Dr. Boyd

       

This past week the interns met with Dr. Richard Boyd, Mississippi's first appointed state superintendent of education. In speaking with Dr. Boyd, the massive overhaul needed to improve public education, not just in Mississippi, was quite apparent. For, as Dr. Boyd pointed out, school reforms have all been focused on the inside of the schoolhouse, a small portion of the student’s life. Reform, whatever form it may be in, needs to address the forces which enter the classroom at the heels of students, none more powerful than poverty.

          In a 2009 NAEP study, Mississippi ranked dead last and third from last in family income and parent education. Mississippi also ranked third from last and dead last in 4th grade reading proficiency and 8th grade math proficiency. That is no coincidence. Students coming from poverty, especially when lacking sufficient pre-kindergarten education (which is almost always), are absent more, learn less, and are far more likely to drop out, go to jail, and have unhealthy, unhappy lives. This is not disputed. But, as Steven Reinberg pointed out in his recent HealthDay article posted June 9th, 2011, "there is a gap between what we know and what we fund." Bill Gates et al. can pour as much money into new educational methods as they want, but until the larger issues are addressed, the problems will persist. For, as Dr. Boyd explained, it doesn't simply take a village, it is about the village itself that we must be concerned.
           
            The increasing chasm between those who receive a quality education and those who do not is quickly redefining our country’s global standing. Dr. Boyd shared with us a recent study of the twenty four member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The countries were ranked on the material well-being, educational well-being, and health well-being of their children. Out of twenty-four countries, the United States finished second to last. The only country worse than us was Slovakia. Our students are poor, poorly educated, and extremely unhealthy. The United States has the largest poverty class of any industrialized nation and it is quickly growing. If measures are not taken to address this issue, which is not limited to matters of education, the soon-to-be majority minority population will be relegated to an uneducated lower class with few prospects for escape. This path is not nationally beneficial, economically, politically, socially, or morally and those who claim to be real patriots ought to be concerned. This divergence of opportunity will increasingly define what it means to be an American: rich or (for the vast majority) poor. When the original GI Bill was signed, it was hailed as a landmark achievement. Education was truly believed to be the great equalizer. Not it has become the great separator, knocking people down rather than helping them up.