Is "African-American" a Valid Educational Category?: A Pragmatic View

Recently, a sparring match has surfaced between William Seletan and John McWhorter over whether test performance statistics should subcategorize by racial makeup. The hubbub is over a recent NYT article noting that No Child Left Behind is failing to close the black/white achievement gap. The question: why even keep score of such an arbitrary categorization of race?

Seleatan's point is that in the age of genetics, race is hardly the most pertinent or salient category. He writes that McWhorter is relying on an arbitrary categorizing when he:

[is] for airing "findings that shed less than positive light on black people." Not bad parents. Not people with low-performing kids. Black people.

McWhorter suspects that Seletan's motive is simply to put a hush on any statistic that might make black's look bad.

Just as that is antithetical to what getting past race is supposed to mean, we will not pretend that it's okay that black students don't read and do math as well as white kids in order to provide a way for people like William Saletan to demonstrate that they aren't racists.

To be honest, this is a hard discussion to think about and there are good and bad points made on all sides. But my pragmatic inclination is to say that what counts as a valid category is any category that has something pertinent to say (as measured by whether most people believe it does). By this pragmatic light, race is still a valid category (even if it is not a valid genetic category). We still - and especially black intellectuals - talk of black culture as somehow being seperate from white culture.

While my personal sympathies lie with Saletan - I really cannot see how different skin colors are valid educational subgroups) - my social symphaties lie with McWhorter. The very fact that we as a society are so obsessed with the "black/white achievement gap" (that does bear out statistically) means that there is something to subcategorizing educational statistics by racial groupings.

And I further agree with McWhorter that as long as we are talking about the black/white achievement gap, we should be divulging and publicizing statistics reporting on it, even if it makes one group look bad. And as a teacher, I will go even further to suggest that current statistics suggest that blacks DESERVE to look bad right now! Whether race is a valid genetic category, the statistics tell a story of a whole group of people going awry in many areas, such as criminality, educational performance, and single parenthood. I agree with McWhorter that to put rosy dressings on such statistics would do a disservice to the black community, who obviously needs to hear (and get angry at) such statistics.

So, I think it would be unfair for Seletan to win this argument if only for the fact that, in a pragmatic sense, we are a society that DOES see "racial makeup" as a valid social category. As long as we are talking about the "black/white achievement gap," and as long as such a gap is borne out statistically, refusing to break future stats down by race would be the equivalent to posing a question only to censor the answer. And as long as we are concerned with how blacks are performing as an academic group (no matter how loose that grouping is), I think it would be nothing short of pussyfooting not to let them (and others) see their dismal report card.

The Problem of Student Motivation

Recently, I have come across an interesting article: "Who is Responsible for Student Learning," by Baylor University education professor, J. Wesley Null. The main thesis of the article is that in an age where "accountability" is a buzz word, we must remember that, as wrong as it may sound to some, teachers can only do so much in getting students to learn. We often forget that the other half of the responsibility MUST lie with the student.

Null suggests that the view which sees teachers as the primary responsibility-holders to student learning confuse the business of education with most other businesses. There, if the product falls short of expectations, the workers are the likely culprit. As Null rightly points out, this ignores one key difference between "factories" and education: students, unlike cars and insurance policies, are agents that are often actively resistant to being "worked on." If a car turns out not to work well, something in the workmanship is likely to blame. If a student graduates history class without being able to recall history facts, it may be due to poor teaching by the teacher, or poor learning by the student.

Null provides an analogy to bolster the point:

[I]f a husband and wife enroll in, say, a marriage course at their local church, should the pastor who teaches these classes be blamed if the couple's marriage never improves? Or do the husband and wife have a joint responsibility to improve their own marriage?

Obviously, we would suggest that the pastor can persuade, guide, cajole, instruct, and remind. What we would not say, though, is that any of this can make the marriage work. In the end, teaching, guiding, and reminding are only so good as the will of the person recieving the instruction, guidance, and reminders.

That this is analogous to the limits of the teacher's role is obvious. What we do with this recognition is not. When teachers say things like, 'we can only do so much,' or try to shift at least some of the "blame" onto parents, students, and an anti-intellectual culture that many students come to us imbued with, we are seen as offering a subterfuge. In turn, teachers may be charged with laziness and unwillingness to be accountable.

