EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of stories about this week’s Richland County Community Equity Challenge. Today’s topic deals with education.)
MANSFIELD — The key to improved educational equity is an early start, even before school begins, according to Donna Hight, a professor at The Ohio State University-Mansfield.
It’s also in understanding other systemic issues, such as wealth, income, health care, criminal justice and more, that help generate disparities between races in the United States, said Hight, who helps lead the Richland County Task Force on Racism’s education workgroup.
“It is critical to recognize addressing the systemic issues of the other days of the challenge from birth to pre-K improves the likelihood of educational success of young people long term,” Hight said.
Her comments come as part of Day 4 of the Richland County Community Equity Challenge, a week-long effort aimed at creating dedicated time and space to build more effective social justice habits, particularly those dealing with issues of race, power, privilege and leadership.
As part of the educational equity challenge, participants learn from Katharine B. Stevens, an early childhood scholar and consultant in Washington, D.C.
“For decades, we’ve been relying on K-12 to level the playing field and ensure that every child has an equal opportunity at the starting gate. But after years of ‘school reform,’ along with public spending that now totals roughly $700 billion annually, large achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged children persist,” Stevens said.
“It’s increasingly clear that one core problem is this: School can’t give children an equal opportunity at the starting gate because (a child’s) start doesn’t occur in school. Indeed, a substantial body of science strongly suggests that the foundation for educational opportunity is laid not at age five — or four or three — but beginning at birth,” she said.
“That’s why ‘going upstream’ (starting at birth rather than pre-K) makes sense: ensuring that children enter school ready to learn and succeed, instead of trying to ‘close the achievement gap’— whether in sixth grade or third grade or pre-K — years after it emerged in the first place,” Stevens said.
Included in the day’s challenge is a video showing how changing the first five years of a child’s life will pay dividends for years to come.
“We need to address diversity, equity and inclusion as part of the educational experience for a number of reasons,” Hight said, including:
— Sharing an accurate historical accounting of the challenges of racism.
— Sharing an accurate historical accounting of the individuals of all diverse backgrounds to the United States and beyond.
— Providing a safe and inclusive learning environment for young people where they are treated fairly and equitably.
“We need to (understand) there are historical systems we did not create, but we allow to continue because we do not recognize the privilege it provides to us as White men and women and the disadvantages it creates for men and women of color,” she said.
The North End Community Improvement Collaborative State of the African American Report 2020 uncovered two significant findings in the education sector in Richland County.
This report was compiled in January, 2020.
First, it found Black residents lag behind White residents for pre- and post-secondary educational attainment.
The report also cited Black men struggle the most as a result of not obtaining educational credentials at the same rate as others. This lack of education also impacts future earning potential, which then feeds disparities in other areas such as housing and criminal justice, organizers said.
The NECIC report found that the educational attainment of Black residents in Richland County tends to be about 10 percent less than their White peers. It also found that students of color in pre-K through 12th grade are disciplined disproportionately.
The educational disparities remain despite the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, authored by the U.S. Supreme Court. It said the racial segregation of children in public schools is unconstitutional.
In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” As a result, the court ruled that the plaintiffs were being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”
Today, however, more than half of the nation’s school-age children are in racially concentrated in districts in which more than 75 percent of students are the same race and districts are further segregated by income.
“Without access to high-quality early-learning opportunities, historically underserved children, including children of color and children from low-income backgrounds are more likely to enter kindergarten behind their peers — both socio-emotionally and academically,” said former U.S. Education Secretary John B. King Jr. at the “Zero to Three National Conference” in 2018.
Hight said the work all of the task force groups is “inextricably linked with the work of every group,”pointing to an article she read that talks about “wicked problems.”
“In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize,” she said.
“Another definition is ‘a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point.’ Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems,” Hight said.
While she is directly involved with the education sector of the task force, Hight said she hopes local residents participate in all parts of the Equity Challenge — and then act on the information learned.
“Even if they cannot complete it day of, I hope they will make sure they complete the eight days of work to learn that life in Richland County is not the same for every resident of Richland County and we cannot safely assume it is without staying open to learning from engagement with one another,” Hight said.
“Success would be the number of people who complete it and seeing some behavior changes from leaders in Richland County that show they really tried to dig in and learn and then make changes,” she said.
The education working group has been active since its inception.
“We are working on assembling a working set of information to connect groups across Richland County who address education in various ways to address issues around systemic racism and student success, without having to try to take on all of the work as a committee,” she said.
“Some examples include partnerships among working groups to address issues around how student behavior is addressed in the schools and how healthcare is provided in the community including in education,” Hight said.
Connections have been made between OSU-Mansfield and NECIC to address the educational attainment of Black men and women to improve job and economic success, she said.
“These are all community issues that we all need to be partnering on to address. A rising tide lifts all boats so we have to work to lift everyone because when we do, it benefits everyone,” Hight said.
The eight-day Equity Challenge, which runs through Nov. 21, allows will allow participants to receive daily emails or text messages with links to videos, podcasts and/or reading assignments, each aimed at exploring the impact of systemic racism in the following areas:
Day 1 — Implicit bias and wealth gap
Day 2 — Business
Day 3 — Criminal Justice
Day 4 — Education
Day 5 — Employment
Day 6 — Healthcare
Day 7 — Housing
Day 8 — Mental health
Sign up for the challenge here.
If anyone has signed up for the challenge and not received an email, organizers ask they check their “spam” folder on their email service.
