Funding schools based on enrollment rather than attendance would be "more equitable," a superintendent told Rick Hess as they waited to go on stage for an event, he writes on Education Next. Chronic absenteeism has doubled, the superintendent said. A third of students miss 40+ days of school.
"You want schools where students show up to get less funding so schools with empty seats can get more?," Hess replied. "How on earth is that equitable?”
Schools don't control whether students come, the superintendent said. "Our students have to work and watch their siblings . . . Just surviving each day is an accomplishment.”
“Some kids face more challenges than others," Hess said. "But I don’t buy that schools are helpless. They can ensure they’re worth attending and have staff talk to families or knock on doors.”
“That’s a very simplistic, very privileged view of the situation,” the superintendent said. "We can’t stomp around giving orders and casting blame. We can’t just tell school staff, ‘Go knock on doors.’ It needs to be a co-created partnership that centers on equity and inclusion.”
That last sentence is a direct quote, writes Hess. And it's not satire.
“You’re saying that a school where only a handful of students show up should get funded as if everyone was there — with a little extra on top — because there’s nothing the school can do?”
The superintendent sighed. Hess was called on stage.
The “soft bigotry of low expectations” used to be considered a bad thing, he writes. "No, under the sway of a truly perverse notion of 'equity,' sophisticates have refashioned low expectations as a sign of compassion and moral superiority."
Years ago, I heard San Jose teachers talking about Pobrecito Syndrome. "Poor baby," he can't be expected to learn like other children -- or even to show up.
The phrase may have been coined by Pedro Noguera, now dean of USC's education school, wrote Esther J. Cepeda in a 2013 Washington Post column. "I use the term 'pobrecito syndrome' to describe those who lower expectations as a form of sympathy for disadvantaged students," Noguera told her via email. "But our students need empathy, not pity, and they need to be challenged."