Introduction
Contributing factors to the failed teaching methods of America's flawed urban educational systems include historical, political, cultural, administrative, teacher preparedness, and the socio-economic conditions of the school settings. These circumstances become exacerbated by the influx of second language immigrants into already failing systems because of lack of quality trained administrators and teachers prepared for the profound demographics of urban school settings.
According to Salisbury and Latique (2004), "Minority children living in America's inner cities suffer disproportionately from a failing education system (p. xv)." This academic exploration of this ongoing educational crisis in America finds the underpinning explanation resides in continuing political and educational institutional racism practices in the 21st century. In addition, urban schools failing to create racially and culturally pertinent curriculums with racially and culturally sensitive and trained teachers make existing alternatives with urban education successes pale against the ongoing faults. It is only through understanding the historical implications affecting the situation today that a clear reasoning emerges for any pragmatic changes to correct the failures.
History Never Taught Us
Brown vs. Board of Education
Salisbury and Lartigue (2004) remind of the landmark ruling over 50 years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court centered on Brown v. Board of Education making America's segregated school system constitutionally illegal. The bottom line message the Court directed American people in sustaining racially separate public education facilities as inherently unequal with no place the United States. However, over half a century since this ruling, 45 percent of African American and 47 percent of American Hispanic students continue dropping out of public schools. This staggering number when compared to the dropout rate of 47 percent of white high school students states the issue of America's teaching methods failing urban students. A 2003 report from the National Center for Education Statistics revealed performance gaps between white and African American students widening further in the past decade and a half (p. xv).
Nothing Changed
Orfield et al. (1996) and Rury (1999) explains the decade following the Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation order, African American populations in urban schools increased to near majority numbers only escalating racial conflicts centered mostly in the larger American northern cities. "Despite protests, schools remained highly segregated, closely mirroring patterns of residential exclusion in urban areas (as cited by Rury, 2005, p. 50)."
Havighurst (1964) writes how this situation in secondary urban schools became evident. By 1963, Chicago's high schools remained extremely segregated by race arising from segregationist practices in residential populations by whites (as cited by Rury, 2005, p. 50). "In all but four schools," according to Harrison (1972), "the student body was nearly 90 percent or more Black or White, despite the fact that the district's population was almost evenly divided between the two groups." In addition, predominantly African American populated schools experienced high dropout rates aligned to poor performance and achievement. Urban schools in other large American cities of the era, proved susceptible to the same conditions reporting the same statistics (as cited by Rury, 2005, p. 50).
Consequently African American migration to northern urban centers showed high levels of segregation of urban school districts or racial isolation between white and African American populations clearly affecting two different academic achievement outcomes (Mirel, 1993; Stolee, 1993; Wells and Crain, 1997 as cited by Rury, 2005, p. 50). Philip and Furlong (2001) explain this further.
Lack of Racial and Culturally Pertinent Curriculum
According to Philip and Furlong (2001) American educational policies in the 1960s tried spreading the racial demographics of students throughout some school districts attempting to prevent urban schools populated by high concentrations of non-white students soon abandoned such a focus. This was despite government offering a theoretical commitment for broadening all racial and socio-economic groups' access to secondary education in America (p. 193).
As outlined in the introduction, the influx at this time of immigrant children also added to the situation, as the need for English language teaching connected to appropriate curriculum was nonexistent as were multi-cultural sensitive curriculums. This ongoing situation through the 20th and the first part of the 21st century contributed directly affecting race and ethnic groups in America's urban school systems negatively (Philip & Furlong, 2001, p. 193).
Systematic Labeling for Failure
The pedagogical method of teaching catered to a white culture as exposed in Intelligent Quotient tests labeling non-whites below normal intelligence.
Richards (1983), Lane (1987), and Gewirtz et al. (1995) explain how particular systems of teaching worked against African Americans and other cultural groups in the urban school settings in America as they still do today. At the same time, lack of necessary funding within political districts receiving less local, state, and federal funding than those predominantly white school districts added to the situation. In addition, "teachers who, if not overtly racist, had no training or awareness of minority issues and the use of special education placement to remove black children from the mainstream" became commonplace until the past 10 years. "The hostility of some white parents to their children being educated alongside racial and ethnic minority children has been an ongoing issue since the 1960s (as cited by Philips & Furlong, 2001, p. 193)." Kirp (1979) describes how, "Local authorities with high numbers of immigrant minority children made policy on an ad hoc basis, but other than encouragement by HMI (Hispanic Mentoring Initiative), there were no national policies to assist in the incorporation and successful education of minority children (p. 40 as cited by Phillips & Furlong, 2001, p. 193)." Masked attempts addressing a national position only embedded such racial and ethnic public school issues under expansive contextual government policies labeling the situation as educationally disadvantaged. "By 1978 it was official policy to subsume minority issues under disadvantage (Phillips & Furlong, 2001, p. 193)." Here again, the literature reveals another cause of the failure in teaching methods on the urban schools because stakeholders - the students - once again are labeled for failure.
