DiversityInc - January/February 2009

And please, let’s not talk about the responsibility of parents when it comes to hungry children. Let’s just feed the kids.

To get to equity in outcome, we’ll have to come to grips with the fact that the typical school schedule is simply inappropriate for most places in the country, especially underperforming districts. There are no cows to milk in the inner cities, so there’s no reason for students to go home at 3 p.m. In most cities, there are no crops to tend to in the summer, so the students can stay in school all year long. Further, a recent New Yorker article presented research that demonstrated that poor teachers have a higher impact than poor schools. Let’s get to a place where we pay teachers for accomplishment, not just the amount of time on the job.

You didn’t mention immigrants in your e-mail, but let me add that studies show that learning English is more important than learning the coursework. If we’re going to have secure borders and a coherent society, then we need a common language, and it’s the obligation of “we the people” to provide that education up front.

Is this going to cost money? You bet it will, but not over the long run. Imposing the condition of equitable outcome would create the greatest economic development boom ever seen in our country. The government conducted a study and found that the GI Bill (which gave returning World War II and Korean War veterans free higher education) had a SEVEN-to-ONE return on investment when you consider tax revenue from better-educated people.*

In this time of economic crisis, is there a better way to spend federal and state funds?

In closing, I agree with you about a shift in “cultural emphasis,” but not in the way you framed it. The burden isn’t on just Black people; it’s on all Americans. The change in “cultural emphasis” needs to be that we no longer accept differences in outcome that are based on race. Equity in outcome is the only way to build a sustainable country in a global economic environment.