How to Build a First-Class Educational System for the U.S. History

We always focus on the process of education, talk a lot about technology in and out of the classroom but very few times an educator or journalist has the courage to voice his/her concerns about the color of skin or race of children attending American schools. Esther J. Cepeda takes the lead and makes her point to stress that 'colorblindness' is necessary to fix education in the U.S.

It is the year 2009, folks, there is absolutely no reason why the National Center for Education Statistics should be releasing a report about a Black/White achievement gap for U.S. school children to the exclusion of Hispanic students, not to mention Asian and many other ethnicities.

And no reason why newspapers and television and radio stations across the country should be reporting on this admittedly sad state of affairs (see Illinois numbers here) while excluding the context of every other struggling kid in the U.S. – be they poor and white, from a foreign country, or Latino.

Esther says that even when the Hispanic community has grown to overpass the African Americans, still American media lacks the interest to make those comparisons we were used to between White vs. Black. Shouldn't they be posting headlines about a special report highlighting Hispanics? Esther continues (the bold part is ours):

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released a statement Tuesday in which he said: This report makes clear that … when schools serving children of color are primarily staffed by less experienced, less effective teachers, the effects are tragic.

He is wrong because the part about less effective teachers is a true statement for every child, even poor white or Asian ones.

And that’s how we need to look at this problem if we have any hope of fixing it. Enough of trying to overhaul our education system while looking at the issue through the prism of a black/brown/white/blue-eyed/brown-eyed divide.

Recommended: Autism as Academic Paradigm