The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

Don Gaetz 
06/13/05

There is a summer tradition in Florida that's as predictable as the onset of tourists from Ohio and storm watchers from the Weather Channel. It's the cry that scholastic standards and academic assessment should be watered down or dispensed with altogether in order to be "fair" to the poor and minorities.

The argument goes like this: children from poor families, children of color, can't be expected to do well when the curriculum is rigorous or testing is tough. There ought to be a different, lesser standard of performance, some contend, if you're not white or rich, or at least middle class.

Masquerading as compassion, this is the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Advocates of this point of view are really saying we should expect less and be satisfied with less from some students because of the color of their skin or the income of their families. It's then a short step to policies and programs which, in effect, create a two-tier education system.

There was a time not long ago when the ugly word segregation was used to describe putting people into different systems based on the color of their skin or the condition of their pocketbook, which often were related.

When Okaloosa Schools became the first in Florida to end social promotion and insist that all students be taught based on the same tougher curriculum and to the same higher standards, we took some hits from the excuses lobby.

We were mindless toadies of Jeb Bush, they charged. The FCAT was racist, they insisted. Lighten up, they urged. Okaloosa Schools would be proven wrong, they predicted, because poor and minority students would not do better, they'd do worse under a more rigorous system.

But, beginning with the 2001-2002 school year, we took the road less traveled anyway.

Our students had to earn their promotions to the next grade strictly on the basis of scholastic achievement, not on some well-meant but ill-conceived notion of artificial self-esteem.

More advanced textbooks were introduced. Assessment of performance became more frequent and more valid.

We recruited hundreds of adult mentors, many from African-American churches and from the military, to inspire and motivate struggling students. One church, Striving for Perfection Ministries, helped find over 200 mentors.

Private sector tutoring services were purchased with public dollars to provide one-on-one assistance before school, after school, on weekends, and during the summers. We bought newspaper subscriptions for some families so, for the first time, children and parents could sit around the kitchen table and read to each other about what's happening in their own communities.

Teaching, itself, was made more effective by carefully diagnosing students' learning problems and then changing methods of instruction to emphasize basics like phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, fluency and reading stamina.

Teachers, principals and, yes, even the Superintendent made house calls to get parents involved in tying privileges at home to performance at school.

The storms of criticism beat around us. But our School Board, our principals, our teachers and our community didn't give in.

Four years later, the results are in.

. Math proficiency among poor students has increased by more than a third. Hundreds more students on free and reduced lunch are reading at or above grade level.

. Academic failures among African-American students have been cut nearly in half.

. Reading proficiency among students with disabilities has nearly doubled. Eighty-three percent more students with learning disabilities are doing math on grade level or years above.

. African-Americans, students with disabilities, and children on free and reduced lunch have posted the greatest learning gains of all our students.

. In 2005, Okaloosa students posted the highest academic achievement of any school district in the state.

. For the fourth consecutive year, our district school grade point average (the melded result of school grades calculated by the Department of Education) was the highest in Florida.

. Every school in the county met federal standards for adequate yearly progress, based on the provisional alignment of state and federal standards.

This isn't to suggest that the battle for common sense in education is finished and we're ready to declare victory. There's still an educational gap between white students and students of color. There's still a difference between the scholastic performance of students from middle class homes and students from homes where next month's rent is far from certain. Because of a generation of "education-lite" delivered to students with disabilities, we still have a long way to go.

Nor do I or our team here have all the answers or even most of them.

But we can say this after four years of doing some of the right things: the soft bigotry of low expectations isn't just morally wrong, it's unsound. In our communities and in our state, when it comes to education policy, it's better to have solutions than excuses.

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