Compare that with Charlotte's Randolph Middle School. On the morning of February 11, Principal Jackie Menser announced that "precise" was the word of the day. In every class Menser dropped by, from special education to advanced algebra, students flagged her down. "It is impossible to know the precise number of french fries on my lunch tray," said one. Menser smiled and placed a colorful sticker in the student's notebook. "It is remarkable," Menser says, "what middle school students will do for a sticker."
advertisement
Does money matter? The failings of black education in America have been linked to many root causes, key among them the nation's original sin of slavery and the lingering legacy of Jim Crow. Since well before Brown, many have believed that the education of black children has been hampered by a related factor: inadequate funding. In 1940, southern states spent more than twice as much on white schools as on black. Today, large urban schools and their suburban counterparts spend roughly equal amounts. But because of the problems of poverty, many advocates argue that majority black and Hispanic center-city schools need far more money than majority-white suburban schools.
The view that money would go a long way toward solving the problems of minority schooling prevails in Elizabeth Davis's class at D.C.'s Sousa Middle School. As part of a project on how the school is faring 50 years after Brown, Davis is having her eighth graders brainstorm a list of things that Sousa needs. Angela Oladiji, 14, notes with irony that although Sousa's 50-year-old library books are a problem, the bigger issue is that the library has been closed since the school laid off the librarian in December. With prompting from Davis, other students list things they would like to see, including working computers, repaired windows, and a recreation room.
Sousa undoubtedly needs a library. And the state of the facilities in too many poor schools is horrifying. But it's unclear that money itself will bring success. In 1966, sociologist James Coleman found that school budgets had little effect on academic performance. The point has been hotly argued ever since. Kansas City famously poured millions into expensive magnet school programs, trying to spend its way to academic excellence. Such efforts did not succeed. Today, many reformers say that while denying the importance of money is foolish, how a school spends its money is as important as how much it spends. D.C. spends about $10,000 per student, putting its spending slightly above nearby Montgomery County, Md., a wealthy suburb known for its top-notch schools. By contrast, Charlotte currently spends $7,288 per student. Washington "doesn't suffer from a lack of resources," says Paul Ruiz, the city's former chief academic officer.
One student in Davis's class has a different idea about what the school system suffers from: "We need teachers who are willing to help students learn," eighth grader Dozje Brown tells the class. Too many kids keep quiet, out of fear of the kind of teasing that occurred in Novak's class, she says later. "You don't want to say, `I don't know,' because you'll look bad."
Previous Page
