January 2010 Archives

January 26, 2010

A Cautionary Tale

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
Blaise Pascal

A rather long time ago, in 1971, I began my teaching career in a tiny farming community just outside El Paso. It was one of the poorest school systems in Texas. More than half of my students were first generation citizens who spoke English as a second language. Because I earned a beginning teachers' pay and owned my own car, I was considered well to do. Because I was a 21 year old woman living alone far from family, I was considered unconventional. Because I wanted my students to have access to the world beyond our little town, I was viewed as a idealist. But because the community was kind; and because I tried hard, cared passionately, and invested myself deeply, I was accepted and I had the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the young people of that town. I had the best of intentions. This is the story of one of my students. Only the names have been changed.

Luci, like most of my students, was Hispanic. She was quiet, serious, and shy to the point of timidity, but she was curious about everything and had a huge appetite for learning. I thought she was special, and when I made a home visit her mother told me that I was her favorite teacher. But she was concerned because Luci planned to drop out of high school to get married. She wanted Luci, her only child, to graduate from high school and maybe get a job in an office, and she hoped I could influence Luci to finish her education. Luci stayed in school and she became my protégé and I, her mentor. By the time she started her senior year, she had set expectations higher than the secretarial job her mother had envisioned for her. Luci had a dream; not only did she want to finish high school, she wanted to go to college and become a teacher, just like me.

Luci was accepted to Texas Tech. Only a few of our students went away to college. Her parents were so proud of her, but I knew that they would have preferred that she aimed a little lower and stayed a little closer to home. Luci's mother cried and her father worried. Who would take care of their little girl? It helped that Sam, one of the two African American students in the class, was headed to Texas Tech as well. Luci and Sam had known each other all their lives, they lived on the same block, and the two families shared their excitement and concerns and the long 250-mile drive to Lubbock. Luci's parents were reassured -- she would have a connection to home.

Over winter break of her sophomore year, 1975, Luci came to see me. She loved college, her grades were good, she had made new friends, and she confided that the connection she and Sam shared had become more than friendship. They were in love and were planning to announce their intentions to marry to their parents. I questioned whether they might have mistakened loneliness for love, but she was adamant. I was concerned that they might have underestimated the pressures associated with an interracial and interfaith marriage; but she was calm and determined. Being together was their priority and she said that they'd just deal with the rest of it.

There was a great deal of dealing to be done. Both Luci and Sam's parents had been glad to see their children be friends. Marriage was quite another story. There was no Catholic priest or Baptist minister, or walk down the aisle in a wedding gown. Luci and Sam married quietly in Lubbock, far away from home. When I saw her mother around town, she turned and walked away.

It was only a couple of years later that I walked away as well. I was married too; and my husband and I were moving east to Dallas. I lost track of most of the people from that little town in Texas, so I was surprised when I got a call from Luci one summer day in 1977. She and Sam were in town for a job interview. Luci had dropped out of college to work while Sam finished his engineering degree. She had been a secretary, just like her mother had wanted. When I asked about her education, Luci told me that the plan was for her to go back and graduate before they started a family.

Sometimes we can plan our lives like clockwork, and sometimes our lives control our plans. Luci didn't go back to school because she was pregnant. Sam had a job offer from Luci's employer, and they decided to stay in Lubbock. With a first grandchild on the way, they began rebuilding their relationship with parents.They were making the long drive from Lubbock, going home for Christmas, when the wreck happened.

You have to drive in far west Texas to appreciate just how lonely it can be out there. You can drive for an hour without seeing another vehicle. When Luci and Sam had a blowout in the Davis mountains, there was no one else around. Sam was pinned in the car, and Luci was thrown from the vehicle. His back was broken, but he survived. Luci lasted for almost an hour, but no one came, and he listened as she died.

I think it was the school counselor who tracked me down to tell me. She thought I should come back to that little town to attend the funeral. She said it might be helpful to the families. But I was pregnant myself and I wasn't at all sure I would have been welcome. I didn't want to risk the probability that her parents traced the beginning of the loss to me. I doubt that they have forgiven me. I doubt I would have if it were my only child.

