“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” ? Frederick Douglass.
To Dr. Bryan Johnson,
We have read with much interest the statements of school superintendents and districts from across the country--Los Angeles, Houston, Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Paul, Atlanta, and others. Officials at Muncie Community School District in Indiana, for example, have acknowledged that some of the district's practices are unacceptable and they have made a commitment to dismantle racism.
Superintendent Aleesia Johnson of Indianapolis Public Schools shared in her statement, “I want to remind all of our students —but especially our black and brown students—that you are so valued. You are loved. You are brilliant. You are powerful. You are magic. And we are so proud of you.”
Since its founding in 1909, the NAACP has shared its singular and consistent statement about racism: “To ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights without discrimination based on race”. Our education agenda is to eliminate the severe racial inequities that continue to plague our education system.
We talk in Hamilton County about the opportunity to become the fastest improving district in Tennessee, and until recently we used the words “opportunity zone” to identify the schools with the most opportunities to improve. Yet, with all the success we tout, we still have a group of chronically underperforming schools of predominantly children of color. This letter is to shine a light on some real opportunities to ensure we deliver on the promise of equity and opportunity for every child in every school.
At no other time in our history have we had an African American superintendent—visionary, smart, energetic, passionate, determined, beloved--- with an African American chief of staff, and an African American chief of equity leading our district. Top talent has been recruited from within and from afar. Partners have stepped up to support innovation and possibility. We have shown historic progress, receiving the highest designation possible —a Level 5— based on the 2018-19 TN Ready test results and Tennessee Value-Added Assessment Scores. All this suggests we are definitely smart enough and determined enough to raise achievement in our district, so our question is, Why not in schools with high concentrations of children of color? We have had years of interventions that have not worked. Growth is not enough to declare victory in underperforming schools when that growth does not become a trajectory for the success we see in short order in schools we don’t control serving predominantly poor students of color.
What have we missed? Maybe it’s the real opportunity to be the district that boasts historic progress in every school. Below is our starter list of real opportunities to make equity and real progress happen for all.
Say its name: Privilege. Then share it. There is a reason that “underprivileged” may be the most appropriate label assigned to poor students of color concentrated in underperforming schools, because they have less access to privilege. Some privilege is by circumstance of birth and zip code. But some has been historically granted by Hamilton County Schools, at its discretion, for the express purpose of ensuring an individual school’s success. Those privileges, not Title I dollars alone, make the difference.
James Mapp, former president of the NAACP, may be best known for his history-making 26 year federal lawsuit against the city of Chattanooga to integrate Chattanooga Public Schools. In 1986, the year the lawsuit was settled, the district made bold moves---a mass transfer of teachers so that school faculties reflected the racial demographics of the city. That same year the city opened its first dedicated magnet school, CSAS, with intentionality to ensure its student population also reflected the racial demographics of the district. Years after the Mapp lawsuit was dismissed and the city was no longer under federal watch, dedicated magnet schools stopped being intentional about diversity. But even in 2020 when those schools no longer keep the promises of helping to address issues of diversity and equity in the district (as reflected in Tennessee Report card school demographic data), the district continues to grant all the privileges.
To create the appearance of equity, the district later designated predominantly black schools as magnet schools. The irony of history is that school names changed, but they never got the privileges. Those privileges are what affluent white families demand (and should), so we see them, for example in magnet schools like the predominantly white CSLA (21.9 percent students of color; 6.8 percent economically disadvantaged), but not in others like East Lake Academy (95.1 percent students of color; 75 percent economically disadvantaged), also a magnet school. The real opportunity, then, for Hamilton County’s Chief Equity Officer is twofold: determine how to share privilege so that black and brown children in both magnet and non-magnet schools are also its beneficiaries. Then, rather than take privilege from dedicated magnet schools, hold them accountable for significantly increasing diversity or assign them a zone that ensures their student populations increasingly reflect the racial demographics of the county. Regularly report progress to the community on initiatives for equity. That is just a good start for the Office of Equity, but an
important one. Stop segregating black and brown children and their faculties. Modern Day Segregation kills children long before they become adults.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. In 1986, the 26 year lawsuit by NAACP President James Mapp requiring the integration of schools in Chattanooga was dismissed on the grounds that the school district was showing compliance. In 2020, Hamilton County still has white schools and black schools. The school district has no control over where families live. HCS does have control over disparities among white schools and black schools that scream for attention. The real opportunity is to change what we can change.
