Life & Times

For a provocative conversation around our Kitchen Table, we brought Austin Dragon, President of the Southern California Republican Club, together with John Rogers from UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access. Our debate is kicked off by Joe Hicks from Community Advocates.

Joe Hicks>> Guys, it looks like the whole discussion around this achievement gap is intensified with the Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell saying that it's just not issues of poverty, but that there may be issues of culture that's informing a fairly wide learning gap between black and Latino kids at the lower end and white and Asian kids at the upper end. You've been around education issues for a long time. In your view, what do you think is informing that gap?

John Rogers>> I think the primary thing that informs the achievement gap is an opportunity gap, that African American and Latino students in California receive fewer resources than white and Asian students, that they go to fundamentally different schools, for the most part, than white and Asian students, schools that are more crowded, schools that have far more under-prepared teachers, and that leads to lower performance.

Joe Hicks>> Austin, I got a hint that you may disagree with that. What's your take?

Austin Dragon>> I totally disagree because even when you look at upper middle class blacks and Latinos, particularly in the black community, you're still seeing those gaps. So they have the resources, they have the best teachers, they live in safe communities and all of that, yet they're still under-performing when they're compared to their white and Asian counterparts. So it's not an issue of resources. It's not a lack of opportunity. It is really a value system.

Again, there is not the focus on the serious business of education. One of the studies we saw from UC Berkeley, they went out to look at the students. The parents asked, "Well, what's going on? We're doctors, we're lawyers, we have the best for our children, yet they're still not performing. What's going on?" It really is a value system.

Joe Hick>> Bill Cosby, in his sort of pop comedic way, made this argument that parents aren't parenting, we got to get serious about education, that's the key to the future. The allegation coming from Bill Cosby, who's for some reason really zeroed in on this issue, is that's not going on to the extent that it should be. Do you think that there's any component of culture that is part of this issue of this gap?

John Rogers>> I'd like to take Bill Cosby into the schools in South Los Angeles and East Los Angeles that I've been visiting recently with high school students. In those schools, I see high school students that are very engaged, that want to learn, that sometimes don't have the conditions in place for them to learn.

Students I was working with did a survey of other young people and eighty percent said that they wanted to do well in school because they wanted to make their parents proud. Those sound to me like engaged students, students that want quality education, but haven't been provided it.

Joe Hicks>> So, Austin, what's the problem? Why aren't these kids performing at the levels that we expect them to or want them to?

Austin Dragon>> In certain communities, they will think that education is either boring or that getting a good education is trying to be white. I mean, that is a big component. You know, education is not that important because I'm going to get a record deal or whatever. So if you have that --

Joe Hicks>> -- or to fight dogs.

Austin Dragon>> Or kill dogs or whatever (laughter). So if you have that component where people think, "Well, I can't bring books to the classroom because that's not cool" or "I'm not going to do homework because, you know, that's for squares" or whatever the term that's used now --

Joe Hicks>> -- brainiacs.

Austin Dragon>> Then you will never, no matter how much funding, the best teachers, the best principal, small schools, large schools, whatever, if that is the mindset going in, we'll never be successful. That has to be basically addressed.

Joe Hicks>> What's wrong?

John Rogers>> I would argue, if the problem of underachievement was a problem of culture, we wouldn't see white students in California under-performing relative to white students across the country. White students ranked forty-seven out of all the fifty states in their performance in eighth grade on reading.

Is it because they have cultural problems or is it because, in California, we have more students for every teacher, we have more students for every counselor, we have more students for every librarian than in any other state? I think we're under-investing in our schools and causing inadequacies and inequalities as a consequence.

Austin Dragon>> I would say that that's the same excuse that's used all the time. Again, my number one question is, how much should we be spending?

John Rogers>> Well, I think we have some good answers to this. There was a set of studies that were done out of Stanford last year. Two million dollars was spent on these studies and, basically, they found that --

Joe Hicks>> -- they should have put that money into education (laughter).

John Rogers>> I would think so too. Basically, they found that we're dramatically under-spending relative to other states. We spend seventy-five cents on the dollar of what other high-wealth states spend. We need to spend twelve or thirteen thousand dollars per student if we want the outcomes that the state is --

Joe Hicks>> -- but, John, they're spending that in D.C. They're spending fourteen thousand per student and the schools in D.C. suck. Yet we look at parochial schools that often spend ten thousand dollars per pupil and get far more results.

John Rogers>> Joe, here's where you and I would agree, I think. The funding is necessary, but not sufficient in order to make the change. We need more resources, we need to lower class sizes, but we also need exactly what was laid out before.

We need to have small schools with a lot of support for the students, with well-trained teachers, with teachers that care about the students, with communities that are brought into play in deciding what's going to go on in the school. We can create success.

We've seen success in schools in South Los Angeles like View Park High School. We've seen success in San Diego at the school like The Preuss School. Despite that it's seventy-five percent Latino and African American students, it outperforms every school in San Diego County.

Joe Hicks>> What would be your solution, Austin, if they came to you and said, "We're going to make you Superintendent of Schools in the state of California." What would you do to try to close this "racial learning gap", you know, to try to make sure the kids are performing where they need to when they graduate? What would you do?

Austin Dragon>> Well, there are several things. One is there has to be more discipline in a lot of those schools. One of the things you'll hear from teachers and principals is that, if you don't have discipline from day one, again, everything goes out the window, so discipline has to be a factor.

Another thing that you'll hear teachers say is that, "We don't have enough of the teachers that will back us up." A generation ago, the teacher, the parent, everyone, was on the same page. Now you'll have situations where, "Oh, my child didn't do that." You know, we all heard and we've all seen that. So basically, we need everyone on the same page, teacher, principal, the parents, everyone doing the same thing.

Then the other thing is just to look at the curriculum. If we have schools that have those kinds of deficiencies, whether it's reading, writing, arithmetic, all of that, then that's where there should be more of a focus. To me, the resources is how you structure the curriculum to make up for those deficiencies. That's what we need to focus on.

Joe Hicks>> What would you do? Same question. You're made king of education in the state of California. What would the first few things be that you'd do?

John Rogers>> Focus like a laser on two different things. One is the fact that we have a climate of scarcity that needs to be addressed. We need to create conditions through more investment in the schools so that all students have decent teachers in front of them, decent school facilities and the materials that they need.

The second thing I would do is to direct the majority of resources toward Latino and African American students to ensure that we can enable all students to be successful. Right now, we're providing Latino and African American students with less. We need to provide them with more.

Joe Hicks>> Well, I'm not sure we solved it today, but we took a whack at it. Guys, thanks for coming in and talking about this today. We're just flat out of time here. Appreciate it.

Austin Dragon>> Thank you.