RIP Jim Crow by virginia stead

Author:virginia stead
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

RECOMMENDATIONS

Castro (2013) calls for adaptations to the widely used Conley College and Career Readiness framework (2010) that centers on race and poverty. Specifically, Castro recommends “protect[ing] students and communities from deficit ideology” (2013, p. 302). As described above, casting the racial inequities of education and higher education as the problem of those who have been disenfranchised not only prevents a solution that brings about equity, but also drives continued inequity, such as the activation of stereotype threat in college readiness assessment.

Related to this, Castro calls for “[clarification of] the use of diagnostic and placement testing” (2013, p. 303) and for a “focus on equitable outreach and outcomes” (p. 304). Those who are setting remedial education policy and practice should consider the environment, preparation, and understanding of those students being subjected to remedial testing and placement, especially in regard to the racialized experience of Black and Brown students. ← 230 | 231 →

In regard to equitability, I return to Ladson-Billings’s (2006) concept of education debt. As she describes, the education debt is the result of long-term inequity in education quality and investment. A considerable part of this lacking investment has been financial. We’ve seen the mostly White suburban school get a new computer lab, while the mostly Black and Brown urban school, in Michael Brown’s case, lacks enough robes for all of the students to get graduation pictures at the same time (Ravitch, 2014; Sumner, 2014). So, in recognizing this economic inequity, solutions to this racial disparity must include financial investment.

If remedial education is offered in the same ways that it is now, it should at least be free to the students who have been left without the educational resources that would allow them to be college ready. If states want to do away with remedial education and send students to private tutoring firms, like that suggested in Colorado, then the states should be paying those fees in a small yet significant step toward alleviating our education debt.

Yet, even within this solution, we still see the money for these programs going into the pockets of White-owned/operated educational organizations. This solution may be palatable to White political and/or corporate leaders in that there is a clear interest convergence (Bell, 1980), where people of color are allowed a social benefit if and when Whites receive an equal or larger benefit.

But if those who are responsible for solving the remedial education and racial disparity crises are truly seeking equity, a better payment toward our education debt would be a CRT-modified learning community in place of traditional remedial education. In these learning communities, former remedial students who have run the remedial gauntlet and succeeded (be they few) would be brought in and trained as paid tutors/mentors for those students who need remedial education. This should be free to remedial students, and it would allow the intervention to be rooted in the experience of the largely Black and Brown students who have experienced remedial education and share life and educational experiences similar to those of students starting college in remediation.

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