The ‘isms’
in Education
CLASSISM
A form of oppression in which individuals and
institutions assign value to people and make
assumptions about their abilities through prejudices
about social class.
CLASSISM OCCURS THROUGH…
• individual attitudes and behaviors
• the policies and practices that are set up to
benefit upper classes at the expense of the lower
classes, resulting in drastic income and wealth
inequality
• the rationales and institutions that support
classist systems and unequal valuing of people
• the culture that perpetuates them
Adapted from: www.classism.org
How do you think
we fund
our public schools?
CLASSISM OCCURS THROUGH…
• individual attitudes and behaviors
• the policies and practices that are set up to
benefit upper classes at the expense of the lower
classes, resulting in drastic income and wealth
inequality
• the rationales and institutions that support
classist systems and unequal valuing of people
• the culture that perpetuates them
Adapted from: www.classism.org
CHILDREN IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS
1.
2.
3.
If funding for schools was based not on local
property taxes but on equal funding per
student, how long would it take to bring the
worst schools up to acceptable conditions?
What would happen in the richest schools
when funding was inevitably lessened?
Why has the current system of school funding,
based on local property taxes, been allowed to
exist for so long?
Poverty in affluent countries:
• the U.S. ranked #28
• U.S. Poverty = less than $22,000 per
year
• Americans live in poverty = 15%
• U.S. children in poverty = 24%
Retrieved from: http://www.unicef.org/media/files/RC11-ENG-embargo.pdf
Poverty in U.S. Schools
Students on free & reduced lunch = 51%
AL students on free & reduced lunch = 58%
Retrieved from: http://www.southerneducation.org/Our-Strategies/Research-and-Publications/New-Majority-Diverse-Majority-Report-Series/A-New-Majority-2015-Update-Low-Income-Students-Now
Across Region in U.S. Schools
Retrieved from: http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm
Poverty by Race in U.S. Schools
Retrieved from: http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm
David Berliner
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Educational Psychologist
Professor at Arizona State University
National Education Policy Center
Author of:
• The Manufactured Crisis
• Collateral Damage: The Effects of
High-stakes Testing on America’s
Schools
THE EFFECTS OF POVERTY
• How Poverty Effects Student Achievement (3338)
• How Neighborhoods Effect the Poor (38-43)
• How Income Effects Behavior & Achievement
(43-48)
• What Can We Do? (48-53)
WHAT CAN YOU DO
ABOUT CLASSISM?
• The Question of Class by Paul Gorski
RACISM
A form of oppression based on the perception of one’s
race, which includes “negative or destructive behaviors
that can result in denying some groups’ life necessities
as well as the privileges, rights, and opportunities
enjoyed by other groups” (Sonia Nieto, p. 42)
But…What is Race, actually?
• Race is a group of categories socially constructed by
us. It is not genetic.
• Racism, however, is the harmful effects that result
from believing that race means something.
HOW IS HARM PERPETUATED?
Stereotypes and imagery are one predominant way we
perpetuate harm, because they often influence
(consciously and unconsciously) our assumptions and
interactions with people.
Here are some examples of how assumptions about
model minorities and constructed fears and
assumptions about ‘blackness’ cause harm:
• Ethnic Notions
• Awkward Moments Only Asians Understand (please
note this is a satire that is meant to be a social
critique of racism, not a comedy)
HOW IS HARM PERPETUATED?
Laws and policies:
Plessy vs. Ferguson – 1896
• Louisiana passed a transportation law that created separate
railroad cars for ‘colored’ and white passengers. Black and
white citizens of LA wanted to challenge the law, and arranged
to have Homer Plessy (a free, mixed race man) sit in the white
car. He was arrested and charged.
• racial segregation was ruled lawful on the grounds that
separate is equal
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka – 1954
• The daughter of Oliver Brown had to walk and take the public
bus to her school (1 mile away) even though a white school
was 7 blocks from her home.
• found racial segregation unconstitutional (XIV Amendment –
Equal Protection) on the grounds that separate education
facilities are inherently unequal
SEGREGATION NOW
Apartheid schools: schools where 1% or less of the
students are white
• apartheid: an Afrikaans word to describe
segregation in South African Brown vs. Board of
Education of Topeka – 1954
• “most of these schools are in the Northeast and
Midwest, some 12 percent of black students in
the South and nearly a quarter in Alabama now
attend such schools…” (Hannah-Jones).
Retrieved: https://www.propublica.org/article/segregation-now-full-text
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN…AGAIN?
Board of Education of Oklahoma vs. Dowell – 1991
• The judges found that federal courts no longer
had to enforce integration laws because the
ruling out of Brown vs. Board was never meant
to impose perpetual judicial supervision. Thus, it
was never supposed to be permanent (Reardon
et. al, 2011, p. 1).
• unitary status: a term given to districts that
petitioned (and won) a release from federal court
oversight for schooling and housing integration.
Retrieved:
https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/reardon%20brown%20fades%20JPAM%20final%20jan%202011.pdf
THE BENEFITS OF INTEGRATION
Rucker Johnson studied the life long effects of integration
and “found that black Americans who attended schools
integrated by court order were more likely to graduate, go
on to college, and earn a degree than black Americans who
attended segregated schools. They made more
money…They were significantly less likely to spend time in
jail. They were healthier.
Notably, Rucker also found that black progress did not come
at the expense of white Americans—white students in
integrated schools did just as well academically as those in
segregated schools. Other studies have found that
attending integrated schools made white students more
likely to later live in integrated neighborhoods and send
their own children to racially diverse schools.” (HannahJones).