Education

The "A-Team" is the status my friend, a high school math teacher in Washington DC, gives to students who achieve an 80% or higher on their tests in his class. Members of the "A-Team" have their tests posted in the room for all to marvel at. Yet visiting his classroom a few weeks ago, I noticed that there were fewer than eight tests posted under the "A-Team" sign despite him having over 90 students spread between three classes. This does not seem like a good average.

My friend teaches high school math at one of the poorest-achieving high schools in the country. Some of the stats from his school are outlandish: 7% of the high school are "proficient" in math (based on national, rather low, standards) and less than 15% are proficient in reading. As of a month ago, 60% of the 90+ students in my friend's geometry and alegebra 2 class were failing the course (although recently, that number has dropped to 45%). Only 30% of the senior class graduates. According to the school, 99.9% of the students are black. There are only 800 students in the school, so I'm not even sure where the other .1% comes from.

My friend hasn't met some of his students (he has been teaching since September), some students miss school because they're in jail, other students because they're pregnant. There are other oddities that certainly don't help the students learn: unnecessary announcements over the school-wide PA system that interrupt class, no repercussions when students walk into class 15 minutes late (those who arrive on-time to class are in a very small minority), fellow teachers who themselves show up 15 minutes late to class, gang-related fights in the halls, a shooting in the campus parking lot, a principal who seems oblivious to the cyclical plight of his students and parents, etc. etc. My friend has a mental storybook full of eyebrow-raising incidents, which he must repeat over and over again to the scores of incredulous suburbanites back home in California, where we are both from.

These stats and incidents do not address the problems, they merely touch on the symptoms. My friend has aptly noted that many of his students' parents, and their parents, have always lived in the same tired part of Washington that is awash in ramshackle houses, carry-out food restaurants, check cashing booths and metal-bar-covered windows. Recently, three students at the high school were gunned down at the "Good Hope Carry-Out," serving as a reminder to my friend's students just how much hope society really gave them. These students are far beyond being failed by society; they completely lack opportunity. Growing up in a neighborhood that was left behind long ago, these students are isolated by a cycle that failed their parents and will fail them too.

Oddly, both the school's website and a not-for-profit website called "ExploreDC" fail to see a problem. The school's website has the wrong principle pictured. The ExploreDC site, when writing about my friend's school, says that new changes are benefiting the school where my friend teaches. "This change in our approach to education has been very successful in helping to raise student performance on standardized tests, in addition to providing students vital information required for making wise career choice." Even odder, at the bottom of the page the site writes "Attendance: 90% or better". I think it fair to say my friend would disagree. A simple walk through the metal detectors, past the corridor displaying the students' national testing statistics and into any class would probably make the author of the ExploreDC website wince on both his points.

It is but a 5 minute drive to traverse DC's roads from my friend's high school to the Capitol Building, that fine building where politicians heatedly debate what's in our national interest while making deals to secure Americans' better future. Yet for my friend's students, the Capitol Building may as well be another world away. These students isolated without opportunity, it is up to people like my friend to make the difference.