To the Editor:

The New York State Education Department recently released its annual list of failing schools. As usual, almost all the schools are located in inner-city or inner-city-like areas.

Rarely if ever are suburban schools included. What is significant is the fact that applying current standards to identify “failures” would apply to similar schools that existed 60 or 70 years ago.

My interest in problem schools goes back to the 1950s and ’60s when I was taken by the writings of various scholars, especially the work of Allison Davis, the first full black professor at the highly esteemed University of Chicago.  He, with colleagues at the university, dedicated themselves to studying problems of minorities, especially in schools where failure rates were extremely high.

Davis was convinced that standardized tests, and certainly those that yielded intelligence scores, were biased against black students. He reasoned that such tests were made up of questions that reflect the kinds of environmental experiences that majority students enjoy.

He and a colleague set out to construct an intelligence test with items reflecting inner-city experiences — the test was named “The Davis-Eels Games.” It turned out to have little value as a predictor of academic achievement, not surprising given that the various tests reflect the endemic values of the middle and upper-middle classes. 

I began my professional career in the ’50s and over the years have witnessed many attempts to deal with the failures of inner-city schools. Success rates are quite small and too frequently reports of success are found to be exaggerated and in some instances bordering on criminality — e.g., Atlanta, Houston, and Washington, D.C. In recent years the pressures on schools to improve their results have been extreme and in some cases might have led to unfortunate outcomes.

It is almost tragic that after so many years of struggles we are left with so many schools designated as failures.  Why have these efforts to improve inner-city schools failed to work? What is at fault?

Given the fact that after 70 years or so and after many efforts, the problems of the 1950s are still with us suggests that greater attention should be directed to the community in which these schools exist. If the problem were poor instruction, then one might expect that suburban districts would also have failing schools, but that is a very rare event. 

Apparently the officials of the State Education Department believe that “failure” of certain schools is primarily due to a lack of quality instruction.  But, the department apparently doesn’t have the magic formula that would lead to highly improved pupil performance as evidenced by its taking over the Nassau County Roosevelt School System for 11 years. In 2015, it was again listed as a failure!  

To go back to Professor Davis, the value systems of suburban schools, largely white and middle class, and those of inner-city schools, largely lower class and minority, perhaps play a significant role in how students react to the curricula to which they are exposed.

And now we have schools pressured to adopt Common Core standards.  Based on my experience, I would expect that most suburban districts will fare well, but the emphasis on higher level reasoning and skills, not valued in the inner-city communities, could worsen the problem related to school failure.

John Rosenbach, Professor Emeritus

Department of Educational Psychology & Statistics

State University of New York at Albany