President's Viewpoint
Tough and Tender, Please

Children need better schools--and better childhoods

For teachers, miracles are an everyday fact of life. These children we teach, these beautiful, sometimes exasperating children, are a lot more to us than a test score--they are miracles in progress. Each one is an individual, with a name, a face, and an untapped universe of potential. When we see the light of learning dawn in a child's eyes, our teacherly heart beats quicker.

But it is also a grim fact of teacher life that there are students we never reach. Some children's lives are on a negative trajectory that we are unable to redirect, despite our best efforts. And these are the children who haunt us.

I am convinced that a major reason one out of three new teachers leaves our profession within five years is that they are overwhelmed by the socioeconomic reality of today's classroom, especially in urban school districts.

The highly respected Annie E. Casey Foundation has pinpointed "six family risk factors" for children: one parent absent from the home; the head of household not a high school graduate; family income below the poverty line; no parent with a full-time, year-round job; chronic dependence on public assistance; and no health insurance.

When children bear the burden of four or more of these disadvantages, they are at "great risk." The chances of such children becoming productive adults in the Amer-ican mainstream are slim.

Through the heroic efforts of family members and teachers, some of these children will overcome the odds. The vast majority will not.

The "high-risk" four-year-old is twice as likely to have difficulty concentrating as the no-risk child, three times as likely to have trouble communicating, and nearly five times as likely to be in less than good health.

This child needs help. It is one thing to deny help to adults, arguing that they've made their choices and now must live with the consequences. It is another to deny four-year-old children the health care, social services, and preschool education they need.

It is, I believe, downright perverse to subject these kids to "get tough" school policies unless we are willing to provide them with the means to succeed. Otherwise, ending social-promotion, imposing zero tolerance, and requiring students to pass high-stakes tests will only serve to label these young people as failures.

It is doubly perverse to eliminate affirmative action under the pretense that our society has leveled the playing field. Leveled the playing field? Tell it to the child with asthma or an ear infection that goes untreated. Tell it to the child growing up in a drug-ridden, violence-torn neighborhood.

Yes, the 9 million-plus high-risk children growing up in America today, 75 percent of whom are minority, need better schools, desperately. They need qualified teachers in every classroom, intensive reading programs, and smaller classes. They need up-to-date textbooks and challenging curricula. There is no earthly reason why every child in our prosperous nation should not attend a school as good as the best suburban school.

But these children need something else that's equally vital--a better childhood. They need a childhood that nurtures rather than kills dreams, a childhood that gives their teachers the opportunity to transform dreams into miracles.

Comments? You can E-mail Bob Chase at BobChase@nea.org. If you would like a response, please be sure to include your name and NEA local affiliate.