I've never gone back to that town where I started teaching almost 40 years ago, but you can go anywhere on the internet. The old high school has been replaced. Two of my former students are on the School Board. It surprised me that they are 50-something; I forget that I was only five years older than most of them. But they were Luci and Sam's classmates. If Luci were alive, she would be in over fifty, possibly a grandmother.

Last week I asked, "When we encourage students to have big dreams, are we ready to acknowledge we may be asking them to take big risks?" Teachers really do touch the future, and our opportunity to impact student lives is an awesome responsibility. I had good intentions when I dreamed big dreams for Luci. I was young and I meant well, but it never occurred to me that high expectations involved so much risk.

Making a difference could have unforeseen consequences. Every day, teachers touch lives; but good intentions are not enough. When we open doors for our students, we must proceed with great care and caution.

Posted by Susan Graham at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

January 18, 2010

Counting the Cost

When I laid out my concerns about Houston's YES Prep program, the issue that concerned me most was not the loftiness of the vision, but rather to question to whom that vision belonged. My question is whether we fully consider the potential damage that can be caused by imposing our own dreams and ambitions on impressionable young people. I must admit that I was surprised that no one accused me of not having "high expectations for all learners."

So, since no one else asked -- I'll offer the question I expected from others of myself: "Should any student be denied access to college?"

No, college is an opportunity to enrich the mind and the pocketbook. I liked it so much that I keep going back. In my dream world, I'd spend my first year of retirement at Oxford. But we are more likely to hear the argument that it increases the odds for a better income and thus, "entrance into the middle class." The promoters of college-for-all regularly reference the 2002 report based on data drawn from the 1998 census That study projects average lifetime earnings of $2.1 million for college graduates. The earnings of a high school graduate are projected at $1.2 million. Those holding an associates degree could expect to earn $1.6 million, while the average high school graduate's projected income was $1.2 million. The study does not attempt to address other factors that might impact the attainment of lucrative employment such as personal goals, ambition, or connections to the larger community.

That an inner city minority student, the son of a hard working carpenter, could go to Cornell because he set high goals and worked hard certainly embraces the American Dream. Like Rocky Balboas of the classroom, we want to to see these students buck the odds, Stand and Deliver, and show proof that Yes, We Can.

That's all great, but it is a huge jump from "no student should be denied access" to "every student should aspire to enrollment in a four-year university upon graduation from high school."

As I read about the YES Prep seniors and their quest, I noticed that there seemed to be a pattern of applications to out-of-state and private colleges, and I wondered about that. I noticed that one student spoke of an out-of-state school as her "back up." As we know, private and out-of-state enrollment greatly inflates both the cost of tuition and the peripheral costs that come with being farther away from home. Would it be so awful to go to Rice University or even my alma mater, the University of North Texas? Of course, there is financial aid, and FAFSA applications were part of the Senior Seminar. And, yes, these are minority students from low-income families who are likely to qualify for Pell grants. But then I read

Pell Grants now cover only about a third of the average costs at a four-year public school, compared with 42% in 2001-02 and 57% in 1985-86. The same trends can be seen for four-year private schools, where the grants now cover only 14% of expenses, compared to 26% in 1985-86. The Congress last increased the maximum annual Pell grant in 2003-04, when it was increased by a mere $50 to $4,050. Meanwhile, college costs (average published tuition, fees, and room and board [TFRB] charges) at four-year public colleges are up by about 25% from five years ago.

Does this explain the push toward privates? Some of the most prestigious schools practice need-blind admission policies and have large endowments that can be tapped to bridge the financial gap. But all over the country, public high schools, charter schools, and even private prep school scholarship students are competing for acceptance to the same schools. And the "need-blind" policies may be shifting. It was discouraging to read in The Washington Post that

[W]hile about two dozen of the country's top-tier colleges and universities -- schools such as Harvard and Princeton, Williams and Amherst -- are maintaining these policies and, in a few cases, expanding their financial commitments to low- and moderate-income students, at schools just below this tier, admissions are becoming more "need aware." These schools are now making some admissions decisions with an eye to an applicant's ability to pay, and some are unofficially reserving new seats for those who can pay full freight.

