October 11, 2010 Issue
Letters from our readers.
Class Wars
Nicholas Lemann offers a nuanced, sane response to the so-called crisis in education (Comment, September 27th). The fact that we are undertaking a huge experiment in public education seems an elementary admission, but it is usually absent from the debate. Too often we are asked to categorize public education as working (by teachers' unions, of which I am a member) or not working (see Oprah's promotion of "Waiting for 'Superman' "). To judge such a large-scale, complex system without acknowledging the gray areas may make for good television, but neither is it helpful for public conversation nor does it offer feasible solutions for the students and teachers who need them.
Angela Beeley
Ontario, Calif.
Lemann's position that things aren't so bad in American public education is belied by facts that he adduces. He readily admits the "heartbreakingly low quality of the education that many poor, urban, and minority children in public schools get." Only fourteen per cent of African-American and seventeen per cent of Latino eighth graders achieved proficiency in reading on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, compared with forty-one per cent of white and forty-five per cent of Asian eighth graders. In math, the gaps were even greater (twelve per cent for African-Americans and seventeen per cent for Latinos compared with forty-four per cent for whites and fifty-four per cent for Asians). Minority groups represent thirty-five per cent of the population today and are already a majority in two of the country's three largest states. Research shows that by 2018 nearly two-thirds of all new jobs will require more than a high-school diploma, but today, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, barely half of African-American, Latino, and Native American students graduate from high school. (African-American students graduate at fifty-four per cent, Latinos at fifty-six per cent, and Native Americans at fifty-one per cent, versus seventy-seven per cent of their white counterparts.) When so many Americans are subject to a "heartbreakingly low quality of education," and when the achievement gap hasn't narrowed in almost thirty years—what is this if not a crisis?
Joel Klein, Michael Lomax, and Janet Murguía
Co-chairpersons, Board of Directors
The Education Equality Project
(Klein is the chancellor of New York City schools. Lomax is the president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund. Murguía is the president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza.)
Lemann writes that "education is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution." He is correct if, like most Americans, he is thinking only of the United States Constitution. But every American state has its own constitution, and all of them mention education. The oldest state constitution, the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, drafted by John Adams, rather charmingly states, "Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them."
Sanford Levinson
University of Texas Law School
Published in the print edition of the October 11, 2010, issue.
More:Blacks (African-Americans)CrisisGraduation RatesHispanics (Latinos)Indians (Native-Americans)MinoritiesNicholas LemannOprah WinfreyPublic EducationSchoolsTeachersUnions
By Nicholas Lemann