For example, stop segregating black and brown children in ways that isolate them from the high performance that will truly make us the fastest improving district in the state. Stop changing the group name for chronically underperforming schools every few years. Instead, change the practices. Stop delivering a curriculum to underperforming schools--same standards and expectations—but under conditions still very similar to the separate but equal policies of the 1950’s when schools were separate but never equal. The real opportunity is to simply do in underperforming schools what we do in high performing and nationally recognized schools. When black children get into those schools, they rise. They can rise in their neighborhood schools if we stop segregating them from the very practices and opportunities that work for high performing schools.
Stop isolating the teachers in struggling schools from their high performing peers in other schools. Consider whether the mass exits across the district from struggling schools each year (compared to transfers from predominantly white schools) are in part a desire of teachers not to be segregated from teachers with whom they could collaborate. Teachers in underperforming schools are not underperformers. We know that because in interviews, some have said they become high performers with a simple transfer to a high performing school. Stop penalizing the teachers who stay in struggling schools by barring them from access to leadership roles because their scores are not on par with peers in more diverse and affluent schools. The conditions under which they work—isolation, oppressive supervision, and challenges beyond their experience—would be equally daunting for any of their peers.
Stop segregating black children and killing them long before they become adults. Stop killing their chance to be brilliant and to work toward a future full of hope. Instead, give them regular access to their high performing peers across the district, even when their zoned neighborhood school is predominantly black. Stop using transportation as an excuse to offer opportunities with the caveat—but only if you can get there on your own. Find and fund the ways.
Stop the Oppression and Control in underperforming schools. Students and teachers can’t breathe. Stop operating chronically underperforming schools like prisons, with oppression and control as the order of the day. Stop constant hall policing by teachers during instructional time, increased numbers of administrators and deans of students who merely react and punish negative behaviors that are the masked frustrations of children oppressed on a daily basis. Consider more support and mental health professionals instead. Stop line-ups where children march in silence with bubble mouths and folded arms from one location to another. Ask yourselves, When as adults will they use the muscle memory of these practices? Stop locking children’s restrooms, curtailing their access to the arts and extracurricular activities, suspending them for responding to frustration in the only way they know how, or mandating that schools with concentrations of poverty reduce suspension numbers by allowing students—who need help beyond what inexperienced teachers can provide—to wreak havoc in classrooms so that no one can learn. Stop beating up powerless teachers and administrators for not dramatically improving conditions that only those in power at the district level can change. Stop evaluating chronically underperforming schools long enough to help them.
With so much expertise and skill at the district level, invite yourselves to take the Zora Neale Hurston challenge: To know there, you have to go there. At some future date when schools reopen, send your children to a chronically underperforming school for a week and then ask them to describe elements of oppression and control they experience. Send your most outstanding teachers and visionary principals from high performing schools for a week and let them tell you where you could focus your expertise and resources to ease the oppression. (Make sure you send them there during the weeks your supervisors and directors are there so that they can listen and learn as well). Then reverse the process. Send students, teachers, and administrators from struggling schools to high performing schools for a week and then ask them about the differences. Talk to teachers who recently transferred from schools where oppression and control are the order of the day and let them tell you why they could no longer take it. When teachers smile and say they do not feel the oppression in their chronically underperforming schools, ask them how long they plan to stay.
Check the websites of schools with the most suspensions and the schools that have recently received national awards. Compare the differences in what schools offer and connect the dots. Resist the temptation to throw a few more Title I dollars at chronically struggling schools hoping that money alone will cure a cancer. As with cancer, the goal is cancer free. Free chronically struggling schools from oppressive and controlling practices and replace those practices with access, encouragement, high expectations, support, and other real opportunities.
While the many inequities and elements of systemic racism in Hamilton County Schools may be difficult to see and unintentional, they exist—and they start killing black and brown children long before they become adults. You inherited this, Dr. Johnson, and for that you share no blame. Please don’t let ignoring this be your legacy.
The NAACP is here to help.
With respect and urgency,
George Calhoun, President of Chattanooga/Hamilton NAACP
NAACP, Chattanooga/Hamilton Branch