Update to "Public School Environment"

I need to add an update to my post from May 4. There are a couple of deeply rooted issues that should be addressed.

Who's The Problem? Who's To Blame?

I have a very difficult time understanding what is so bad about Padgett Elementary (a "C" school). They have a fantastic staff. Why are the teachers of Padgett not good enough for all of the families of their zone? There must be something else besides the teachers. The only people remaining at the school are the children. But they are children, there can't be anything wrong with them right? What about the innocence of children? Well, further in my conversation with Chris Dowdy he mentioned that he didn't want his children to around "those" kids. Unfortunately, Chris Dowdy and Senator Stargel are not alone in this thinking. (Hence why there are so many children at McKeel and other private schools!) So therein lies the problem...children.

Deficit Thinking

What is so wrong with "those" kids? Why is it so important to some to keep their children away from the children of public schools, or Padgett for example?

Reason: Some people believe that low-income or minority parents and families do not care about education. Ergo, the students do not take school seriously. This is a false statement. In my 7 years of teaching, I have yet to meet a family that would say anything close to this.

I am very concerned with this type of thinking. One, it shows how out of touch our Florida Congress is with our communities reality. They do not understand the daily lives and struggles of many people within their districts. They do not understand the societal constraints that they [Florida Congress] are responsible for and re-enforcing upon our marginalized families. Second, it describes our community as without the skills to be successful in school (or life for that matter). Does this help or hurt our community?

This isn't the new phenomena of 2017. These rules, policies, and thinking have been around. Valencia (UT Austin) describes this as culturally deficit thinking. He defines deficit thinking as "characterizations and explanations of schooling outcomes that render a view of low-income and ethnically or linguistically diverse students as possessing only deficiencies as learners." Valencia is saying we are distancing people because they are different than us. Then, those differences will not help them succeed in school. In fact, they will ensure they fail. Culturally deficit thinking is a way people use to rationalize why low-income or diverse families fail to perform well in school.

For a while, I suffered from a bad case of deficit thinking. Heck, I remember battling this type of thinking the first time I visited Mexico while I was in high school. The way I am seeking to overcome this is by recognizing my biases and seeking to understand the complexities of the cultures of our great community. I am not the only suffer of deficit thinking.  There are many people daily suffering from deficit thinking, including some of our members of the Florida Congress.... They are seeking an alternative therapy from my approach. They offer "choice" [this was initially quoted] to all families. This allows them to remove themselves and distance themselves from the great societal atrocities that inflict our marginalized families daily. They are essentially saying "your societal problems are not my problem." I will allow the words of Dr. MLK Jr. to respond. He said, "We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now."

Final Thoughts

I have a couple of take-aways from this post.

One, supporters of charters must seriously reflect on their views of all families within our communities.  We have all seen the policies and that the Florida Congress fights for supports.  Their votes show they would rather continue to defund public education. A public education that seeks to educate everyone regardless of their class or ethnicity. The Florida Congress would rather ignore the injustices of our marginalized families.

Second, there are too many families in Polk County that are marginalized. In just Polk County, the US Census Bureau estimates 17.3% of the population lives in poverty. That is almost 1 in 5 people. Furthermore, they estimate that the rate for school-aged children is even higher, 24.5%. This means that a family of 3 (two parents and a child) would be making about 19k annually. These statistics only represent poverty. (Imagine the rates of low-income!)

I think what our community must address is why low-income and/or minority families are not engaged and reflected in the educational system.

P.S.

My goal is to bring awareness of our current education policy influencers in Tallahassee and how they are attempting to "drain the swamp" of public education. They would be perfectly fine to have a privately-run education system. And we all know that type of system severely and adversely affects our marginalized families.