Lessons from the Cities, part two: The Strengths of City Kids
When the recess bell rings at Maple Elementary in Seattle, 400 children spill onto the playground. Principal Eleanor Weisenbach watches her students navigate the tight space. On a single ball field, they manage to squeeze in three games by sharing bases. The same thing happens over on the blacktop, where what looks like room for one foursquare game is plenty big for several. Sharing is a way of life that many of these children learned first in places like China, the Philippines, or Somalia before their families settled on the south side of Seattle. After recess, when Weisenbach peers into classrooms, she sees more good qualities: Students on task, self-directed, self-disciplined. "I see this as a real strength," she says. There are struggles, to be sure, in teaching students whose families are largely poor and may speak little English. Yet for Weisenbach and her teachers, "It’s a joy to be here every day."
Building on the strengths of city kids, rather than tallying up their weaknesses, takes a fundamental shift in thinking about urban education. But it’s a shift that makes sense to researchers, classroom teachers, and administrators who already know plenty about the challenges facing the children of America’s cities.
More than 150 languages are now spoken in America’s public schools, a reflection of recent immigration trends. City schools enroll the lion’s share of these newest Americans. Is this diversity a strength or an obstacle to learning? If seen as a deficit, immigrant students’ limited English skills can look like one more burden for urban districts to bear. Taken as a talent, however, children’s "multilingual abilities may one day give them a distinct advantage in the global marketplace," points out R. Craig Sautter in CITYSCHOOLS, a publication of the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Urban schools, concludes Sautter, "need to develop strategies that build aggressively on the real capacities, experiences, culture, and linguistic attributes of city kids." Such strategies start by thinking of urban children as "of value" rather than "at risk," suggests former Philadelphia superintendent Constance Clayton in City Kids, City Teachers: Reports from the Front Row.
For decades, researchers have been documenting the deficits of urban students and the social ills of the inner cities. Across the country, including the largest cities of the Northwest, achievement gaps remain especially glaring for low-income minority youth. Complex social and economic reasons have left many of these children increasingly isolated from middle-class students and from successful schools, according to Trends and Issues in Urban Education, 1998, a report from the ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education. City kids attending high-poverty schools, according to the ERIC report, tend to have limited exposure to rigorous coursework and experienced teachers—two key factors for boosting achievement.
According to Urban Schools: The Challenge of Location and Poverty, a 1996 report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), students and teachers in urban schools have "greater challenges to overcome in a number of areas compared to their suburban and rural counterparts, even when the higher concentration of poverty in urban schools is considered." Education Week’s Quality Counts, 1998, reports that academic performance is worst in urban schools where the majority of students are poor.
At home, in their neighborhoods, and in school, many city kids do face obstacles that can interfere with learning. It’s a long list, according to NCES, and includes health, family, economic, and social factors that extend well beyond the classroom. Compared with rural and suburban children, urban students are more likely to be exposed to safety and health risks and less likely to receive regular medical care. They’re more likely to be victims of crime. They’re more apt to engage in risk-taking behaviors outside of school and more likely to be disruptive while in class. They’re less likely to attend schools with talented and gifted programs and more likely to be identified as having learning or emotional disabilities. Despite their academic needs, city kids are more likely to be taught by inexperienced teachers. They’re more likely to live with only one parent, and their parents tend to be less educated than the parents of children in the suburbs. City kids have less access to computers and the Internet but watch television more than children in suburban or rural places.
Although America’s cities are "the strongest they have been in a decade," according to a 1998 State of the Cities report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, poverty remains more concentrated in distressed urban areas and affects a disproportionate share of minority families. "When asked why people are leaving cities," the report relates, "two answers most commonly cited are the poor quality of urban schools and the relatively high rates of urban crime."
Without ignoring these challenges, however, more and more educators are asking a question intended to help all city kids, whether they go to school in Detroit or Portland, New York or Anchorage: What can schools do to help students thrive in the urban neighborhoods where they live and learn?
Researchers at the Center for Education in the Inner Cities (CEIC), a project of the Laboratory for Student Success at Temple University, are focusing on educational resilience as a key to helping urban students succeed—even if they live in neighborhoods beset by social and economic woes. "Although not forgetting for a moment the details, complexity, and history of the problems cities face," relates the CEIC impact report, Next Steps in Inner-City Education, "researchers focus on the ‘positives’ of inner-city life, the vast resource of the cities, and, most important, the resilience and potential of inner-city children and youth."
Bonnie Benard, who has written widely on the topic of resiliency, reports that "new rigorous research" supports nurturing the strengths of urban youth rather than targeting services to overcome their deficits. Teachers have the power "to tip the scale from risk to resilience," she writes in Turning It Around for All Youth, a 1997 ERIC Digest. Benard cites three school-related factors that have the power to transform city kids’ lives:
Caring relationships with teachers who demonstrate kindness, respect, and understanding
Positive and high expectations, which can challenge students beyond what they believe they can do and help them not see setbacks as pervasive
Opportunities to participate and contribute, which allow students to express their opinions, solve problems, and help others
From a mental health perspective, too, it makes sense "to promote strategies of resilience to overcome the challenge of urban life for children, their families, and communities," conclude Maureen M. Black and Ambika Krishnakumar in the June 1998 American Psychologist. Affluent families, the authors point out, have the financial clout "to enjoy the benefits and avoid the negative aspects of cities." Parents with means can foot the bill for private tuition or pay for extras to supplement public school offerings. In wealthy north Seattle, for instance, only 65 percent of school-aged children attend public schools compared with 90 percent on the less affluent south side of the city, according to the Post-Intelligencer. Middle-income families have sheltered their children from perceived city ills by moving to the suburbs, where public schools typically enjoy higher parental involvement, serve a more homogeneous population, and can often afford to offer higher salaries to attract more experienced teachers and principals.
For the families left behind, the daily stress of life in an urban neighborhood where poverty is widespread "can be likened to the effects of toxic chemicals on physical health," report Abraham Wandersman and Maury Nation in American Psychologist (June 1998). And yet, Wandersman and Nation add, "urban neighborhoods can have positive and life-enhancing effects." Within their schools and communities, city kids can find "key factors that contribute to resilience."
Deborah Meier, the gifted educator who founded Central Park East schools in Harlem and wrote about her experience in The Power of Their Ideas, has seen firsthand the transformation that can happen when urban schools work well, "inspiring students with the desire to know more." Teachers who launched the Central Park East experiment were motivated by questions of equity, Meier relates: How could the children at the bottom of America’s social ladder use their schools to develop rather than stunt their intellectual potential? How could public schools provide for the least advantaged what the most advantaged bought privately for their own children?
"A successful city neighborhood is a place that keeps sufficiently abreast of its problems so it is not destroyed by them."
—Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
By looking closely at high-poverty schools where children are successful, researchers are identifying the characteristics that can build educational resilience and support student success. Joseph F. Johnson, Jr., of the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas (www.starcenter.org), outlines seven factors that he finds consistently in high-poverty, high-achievement schools, including those in urban areas:
Focus on academic achievement. Goals are clear, measurable, rigorous, and challenging —for staff, as well as for students.
No excuses. Staff members share a core assumption: Given the population we have, given the resources we have, we can find a way to make a powerful difference in the lives of children.
Experimentation. Teachers are encouraged to ask: What will make a difference here? Local control over how to provide instruction is coupled with accountability for results.
Inclusivity. Everyone who comes into contact with a child is part of the solution.
Sense of family. People feel valued and respected.
Collaboration. Teachers are given time and opportunities to learn from one another.
Passion for improvement. The entire school community shares it.