A Student Perspective
Theoharis (2009) takes the approach to answering why the teaching failure in American urban public schools getting feedback from the affected students. The findings of the study look at society's dialogue concerning the Brown decision over half a century ago as having "sidestepped the similarities between the schools that educated Black and Latino students in the pre-Brown era and many of those that educate Black and Latino students today." In other words, too much of the public debate continues misrepresenting the existence of segregationists' policies in failed curriculum, ill-prepared teachers, and needed funds going to schools already academically ahead of their urban counterparts. Urban centered student protests took on the "differences in resources, facilities, and teacher pay fundamentally compromised the kind of education Black children were receiving and, accordingly, Black advancement in American society (p. 178)."
Tallying Up the Evidence
Discussion
The literature presented in seeking the answers to America's historically rooted failure to provide adequately responsible teaching to urban schools establishes some core realities. Primary is the institutional racist attitudes of an American public school system that continues labeling non-white students with tags such as disadvantaged, incapable, culturally handicapped as learners. Few culturally responsive teachers ever existed in American public schools in general but markedly so in urban settings where such sensitivity and administrative support was always needed.
Taylor (2010) looks at generational implications revealed after the Brown decision with pedagogical applications to teaching culturally different Americans from the predominant white culture never took place - and remains as such in the majority of American urban schools. By the time urban students, reach the 8th grade where teaching fails to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to this level of academics, the preponderance of dropouts pick up rapidly in the ensuing grades as the students enter high school. No matter the race, teachers harboring negative feelings toward language, cultural, ethnic, socio-economic, and places of origin among their students need to confront their biases because as they have always done, these biases influence their value systems. This in turn, directly influences their relationships with their students resulting in failed teaching practices. "Therefore, teachers must reconcile negative feelings toward any culture, language, or ethnic group (p. 24)."
Cibulka and Boyd (2003) look at the institutional failure of urban school failure and as pointed out this starts with institutionalized racism. The fact remains it is "as being rooted in policy fragmentation and lack of coordination and information among policy actors" to make any relevant changes. Taking a reasonable approach as was set in motion with the No Child Behind legislation while holding accountabilities in the guise of dollars, only tries to put a band-aid on existing policies that failed because no one made them work. Therefore, a "rationalist paradigm begs the question of who will have the authority to transform urban educational systems from low-performing systems to high-performing ones (221)?"
Cibulka and Boyd (2003) also clarify how any system reform strategy "suffers from a certain imprecise and inchoate character." It is the varying plans of system reformers that fail to get to the heart of the matter as explained in the academic exploration - that it is harbingers of ineffectual institutions who care nothing for the stake holders and find the status quo sufficient to perpetuate the insidious implications how making changes historically proves no change (p.. 221).
Conclusion
As posited in the introduction, contributing factors to the failed teaching methods of America's flawed urban educational systems include historical, political, cultural, administrative, teacher preparedness, and the socio-economic conditions of the school settings. The rationales for fixing the problem fill academic shelves with literature. The difference for fixing the urban school crisis in failing its students may reside in the goals of community-based actions to make this faction of public schools turn around its realities.
References
Cibulka, J., & Boyd, W. L. (Eds.). (2003). A Race against Time: The Crisis in Urban Schooling. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Phillips, R., & Furlong, J. (Eds.). (2001). Education, Reform, and the State: Twenty-Five Years of Politics, Policy, and Practice. London: Routledge Falmer.
Salisbury, D., & Lartigue, C., Jr. (Eds.). (2004). Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown v. Board after Half a Century. Washington, DC: Cato Institute.
Rury, J. L. (2005). 3: Democracy's High School? Social Change and American Secondary Education in the Post-Conant Era. In H. S. Shapiro & D. E. Purpel (Eds.), Critical Social Issues in American Education: Democracy and Meaning in a Globalizing World (3rd ed., pp. 45-69). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Taylor, R. W. (2010, Spring). The Role of Teacher Education Programs in Creating Culturally Competent Teachers: A Moral Imperative for Ensuring the Academic Success of Diverse Student Populations. Multicultural Education, 17(3), 24+.
Theoharis, J. (2009). Conclusion. In G. Alonso, N. S. Anderson, C. Su, & J. Theoharis (Authors), Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education (pp. 177-214). New York: New York University Press.
