Lower Richmond School has been well regarded by parents, children, and educators for many years. Ms. Bernstein, a fourth-grade teacher, calls Lower Richmond a “cream puff” compared to other city schools. Institutionally, Lower Richmond provides students with a variety of valuable resources: There are a computer laboratory and a computer teacher, as well as specialty teachers for art, music, and gym. The school has a library and a science program specially funded to provide an emphasis on technology. School-sponsored extracurricular activities include a choir and a band; both perform at school, district, and local community events.4 Lower Richmond also puts on a popular spring fair.
Still, the school has its share of problems, ranging from a shortage of teaching supplies, such as paper and art materials, to a shortage of teachers, to an unwieldy administrative structure that can shortchange students’ education. Although teaching in city schools is widely viewed as more challenging than teaching in suburban schools, salaries (as well as expenditures per pupil) are less than in the suburbs. Qualified teachers are not always available. Some students at Lower Richmond experience this teacher shortage at a very personal leveclass="underline" one third-grade class, for example, had a series of different substitutes for their entire school year. District rules do not require classroom rosters to be finalized until several weeks into the school year. As late as mid-October, a child may be reassigned to a new teacher (the district sometimes reconstitutes classrooms in order to meet staffing and budgetary concerns). Other aspects of the district-imposed bureaucracy create difficulties as well. As a teacher explained, a seemingly simple request could require a cumbersome, time-consuming response:
The grandmother called and said that [an after-school program] needed information. And I’m not allowed to give out any written information on a student unless you have the written consent of the parents and something on letterhead [from the requesting organization]. And then the counselor and the principal has to sign it.5
Parents (and educators) often are bewildered and frustrated by district guidelines in academic matters, too. A referral to full-time special education, for example, requires two pre-referrals (each involving efforts to improve the situation without recourse to full-time intervention) before a child can be formally considered for special education. Since each stage takes at least 60 days, and the school year is only 180 days, an entire academic year can elapse without a decision having been made. As I show later in the book, this kind of bureaucratic infrastructure sometimes results in children “slipping through the cracks” as major learning problems go untreated.
During the years of the study, local political figures openly criticized the district for doing a poor job educating children. At Lower Richmond, one of the district’s more accomplished schools, about one-half of each class reads below grade level and about one-third of the fourth-grade cohort is at least two years below grade level. The district is under pressure to raise test scores, but the budget is very limited, and shortfalls occur annually. Unlike in the suburbs, inner-city schools do not have wealthy parent associations capable of supplementing individual site budgets. At Lower Richmond, few parents participate in the Parent-Teacher Association; meetings often have only three or four attendees (usually the officers). Social relations among the teachers are another potential cause for concern. Real tensions underlie a generally cordial atmosphere. Some of the Black teachers feel that white teachers treat certain Black children unfairly, as a Black third-grade teacher charged angrily:
There are some faculty members—some of the children aren’t treated equally. Some Black children with certain reputations did certain things and . . . [got] kicked out to another school. Some white children would do serious things and they would get detention, call parents, or suspensions.
Although white administrators and teachers generally did not agree, other Black educators at the school echoed these concerns.
Relations among the children at Lower Richmond also are strained sometimes. Serious threats to safety are unusual.6 But physical fights between children are common on the playground throughout the week. Teachers estimate that at least one-half of the children have serious life problems, often involving a parent who is absent or incapacitated. The school counselor works regularly with Child Protective Services to address the needs of students she feels are being neglected (e.g., those who come to school in winter without coats) or abused. In a single classroom, it is common to have several children who have “serious issues.” In Mr. Tier’s fourth grade, among the white students, there is Lisa, whose mother left her and who now “lives with her father, who likes to drink to excess”; Thomas, whose mother disappeared one day and, although she eventually returned, still has no contact with her son; and Shaun, whose father “does cocaine, . . . is paranoid, and was arrested twice this year.” Among the Black students in the class, there is Tanisha, who lacks even the most basic school supplies (such as a school bag) teachers prefer students to have. Another student, Toya, is disruptive. She “gets in fights all the time . . . but her mother . . . [instead of reprimanding her daughter, spends her time] explaining to me why it’s not Toya’s problem.” Julius is from a home where “there is a whole history of drug abuse and violence.” Teachers at Lower Richmond note that in addition to being emotionally upsetting, their students’ life problems are academically disruptive. Uniformly, the teachers want their students to arrive at school each day “well groomed” and “prepared to learn.” They also want parents to be involved in their children’s education, to “sign homework, help with projects” and “be positive,” in the words of one fourth-grade teacher.
These expectations are met by some. There are both Black and white children whose parents are steadily employed, as well as those whose parents are energetically striving to move up in the world. In Mr. Tier’s class, there are three such Black children—Isaiah, whose mother is absent but whose father is devoted to him; Morrell, whose mother has “gone back to college to become an elementary school teacher,” and Danielle, whose mother works at “Joe’s Steaks.” There are comparable white children, including those with parents Mr. Tier describes as “upwardly mobile types.”
In sum, Lower Richmond is a school with many positive aspects, particularly in comparison to other schools in the district. Still, it shares with other urban schools core limitations, such as teacher shortages, lower teacher salaries, limited supplies, and a cumbersome bureaucracy. Parents are not a major force in the school, either financially or politically. Students are drawn from racially segregated neighborhoods where historical patterns of land use and market forces limit the availability of large stores. Homes are small and built close to one another, traffic is hectic, and crime is a common concern. Thus, when compared to a suburban school like Swan (described below), Lower Richmond ranks a very distant second on many criteria.
SWAN SCHOOL AND SURROUNDING COMMUNITY
Like Lower Richmond, Swan School serves children from kindergarten through fifth grade. It is located in one of the townships in the suburbs that ring the large northeastern city in which Lower Richmond School is located. Swan, like many other suburban schools, is a sprawling facility. It consists exclusively of one-story buildings that are spread out over the school grounds. The buildings have windows lining one entire wall of each classroom. Although all the windows open, in the fall and spring the classrooms can be sweltering (there is no air conditioning). Outside is an expanse of grass on a gently sloping hill, large enough for multiple games to occur at the same time. Unlike at Lower Richmond, the school playground has an elaborate swing set and bars, with a red-hued mulch of shredded wood under the bars to protect children if they fall. There is no fence around Swan; the entire facility looks open and inviting.