Re-Thinking Community--- NCLB and It's Failures Pt. II

If Americans are serious about closing the achievement gap, we need to expand our ways of thinking about community. Currently, policy work and community activism center around solving the social problems of 'dysfunctional' communities, or communities with the outward signs of poverty, neglect, crime, and violence. For example, the current logic says that if a community has a significant number of boarded up houses, those houses need to be torn down, or re-habbed, or replaced by a viable substitute such as mixed-use development. In the case of East Baltimore Development Inc., their “New Eastside” aspires to be a “vibrant, mixed-income community,” which includes an education initiative of a new community school, and the “economic engine” of a Johns Hopkins Science and Technology Park. In its ideal form, the current mindset identifies problems and allocates resources to solve those problems to 'dysfunctional' communities. No jobs? Let's create jobs. Not enough 'highly qualified' teachers? Let's bring them in. I am even a product of this mindset, moving to Baltimore from California to teach in the city schools through the Baltimore City Teaching Residency.

I suggest that we need a broader approach. We will not close the achievement gap until America as a whole understands that as long as any 'dysfunctional' community exists, our entire social ecosystem is 'dysfunctional.' The broader approach needs to see the achievement gap as an issue not simply of schools failing to educate students, but also of economic, public health, and community safety failures. Even more broadly, what are communities doing outside of Baltimore City to addresses issues of privilege, power, social justice and their roles in the achievement gap? Until ALL Americans confront how racism, classism, and segregation have contributed to the achievement gap, we will not close it, and America as a whole will remain a 'dysfunctional' community.