — reveals that they are on their own, no matter how loudly a parent may punish or threaten or scream at them. The majority of these children are charting their own course in life, under the guidance of their peers.
If you haven’t been where these behaviors are commonplace, that might be a good thing. But it means you might think profound dysfunction can be fixed with activism to change laws and schools. That would be understandable. That would be amazingly naïve.
These children, like all others, need love. The kinds of needs Dr. Jackson listed are traditionally met all along the way in a child’s life in countless interactions that do not happen in the homes she described. So, if you ever get an itch to make a difference in those youngsters’ lives, get involved with one of the families. They are found in any school district. The abundance of opportunities to meet needs will freak you out.
It takes a long-term commitment to close the gap. The legislature cannot do it.
Max T. Russell of New Palestine writes for the international business intelligence community. You can contact him via his website, maxtrussell.com. Send comments to [email protected].