I hope everyone one of the YES seniors get into the school of their choice. I hope everyone of them gets all the funding they need to go there. I hope they beat the not so great statistical odds of college completion and all graduate with honors. I hope that after graduation they fulfill the Youth Engaged in Service vision and come back to make Houston, Texas a better place where more children will be able to achieve their dreams and build a better life.

But I fear that with the best of intentions, caring and committed people sometimes impose their dreams on young people without calculating the price of making dreams come true. Sometimes our vision leaves us blind to repercussions and even potential harm that could result from our attempts to do good.

I do not say these things lightly because I speak from personal experience. I hope that next week I can summon the courage to tell you about Rosemary, my former student, for whom I had a dream.

I meant well.

Posted by Susan Graham at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

January 08, 2010

Maybe This Time....

Everybody loves a winner and Youth Engaged In Service Prep North Central charter school is pushing hard to win. The goal: 100% college enrollment for their first senior class of this school where most of those seniors will be the first in their families to go to college. In fact,

To earn a high school diploma, each student at YES Prep Public Schools, a growing Houston-area network of charters that predominantly serves children from low-income and minority families, must be accepted into at least one four-year college or university.

Going to college is a great thing.This YES school pulls its students from a lottery with more than 4,000 applications, so obviously parents believe in it as well.

But here's what worries me:There are 43 seniors in the Class of 2010. But there were 100 who started off together in sixth grade back in 2004. What became of the others? Did they move? Did their parents fail to meet the expectations of the parental contract that is a condition of enrollment at YES Prep? Did they drop out? Were they counseled out?

"We know that a lot of things outside school that have little to do with academics will affect academics," said North Central school director Mark DiBella. "So we try to create a support system at this school. When they go back into their neighborhoods, they can hearken back to this community of like-minded people."

How supportive is a system that allows more half of its candidates to slip through the cracks? If there is a waiting list, why didn't YES open the door to 57 students who were not luck enough to be selected as first round winners in the YES enrollment lottery? Were the others deemed insufficiently like-minded to remain or become members of this community? Or were they simply causalities to the Youth Engaged in Service mission statement, since:

So much was riding on this. The reputation of a charter school built around the mission of sending every student to college. The hopes of parents who wanted more for their children than they had attained. The expectations of younger siblings, schoolmates and friends hungry for role models. And above all, the dreams of 43 North Central seniors determined to turn stereotypes and statistics upside-down.

Forty-three seniors are trying to make it over the wall. Hear what they have to say:

"We are the leaders here. We have to set the record for everyone else to follow."

"Going up to your senior year, you don't get it yet. You just work hard because teachers tell you to do it and you have to trust it will pay off."

"Now, I've been out there, away from my parents. It makes it harder for me to think about staying in Houston for school."

"If I don't get an education, I'll be letting all the people who support me down and I'll be proving the people who don't believe in me right."

"Now I say: 'I'm going to college and you're not."

"Everyone's on the same page here. It's like physics, like Newton's law. Something stays in motion unless something negative stops it. Here, there is nothing negative to stop us."

I hear a lot about achievement and accomplishment and it is admirable, but I don't hear much about Youth Engaged in Service. Yes, Newton was right, something stays in motion unless something negative stops it. There is nothing negative to stop students from achieving at YES Prep North Central. Small classes. Longer days. Saturday school. Parent involvement. Two full time counselors to focus on college placement for the 43 seniors and 60 juniors. A senior seminar period to work on SAT prep, resumes, and applications. But can or will all of the four-year colleges where these students are accepted make the same level of commitment to the success of the 43 members of the YES Prep Class of 2010?

I admire these kids, they have done well; but I wonder about what comes next. College acceptance doesn't necessarily result in enrollment. And college matriculation does not necessarily result in college graduation. And college graduation does not necessarily result in economic or social stability. And economic and social stability does not necessarily lead to a desire to serve the greater good of the community. I am concerned about what will become of these and many other students who have spent four years focused on the prize of college acceptance -- with the assumption that it comes with a guarantee of living happily ever after.

Just a month earlier at a parent-student conference, Elizabeth had cried as she talked about moving away from Houston. Now, she said, "I'm sure everything's going to be OK. I hope so."

Oh Elizabeth, I hope so too.

Posted by Susan Graham at 7:10 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend