Class Dismissed

I’m never sure how to answer. I don’t view MPS as a broken-down machine that needs to be “fixed” – charter school grease here, voucher school parts there, standardized tests to keep it running and, bango, good as new. Rather, I liken MPS to a family of 100,000 children. Like any family, it is a work in progress, with strengths and weaknesses; it needs to be nurtured, not abandoned.

People asking how to fix MPS usually want a silver bullet – the best single shot at reform. Knowing that, I reply, “Deal with the city’s double-digit poverty and provide decent-paying jobs.” Most often, I get quizzical looks and the conversation ends. While good schools are deemed essential to a vibrant economy, the reverse is rarely acknowledged.

In this city’s conversations about education, one topic is assiduously avoided: how Milwaukee’s devastating poverty affects its schools. To even raise the issue is heretical because, so the sound bite goes, there are no excuses for educational failure.

Yes, schools must educate whoever walks in the door. But no school system can completely compensate for the educational complexities caused by inadequate housing, substandard healthcare, deteriorating neighborhoods and, most important, the loss of family-supporting jobs.

The devastation of Milwaukee’s manufacturing base has taken a huge toll. Since 1975, the percentage of elementary school children in MPS eligible for lunches that are free or reduced in price has more than doubled – from 36 percent to 77 percent. More disturbing, in 23 of the district’s 85 elementary schools, 90 percent or more of the students receive free or reduced-price lunches.

Reports coming out of the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will break your heart. Between 1970 and 2000, unemployment rates in the Inner City tripled, to 22.2 percent. Add those who’ve stopped looking for work and the figure jumps to 59 percent.

But not everyone suffered equally. The disappearance of work is far less severe outside of the city. Within the metropolitan area – Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties – unemployment rose only slightly – from 3.2 percent to 5.2 percent.

Why do we tolerate such inequities? Why isn’t the “no excuses” mandate applied to political and business leaders with poverty and jobs in the central city?

MPS teachers and administrators have their own reasons for not discussing poverty and its effects. Some are so conditioned by the prevailing political climate they’re afraid they will be charged with defending educational failure. Others believe it’s impossible to solve the problem, so they focus entirely on the classroom. And some fear it will only exacerbate stereotypes of MPS families as less caring and less hard-working than their suburban counterparts.

The last concern is particularly significant. Stereotypes of poor people, which inevitably are linked to racial stereotypes, are so prevalent that talking about poverty in MPS runs the risk of heightening suburban fear of “the city” and its “ghetto schools.” I routinely speak with MPS teachers and administrators who are quite vocal about poverty’s repercussions, yet reluctant to talk on the record. They’ve had too many negative experiences with media portrayals of poor people, especially poor black people.

Because there’s no honest discussion of poverty and MPS – how poverty makes things different and, more important, how it doesn’t – stereotypes go unchallenged. But poor parents have as much love and hope for their kids as middle-class parents. They want access to jobs and resources, not charity, things as basic as Laundromats, grocery stores, reliable transportation.

The flip side to not talking about poverty is the belief that little good can come out of MPS. So the accepted wisdom becomes, “MPS is failing.”

I graduated from one of Milwaukee’s private high schools. My oldest daughter graduated from Riverside. I firmly believe she had a superior education, not just academically but socially and culturally; she learned not only her calculus and European history but how to negotiate a multiracial, multilingual world.

Do people believe me? Fellow MPS parents, generally yes. Suburban parents, generally no. Too often, those most prone to condemn MPS have not set foot inside an MPS school in years – if ever.

Many people are so blinded by stereotypes they don’t see that MPS provides one opportunity that money cannot buy: diversity. At a time when business leaders are clamoring for diversity so Milwaukee can compete in the global marketplace, MPS is arguably the most diverse institution, public or private, in the region. Yet rather than take advantage, leaders seem intent on further segregating students in neighborhood schools.

In coming months, there will likely be a new silver bullet reform to fix MPS. (Already floated is the idea to abolish our elected school board. Democracy, after all, can be so contradictory and time-consuming.)

Will the reform be accompanied by demands for the family-supporting jobs in the central city that are vital if, indeed, no child is to be left behind?