In some sense, this view is sometimes justified. There certainly are such things as bad teachers, and often, those teachers ARE shielded from accountability by the ill-thought-out mechanism of tenure. And, as a "public service," there has to be some way to hold teachers accountable for results. Otherwise, poor-performing teachers can pawn all responsibility onto their students.

There are several other reasons for our collective uncomfortability with blaming at least some of education's failure on students:

(1) Doing so forces parents and society at large to take a critical look at their practices and whether they may be (inadvertently) sending teachers students who have not been taught such basic prerequisites to learning as respect for authority, impulse control, and some reason (internal or external) to value the enterprise of education. It is easier to blame teachers for students' low performance.

(2) As trivial as it seems, all of us have become familiar with the "feel good" teacher movies like "The Ron Clark Story," "Dangerous Minds," and "Freedom Writers," where a teacher is able to overcome all educational obstabcles with students by pure dilligence and tenacity. Take this, couple it with the egalitarian idea that every child has equal potential, and we grow intolerant with the view that student failure is not purely a symptom of bad teaching.

(3) As most of us have had at least 12 years of direct experience with teachers, teaching is the one job that most people have seen close-up, and as such, most people feel is not so difficult. I think that this inadvertently plays into notions that student failure is due to bad teaching because, unlike most professions, it is easy to "play at armchair teaching." Laypersons might not be quick to offer opinions on how accountants can do their job better, but are generally unafraid to criticize the "common sense" discipline of teaching.

It is difficult to know how to strike a good balance between holding teachers accountable for results and accepting that teaching, unlike other professions, requires willingness from producer AND PRODUCT in order to be successful. it may even be as simple as involving teachers who produce scores of underachieving students in more stringent observations and professional developments. It may also involve offering teachesr financial incentives, as some districts have done, for good results (thus not penalizing underperformance, but simply rewarding outstanding performance.

But what many don't realize is that teaching is hard as it is. It is even harder when we teachers are held solely or even primarily accountable for students low performance on tests (when they admit, as they often have to me, that they do not studey), for low homework grades (homework is the responsibility of the home), and even student truency.

As Null correctly notes, and as hard as it is for many parents and policy-makers to hear, "Individual agency matters. Put another way, one person cannot be held responsible for another person's behavior."

Is Tenure for School Teachers Necessary or Productive? (No.)

When we think of tenure, we think of academic freedom - the liberty of teachers to delve into controversial ideas without fear of losing their jobs. We think of professors like Bertrand Russell who was denied various teaching positions due to some controversial writings he produced (as a professor). Tenure's rationale, then, seems to be a desire to leave professors free to engage in research without having to think about whether their choice of subject or position will affect their employment status.

This concern of academic freedom, though, doesn't seem to have the same import at the primary and secondary school level. Unlike professors, teachers do not engage in research and publishing in addition to teaching duties, do not often have complete freedom to write curriculum, and, even if they do, are strongly advised not to engage in teaching that could be considered controversial or edgy. Because of this, it is tough to see why primary/secondary school teachers need tenure to protect them.

One of the most universal criticism of tenure - at any level of education - is that it makes it difficult, bordering on impossible, to fire incompetent teachers. Once a teacher/professor has tenure, she is stripped of the market pressure to perform that exists in any job where fear of termination could be a motivator. In a recent blog entry, Stanley Fish writes of a professor who, up until now, has been protected by tenure (and even now, it will be extremely hard for the University to terminate him). This professor - Denis Rancourt - is supposed to teach physics, but tells his students that he will teach whatever he feels like teaching (often political activism).

While tenure protects incompetents like Rancourt, many feel that, at the college level, the cost is worth the benefit of ensuring that academics are free to pursue their scholarly interests without fear of termination. The University of Delaware's Linda Gottfredson, , who does controversial research on the relationship of IQ to factors such as race, health, etc, produces very scholarly important research that, without tenure, she may not engage in for fear of termination. Even if tenure protects some bad professors, it is often argued that without its guarantee, professors like Gottfredson would let the topics of their research be motivated by economic concerns, rather than the pursuit of truth.

