Testing cf. Knowledge

One of the good things about laundry day is that I’m given the opportunity to get out and be social for at least three hours that day. It gives me the chance to meet other people, share in conversation with them, learn something from them, gain new knowledge. And this past Monday was no different.

This time, my laundry buddy (I’ll call her Shelly) and I struck up a conversation because she was wearing a dress that looked like one I recently bought but haven’t had the courage to wear yet. She confirmed that we’d bought from the same store and that it was probably the same style. And then we started getting acquainted.

She has a young child and is concerned about the quality of education that she’ll receive when she needs to go from the nursery school she’s presently attending and into First Grade. The child is already writing in cursive as well as reading and writing sentences. We talked about the private school options available in the neighborhood and in the community. One thing we both observed is that the Los Angeles Unified School District in our community is not serving its constituents well. Sending the child to a public school is causing Shelly great concern.

She shared her experience with East Coast universities compared with what she experienced here in California. She admitted that the East gave her much more of a challenge. I didn’t ask if the challenge could have been attributed to her freshness to Life and inexperience but took her words at face value. She also shared that CSUN offered very little challenge. Her academic exposure has been in one of the more difficult sciences, pharmacology, and urban planning. She’s also worked at City Hall and gained insight into how things operate there. Now she works part time as a tutor.

I told her it’s as though the teachers either don’t care about their charges or else are so overwhelmed that they cannot do what they were hired to accomplish. The other explanation is that the teachers aren’t qualified to handle the work. Shelly felt the observations were entirely correct but was slightly reticent to admit as much. She just kept praising the excellence of the preschool she’s found and looks forward to finding the next school that will present as much challenge and learning as it does.

At the risk of sounding pompous in that previous paragraph, I’ll supply a little background to my words. I was a candidate for the School Board in South Pasadena in 1989. During the campaign, I interviewed several of the teachers in the district to get a feel for their needs. Likewise, I paid close attention at the School Board meeting when the exchange students from Germany provided their feedback on their experience with American schools (especially upper middle class schools such as South Pasadena, a close rival of San Marino and La Canada). Additionally, I listened carefully as I talked to students about their impression of their learning experience. I was interested in the types of young people I was meeting and what the schools were producing.

The teachers complained that they’re given so much administrative work that they can’t do what they were hired to do — teach. There’s not enough time to do it. The next complaint was insufficient supplies and equipment in order to deliver state of the art instruction on equipment that is currently part of the work world. Even with a classroom aide, the teachers were being stretched to the point of snapping. Still, the South Pasadena schools were measuring up on the Stanford 9 exams and going toe to toe with San Marino year after year.

Parents in the community complained about the fact that they were reaching into their own pockets to keep the schools on par. They spoke of the dollars spent on public education for their children and wondered whether it would be more cost effective to simply give up on South Pasadena schools and send the youth to private schools instead. Financially speaking, it was becoming the same as doing so without the assurance that the charges would succeed as well as in the other environment. But then by choosing a private school, the youth no longer had that distinction of saying they were South Pas grads.

The exchange students were quite direct in their assessment and very unreserved in expressing it. They were bewildered at the amount of homework required every night. Several said it was as though the amount of learning was measured by the volume of homework assigned. But the homework was poor in quality and taught very little. At home, they would have about 20 minutes of homework that was rich in challenge compared with one hour or more of American homework that was very easy and quite repetitious.

How interesting it was to finally have power in the house again this morning and the ability to hear the news. The story that caught my attention most was the one regarding schools and how much training the students actually receive compared with the volume of homework that is meaningless in content. Students withstood volumes of testing that didn’t seem to justify the basis for the testing. It was merely to test in order to say that the students were tested. Did Shelly share our conversation with someone in the media? That wasn’t possible. Why would a reporter want that story? What newsworthiness could there be in a laundromat conversation about education? But there was the story, complete with an expert who has conducted a study of the topic and who had come to the same conclusion.

What does this say about the education we’re providing our youth? What does this say about the workforce readiness of those who seek careers and high positions? It says we’re not properly training them. It says we’re not providing the types of meaningful challenges that will benefit them in the real world. Thus, when it comes time for them to perform at peak levels, they will crumple as they reach. They will crumple for many reason.

• They were not prepared
• They didn’t understand the fundamentals of the task, therefore, they overlooked many small details
• They weren’t sure of when to ask questions
• They weren’t sure of what questions to ask
• They relied on the advice of friends and comrades
• They overlooked the advice and counsel of veterans
• They took the easiest way
• They did not plan
• They waited for someone else to do for them
• They had the impression that “professional” meant stylish
• They had the impression that “leadership” mean bullying and forcefulness

Even if they do not gain these skills and knowledge sets in school, the reinforcement (or procurement) needs to happen in the workplace. To the extent there are supervisors who also do not know (or remember) the whys of the practices nor take the time to explain the bases for doing things in a particular order, we will continue with the losses and setbacks that are part of the talent loss and corporate guerrilla warfare for qualified workers.

Whether in school or in the workplace, the lack of proper training, homework anemic in content, challenges bereft of meaningful achievement and comprehension will take a toll on the social fabric. No miracle savior of any magnitude will be able to turn the tides nor save us from our destruction.

It all starts with proper training, sound education, testing that searches for meaningful measures of learning — not testing for the sake of testing.

Still Standing for the Cause

There are times when we go through situations that are most disagreeable. Unsavory as they are, unacceptable to the typical, forward-looking person, there are those who see no flaw in the circumstances because that is obviously where the person is supposed to be. They are among their kind. These individuals are progressing as they are supposed to be (which is actually stagnating and not being challenged in any meaningful way). These people are free to live wherever they want as long as it’s in the same or lesser environment of where they’re expected to be. Goods and services are acquired appropriate to the person’s standing. There is freedom of self expression in whatever manner chosen, so long as it’s among a particular class of people. Boundaries should be respected.

