Watching Season 5 Episode 5 of OTNB this morning before really getting my day started, I find myself bawling at one of the character’s back stories…

… It’s just so, so, so true and I see it every day.

It was about a gifted, low-income black girl who does a tour of an upper income private school. She comes back to her school crushed and crestfallen. She talks about all of the advantages the other kids have.

To paraphrase, she says, “This is a fake paper. It’s not MLA or APA or anything like that. My grades here are fake because all we’ve got is the basics. We’d have to work twice as hard to get half as far. There’s no point.”

Her teacher says, “You’re right, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.”

The student responds. “Why get in the game when you already know it’s rigged?”

I teach in a majority minority school where more than half of the students are on free or reduced lunch. We work HARD to build relationships with them, meet their needs, and help them achieve the things that they wish to achieve…

But I look at other schools just miles away from where we are and know that their reality is different.

I think of this when I hear people tell me all the time that schools are failing–that I am failing students and failing society.  They remind me that schools don’t do things like we used to. We don’t hold kids to the standards that we did before.

(How could I possibly when they came to me crying this morning because they don’t know where they’re going to sleep tonight? How can I expect them to find time to read the book when they have to cook dinner and watch the kids?)

School is different because we don’t let the kid without the box walk away from the game anymore. In 1950 about 59 percent of students graduated from high school. In 2016 that became 83 percent. Anyone who tells you that can be done while keeping the standards exactly the same is not telling you the truth.

Now the question:  is this right?  or is this wrong?

How many times do we see the story about the impoverished child who fought and clawed her way to the top?  She made something of herself DESPITE the odds.

I mean EVERY kid could do that, right?

If every kid did that, we wouldn’t hear the story,  would we?

Did you hear the story about the wonderful white kid who came from a strong upper middle class background, who had lots of family and lots of support? He now also has an upper middle class job and his own family.  Did you hear that story?  Yeah, me neither… because there’s nothing unique about the kid who comes from that background and perpetuates it.  There’s nothing unique at all about continuing the life you already know.

Truth?  I’ve been asked to serve on dropout prevention committees before, and I always scoff at it.  What is my POINT in frog marching some poor, unwilling student across the graduation line when he couldn’t care less about being there. I seem to be the ONLY one who cares.  His parents PRETEND to care.  The kid PRETENDS to care… but I don’t see any real drive.  Where is my upward bound moment?  Why am I not Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds?  Never mind. If he doesn’t care, I don’t either.

Then again, he’s only 18…  Now he has limited his job chances substantially.  Did you know that GED can’t get you into the military anymore?  It HAS to be a high school diploma.    So…  I’m taking that kid who doesn’t know his parents, whose grandmother is raising the children of four of her own children, and I’m forcing him to do some kind of project because I’m not going to torture him with one more STAAR test.

Fifteen years ago, he would have dropped out.  No doubt in my mind.

The doubt in my mind is about which way is right.

My husband is fond of saying that we have the best educated bottom in the world.  I believe that is likely true.  We put A LOT of money and resources into helping the very lowest students achieve at the highest levels possible for them.  In the past, I’ve had students who have had their own individual aide, paid for by state money, who travel with them from class to class even though the physical AND mental deficiencies of those students would keep them from ever becoming financially contributing members of society.