We know that the same cost of tenure - the insulation of incompetents from firing - exist at the primary/secondary school level, but do the benefits? No. As mentioned, primary and secondary teachers do not have the research responsibilities that do college professors. Thus, the only "controversial" stances they could take would be in the classroom, which has always been ill-advised (witness the sad examples of James Keegstra and Jay Bennish as unfotunate examples of teaching "controversially" to high school students).

I am quite at a loss to find any benefit in primary and secondary school teachers recieving tenure. If academic freedom is the rationale for tenure, then the only question left is whether primary or secondary school teachers have such academic freedom concerns that they should be granted the freedom to pursue ideas that might otherwise get them fired. I simply cannot see that teachers of 5, 12, and 17 year olds would ever need that kind of freedom (and would be concerned if teachers, like Keegstra, took positions in their classes that could conceivably result in termination).

According to this article the push for tenure amongst primary and secondary school teachers:

The start of the tenure movement paralleled similar labor struggles during the late 19th century. Just as steel and auto workers fought against unsafe working conditions and unlivable wages, teachers too demanded protection from parents and administrators who would try to dictate lesson plans or exclude controversial materials like Huck Finn from reading lists.

This, too, is a rationale that is antiquated. Rarely do teachers control whether Huck Finn should be required reading, and rarely would a teacher be fired over their lesson plans. Whether Huck Finn is part of the curriculum has become an administrative issue, and the lesson plans that (public school) teachers teach are heavily dictated by the demands of a curriculum that they didn't write. (Whether this should be so is debatable, but I think this decision is correct for public schools.)

Again, the rationale for tenure amongst primary and secondary school teachers seems to be antiquated and unnecessary. One of the only articles I have found to argue for the justice of tenure for primary/secondary school teachers has the following abstract:

This speech responds to arguments for reform or abolition of teacher tenure acts. The author argues that, inadequate as tenure laws may be, they provide in many States the most practical safeguard against managerial caprice in the educational establishment. Court cases that uphold or prove the value of teacher tenure laws are presented.

Teh large problem with this argument is that "manegerial caprice" is not exclusive to the education industry, and protection against it is hardly a reason to argue that schools are unique in needing protection from it. One can certainly argue that, without tenure, good teachers might be fired simply because they are not liked by peers or superiors, but this could just as easily happen at a bank, a restaurant, or a law firm. It is unclear why schools are unusual in needing protection from "managerial caprice." If it is argued that schools are particularly susceptible to such political decision-making, then this seems more like a "childishness" problem, rather than a problem warranting exceptional "tenure" protection.

A Gallup Poll report suggests more of the same:

Those in favor, including teacher unions and state school board associations, have long held that tenure is necessary to protect teachers from dismissals based on unpopular opinions, arbitrary administrations, or simply the ebb and flow of cultural tides. "I'm in favor of job security for all types of work, including teaching," says Todd, a 45-year-old respondent from Maine who is "somewhat familiar" with tenure and likes what he sees. "Teachers put in a lot of time and they deserve to know their job will always be there."

As we have discussed, dismissal because of unpopular opinion is much more likely with college professors, and "arbitrary...ebb and flow of cultural tides," is not a factor that is exclusive to schools.

But a new argument is that since teachers works so hard, they deserve job security for life. I am a teacher, and can attest that we do work hard. But I can also attest that (a) good teachers (the ones the quote focuses on) wouldn't need tenure to be able to keep their jobs; and (b) there aer plenty of other professions with people that would "deserve" job security if the criteria is how hard the work is.

Anyway we slice it, justifying tenure for primary/secondary teachers is a stretch. Unlike college professors, we don't have much occasion (or is it advisable) to hold opinions in the classroom that would warrant tenure protection. Second, we do not, by in large, control the curricula and, therefore, do not need "academic freedom" for curricular purposes. "Job protection from arbitrary administrations" is a weak argument, as there are many other professions that could fire based on unsound reasons. And, lastly, arguing that teachers deserve tenure because they work so hard ignores all of the other professions that work as hard or harder, yet do not need tenure and do not argue for it.