That description sounds like life from some foreign planet. It sounds like a brochure for a communist country tour or a visit to some place still existing under dictator rule. Actually, it’s a description of life for a typical 21st Century resident in a United States ghetto.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has established unequivocal standards that relate to fair employment practices. One would expect that after more than 50 years, those rules and regulations would be part of every person’s subconscious and guide them to make proper decisions as well as act in a reasonable way when sourcing, recruiting, screening, and hiring. But they don’t. More examples are reported each week.

Even in the recruiting industry, there are those who proudly beat their chests and boast about how ethical they are. Yet these are the very same people who will attempt to have the applicant exclude themselves from being considered by asking them questions that tend to disqualify rather than demonstrate higher qualifications. What the applicants who survive this screening-out process gain is an opportunity at a lower salary because of the lack of skills they have to offer. It tends to be Jim Crow in treatment.

Again, prime examples of race-based pay inequities abound. Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and education centers abound with the evidence. According to a 1998 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, the difference between compensation received for work (and education that qualifies the individual for it) among black women compared with Asians was .857% and between black to white workers was .9724% for the same position. In other words, blacks could expect to earn at least 3 cents less than their white counterparts and 15 cents less than their Asian ones.

This reduced starting (and therefore long-term) salary keeps certain races and individuals locked into an ever downward spiraling path of lack of opportunity. It may look like they are getting work. But many times the work that is offered actually constitutes permanent under-employment. The only hope the person has of advancing their career is to change jobs because, unlike their initial hiring process, they will be passed over for all promotions unless they are quite aggressive in their pursuit of something more advanced.

These lesser positions and opportunities are partially hinged on the not-so imaginary inferior quality of education that is delivered in black neighborhoods, especially the ghettos, compared with what is supposed to be a level playing field of equal education and exposure to challenging concepts that will develop the critical thinking minds and talent we so desperately need in 2018. Teachers are saddled with not only inferior quality supplies and resources. They are also burdened with inordinate amounts of administrative paperwork. Couple those obstacles with students who come to school ill prepared because they may have been deterred by any number of factors, and you have a powder keg of disenfranchisement that can be blamed on any and every part of “The System.”

As with the times before the EEOC, before the 1950s, people no longer rock the boat with protests of unfair opportunity or unequal opportunity. Instead, they quietly take whatever they can get in order to support their own selves and their families. Stakes, as always, are high. There are bills to be paid, rent that always comes due or resort to living on the streets. But the salaries the minorities can command are so much less than that of others that the quality of goods and services that can be consumed is also lacking. The ripples of unfair employment practices spread across the pond and touch on every aspect of business and life as we know it.

It no longer does any good to protest the wrong. To do so is to be one who makes waves and is uncontrolled and uncontrollable, prone to violence at the least provocation. The solution is to shut up the noise and get rid of it by whatever means is expedient.

We stand today looking forward to a new horizon of opportunity and a promise of change from the status quo. We have a new president who has been elected on the merit of who he is and how he conducts himself, not on what he is. What he actually represents is another statement about being an American. He is a blend of races that came to these United States. He is an example of one family’s struggle to make ends meet and strive to be a little better than the previous generation. He is one who knows the history of this country and appreciates the foundations upon which all of the lessons are based. From that type of knowledge and awareness, there can be growth and improvement.

With grit, tenacity, hard work, and adapting to the many cultures surrounding him, Barack Obama has succeeded in being the the President of Change. Change is desperately needed. Nay, it is required. He prepares to step into his office on Tuesday with the state of the Nation in shambles scattered about the floor. The leadership of the previous administration was in word only, not in execution. The world is breathing a sigh of relief and pensively waiting for the first strokes of the man who will bring order back to the Nation of leaders.

We now have the daunting task of getting shell-shocked troops out of countries where they should not have been sent in the first place only to bring them back to home soils where there are no jobs. There are few job opportunities for those who never left the States while they face high rates of layoffs. Wages are not desirable. Rents are high. Housing is next to impossible to find because lenders are foreclosing on more properties than gaining revenue from the risk. Perhaps we should become a nation of Peace Corps enlistees who live from the basics of the land and build up. Is it realistic for us to look back to an agrarian economy? As long as agri-business isn’t involved, that could be one of the solutions.

It was about 50 years ago that we marched on Washington singing and chanting and joining hands to demand Freedom Now. We listened as the charismatic King told us of how we were on our way to the Promised Land of Opportunity. But we now stand looking at that prospect and dare not breathe lest the dream vanish before our eyes.

Do we have anyone in our numbers, of whatever race or mixture, who is willing to call the injustices when they’re encountered and strive to create the corrections, turn the thinking, to the directions where there truly is an open door for those who have worked to enter it? We look forward to this inauguration and are hopeful. But we look toward this inauguration with two generations of people who no longer remember why all of these inroads are landmark.

Instead, those two generations ask “What’s Going On?” while those who were not even in their teens attempt once more to explain who the leaders were, what causes existed, why they were important and mattered. They hope by sharing the stories the younger generations will be infused with a desire to learn those lessons and names. There is a hope that they will strive to pick up the gauntlet and continue where others fell short.

We need to once again reflect on our American freedoms before we begin to formulate the response to these new generations. But we, all of us, no matter what color or ethnicity, need to be certain of the many promises this land held for us in the 1600s when the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. And then we need to find ourselves still standing for the causes they represent. Finally, we need to firmly grasp the reins of change in order to effectuate that change, not run away from the deterioration that has become part of our apathetic reverie. Rather we need to move forward to the progressive realization of The Dream so that it will not have been in vain.