https://drive.google.com/file/d/11TEvMzfpcCHGQTNDCUkH7ayAWL0HWs_m/view?usp=sharing
(included link to mp3 on google drive because embedded mp3 was not working correctly)
I’m Colby Kramer, and today I’m going to be talking on a new podcast of mine, which is the “Yo… is this educational inequality?” Podcast. Today, we are clearly living in a time of great distress. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed lives all around the world. One instance of change that I would like to address is the multiplying negative effects that this coronavirus pandemic has had on inner-city schooling. I’d like to start out with a story of one student who is named Shamar, who is from an inner-city. Shamar, like many of the students his is peers with has had a rough home situation in his past. The mom, who battles a drug addiction, and he also has to bounce from home to home to his grandmother to his mom to his siblings which often leads him to experience absences from school due to a lack in transportation. And… these absences have been multiplied by the recent coronavirus pandemic. Once everything was sent to be remote, he at first did not even have a laptop, but was eventually provided with one… actually by church funding. And even with this, he doesn’t always have internet access. He struggles to find a good place to do his class and is often up late with his mom watching television or something of the sort. Essentially, he’s just struggled. And he is not finding that escape that he used to find at school from his home life. He’s not alone in this being his escape. Many of these students that live in these areas need school to get out of these rough home lives. It’s just… something that is essential to their life and their well-being. And… one just tragic part of this is that it’s often hard to see these stories especially in these current times because they are occurring being closed doors: they are private. People are not moving around as much with the pandemic so you can’t… they aren’t in these schools; you can’t see them struggling as well as you might want to. They are often times not even showing up to class so you can’t see them at all; as a teacher or as an educator you can’t help them. One teacher, Ryan Hooper, who is a social studies teacher from Cleveland who teaches in Massachusetts actually reported that only about 1 or 2 of his students were showing up regularly for a class of 10. This is clearly an alarmingly low rate. And… it doesn’t make these teachers feel too good; it’s not what they are trying to do… they are trying to make a difference in these kids lives, and it’s nearly impossible if they are not there. And… he actually attempted to alert child protective services for the students who were not showing up, but Baltimore essentially did not take any action against this, largely due to the fact that students were not being penalized for not doing their work at this time. This was… right after the pandemic began, and these students were seen to be as going through a rough time and they thought that they couldn’t penalize them for not participating. The thing is… these students needed this. Like I previously mentioned… it’s their escape. They… need school, and if they are not getting school, they’re falling behind in metal aspects, with their home life, as well as the learning aspect of it because they are just falling further and further behind without getting any teaching. This is clearly a problem, and one previous occurrence that kind of shows the future impacts that this could possibly have on these students was actually Hurricane Katrina which showed that about 6 months after the Katrina incident, only 20% of students from New Orleans were not enrolled or missed 10 plus days of school in a month. This is kind of similar in a way to what we are seeing today. Students aren’t showing up. This has been going on and it will continue until we are able to get fully back into school with the vaccines and such, but currently this is what is going on and one almost terrifying fact from this is that a 7-year-old from New Orleans during Katrina was found more likely to be unemployed than all but 2 cities in the US from kids that were the same age. Which… clearly displays a direct correlation to negative effects of kids not being at school and them seeing this in their future. 10 years ahead of this… there is a clear impact, and it is the same thing that is happening in inner cities all across the United States right now. Our entire educational system is being set back and there needs to be action taken. This setback is a setback to a system that was previously already not performing. Another study that I looked at from Education Week, which was titled “Study Lays Out Grim Statistics on Urban Education”, actually displayed… I mean these negative effects were already there. Less than 15% of these students took the ACT/SAT from 30 out of the 50 cities that were studied and in addition to that only… well 1 out of 4 students from the 9th grade in the beginning of the study graduated in 4 years when it was looked back upon in 2015. And… this is… just a clear fault in the system. This is not the statistics you would see; they are better in suburban and rural areas, but these cities are being neglected and the funding… it’s not enough right now. It’s just clearly not enough. These students… they are not receiving the funding that they need. And… as a direct result of this, they are not going to succeed in their futures. And going back to current times, just one story that I would like to address… it was a Cleveland news story from wkyc which is just a local news network there. I’m just going to play a quick clip for you guys here…
This investigation looking just at the data for the start of this fall semester suggests that problems still persist in Cuyahoga County, as suburban schools scored higher than inner city schools in one key area: attendance. “It’s good… it’s an adjustment, but it’s working out.” In suburban Parma, where Abby Maloro goes to school, the district has seen near perfect attendance. 97% logging in at her school Normandy high and 98% at Parma high school. 3 news found similar results at Shaker Heights High School and Beechwood High School. “I say fair… it’s going fair.” But Cleveland Metro Schools, where 37,000 students have been in virtual classes since March… 3 news found roughly 5600 students not regularly logging on. “Sometimes a Chromebook goes out, and we’ve been up here twice to get new Chromebooks because this one will go dead.” While Cleveland Metro schools has given students Chromebooks and hotspots, Brenda Cook Weems says her son Thomas often has problems logging on. “How many times has that happened?… twice, this is the second time.” And perhaps even more troubling is Cleveland’s High School attendance. The most recent data available shows only 63% of students logging on at Thomas’ school, Glenville High. On par with the 64% average at John F. Kennedy and 66% at Collinwood High School. “Yes I am… very disappointed… 63% is not good.”
So, this attendance aspect of things which we are seeing with the coronavirus pandemic… it’s… highlighted, it’s clearly much worse, but it’s a problem that already occurring as I mentioned earlier with stories like Shamar who have rough home lives and struggle to find the transportation they need in order to get to school. Beyond that, the previously mentioned funding… there’s actually… for urban students in these districts, they receive about $2,100 less per student in funding compared to suburban areas and ultimately $4,000 per student less than rural areas. This is largely due to local control and self-funding in these districts, which often lead there to be a higher per student funding for smaller districts and… another aspect that has caused these deeply rooted issues in the education system has been racial segregation and redlining, which have led to concentrated low-income communities of color in these urban areas which is displayed by the fact that about… per student kids of color receive about $1,321 less than their white counter parts even in these cities. So, it’s not just a problem from cities to suburban areas, it’s actually within these cities you are seeing separation/segregation, and this essentially leads to a perpetuation of poor education and it leads many of these students to drop out, possibly go to crime and that does not set them of for the future of success that we are looking for. There is clearly, a problem with the funding formula that exists in these cities and everywhere… there is just not an equal balance of this education system. It’s not providing students from different areas with the same equal opportunities that could possibly lead them to maybe go to college, and possibly beyond that there are systems of scholarships and such set up so that some of these students can have that opportunity, but the education system in the root needs to give these students an education that will provide them with future success. And essentially to go towards that, the stories of these inner-city students just need to be heard. Stories like Shamar, he’s not alone. All of these students’ stories need to be heard, and once they are heard, there can be an uproar and people will see that the inequalities seen in the education system are completely alarming… and they are also absolutely unacceptable. They need to be addressed to the highest degree, and we need to see change in the policies that exist in our current climate.