Education, Riots and the Baltimore Schools

I don't have a guest columnist today, but I do have a guest "influencer."  In what I thought was a pretty decent article about the all-too-casual use of the term "income inequality", one comment from an anonymous reader got my attention.  He or she wrote:

"It is a mistake to apply a middle class value, education = work = financial success, to an inner city environment. Liberal thinkers are posing education as the answer to the inner city's problems. Look at the realities. You can't convince a 10-year-old in the inner city that study, school and hard work pay off when the reality is they can made substantially more running drugs and money between the client on the street corner and his drug boss. Either really fight the war on drugs or take the profit out of it by legalizing it. Unfortunately, we can [no] longer afford half measures.

Well said.  If the stereotype holds true, we have this sort of thing going on in Baltimore and, of course, elsewhere:

(1) Over 60% of children born illegitimately and into single-parent households without the influence of (usually) a present father
(2) An active drug-sales culture wherein most, if not all, children by age 12 are fully aware of its existence and the opportunities available to make money participating in it
(3) A prevailing attitude that educational success is to be frowned on as being of a different culture
(4) A school system with money provided, on a per-pupil basis, at a higher rate than most other places
(5) A deeply-rooted teachers union rock-solidly opposed to any steps that could be taken to remove poorly-performing teachers or to implement accountability for student performance
(6) Solidly Democratic leftists in virtually all elected leadership positions in the jurisdiction, including the city leadership and school board, who negotiate contracts with the same union that contributes to their elections.

This will not change on its own.  Why?  It's FTM, folks, the system keeps people in power, and power keeps them employed.  The voters are so ingrained to vote for Democrats, that no ideas that could result in improvement to the system are even able to be aired.

So let's take the commenter's suggestion to discuss legalizing drugs -- and by "drugs", we'll assume crack, cocaine and heroin as a start.  Either way, let's assume that the government, in legalizing them, provides for some manner of distribution, dose-regulated, so that they can be bought and taxed in a way that renders the street market nonexistent.

Forget for the nonce that it can't happen politically, and the FDA would have fun deciding how prescriptions get done, or all the other things that might cause a black market to rise up anyway -- it's actually not relevant.  Let's just stipulate that the illegal drug market, and the opportunities for young people to make money at it, go away.

Hmmmmm.  What then do the youth do?  We would want to hope that the only remaining option is to work through their schools, get high school educations to make themselves marketable, and get actual jobs.  Sure, that requires a cultural overhaul, but let's stipulate that too.

It still boils down to education, particularly K-12 education.  Absent the influence of two-parent households (I'm not stipulating any moral change), there are still two major barriers to fixing the fundamental social decay in that neighborhood through education -- a social, community resistance to educational success, and an institutional (i.e., union-driven) constraint on the accountability of teachers to do a good job.

Right now, a Baltimore-based neurosurgeon is running for president.  I can't imagine much more of a role model for those kids in that neighborhood than someone who lifted himself out of a crappy neighborhood in Detroit, worked hard to get through high school, college and med school, saved a ton of lives on the way, and spoke his way to national prominence.

But how many parents of first-graders in Baltimore are pointing to Ben Carson and telling their kids that they can aspire to be successful in the same way that he did, because they're starting out as poor as he did?  Do we think any parents there are pointing out Dr. Carson as a role model?  At least, are more parents pointing him out than they're pointing out Michael Brown, or Freddie Gray, or Al Sharpton?

And if the parents did -- and if they got their kids to work hard in school, what quality of education might they get?  After all, Baltimore already spends more per pupil than 98 of the 100 largest school systems in the country, aside only from New York and Boston.  Yet over 60% of the age 18+ residents in Freddie Gray's neighborhood do not even have a high-school education.  Were they not inspired by their teachers?  Is none of that huge per-pupil expenditure used to make classroom education interesting?

Do we think that the next teachers union contract might recognize that and provide incentives for high performance and disincentives for material not being communicated well?  (Answer: no)  How about administrators being made accountable for graduation rates?  Do you think the taxpayers of Baltimore who subsidize that school system might like it to be, well, functional?

We can take the drug-selling incentive out of the equation, but the alternative has to be made better.  The left will swear that all we need is to throw more money at the Baltimore schools to make them "better."  Hogwash.  You know what those schools need?  Competition.  They need to be accountable for their fundamental job, which is to deliver a quality education from kindergarten all the way through senior year of high school to prepare each and every student for a profession and/or college.  If 60% of them aren't even finishing, then it's time to blow up the paradigm by which education is delivered.

Dr. Carson, perhaps you should talk to them all.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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