We gather tonight at the nexus of conflicting realities. Our public school system is in crisis, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Students, parents and teachers are caught up in a chaos of uncertainty.  Residents of our city struggle with poverty and joblessness. While the police commissioner says that homicides are down, there is still way too much violence on our streets. These are the grim realities that many of us face and all of us live with.

 

Yet this Saturday, my wife and I, along with what is expected to be 100,000 other people, are going to gather on the Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that took place on April 28, 1963. The March was the brainchild of A. Philip Randolph, head of the Pullman Porters Union, and was first proposed in 1941. On that day an estimated 200,000 people gathered from communities across the country on that sweltering August day that is most often remembered for Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in which he proclaimed that they had come there to cash in a promissory note at the bank of justice.

 

I was only ten years old when that march occurred and was living in an all-white Midwestern suburb where the Civil Rights movement seemed something far removed from my family’s life. However, today I realize that what Randolph, John Lewis, Dr. King and the others who were speaking about was essential to the well-being of all Americans. And so I am going to pay tribute to that original vision, and reaffirm my commitment to work to help realize the Beloved Community that Dr. King so often spoke about. That’s what POWER is about, and why are so concerned about the struggles of people in our own city.

 

For a few moments I want to look back at the original March on Washington and the goals that brought folks there. They were as follows:

 

What came of their efforts?

To further put things in perspective, unemployment among African Americans is higher today than it was in 1963. In 1963 it was 10.9%, today it is 12.6%, and we know that roughly 25% our citizens in Philadelphia, working or not, live below the poverty line.

 

So, while much has changed for the better since 1963, it must be put in perspective.  Many of the gains that were made then have been eroded or lost. This is why organizations like POWER are so important; the struggle for justice is never done. As Frederick Douglass reminded us 175 years ago, those in positions of authority never relinquish their power without a fight and a struggle; that is what we in POWER are engaged in.

However, I want to speak specifically about education.

 

The March  also called for the desegregation of schools because even though the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision outlawed segregation it have given states the freedom to decide when and how they would desegregate; Most states did nothing. For instance, I went to Boston in 1971 and they were just beginning to desegregate schools then.

 

Not much has changed on that score. Just because a law is in place, does not mean it will get enforced. For instance, the PA constitution requires the state government to “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.” What we have been experiencing is anything but thorough and efficient, and if they were offering maintenance and support, would we be in this position?” Sometimes OUR JOB is simply to get the political establishment to do ITS JOB.

 

The rationale for fighting so hard for desegregation in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s was not just so black and white kids would go to school together. No, those in the NAACP and others who fought for desegregation realized the only way that black kids would get access to same resources  as white kids  was by being in the same schools with them.  Then and now desegregation was about ACCESS and RESOURCES.

When we look at what is happening to our schools here in Philadelphia we see that our system  discriminates against students of color and poor kids of all colors;  that it denies them the access and resources they are entitled to by LAW. What we are looking at the effects of a system that is racist and economically unjust.

 

Let me pause here and say a couple things about racism.

 

First of all, when people think about racism they think about overtly racist acts or statements like George Zimmerman’s profiling of Trayvon Martin or Riley Cooper’s statements that have gotten so much press. But when you are talking about something like the Philadelphia school system, we are talking about what Stokely Carmichael (now Kwame Ture) called “institutional racism.” People see a black school superintendent, a black mayor, a black City Council president, and Asian and Hispanic leaders in both the educational and political roles; so how can it be racist? Well maybe it’s because Governor Corbett is white – and he won’t authorize funds – is that why it’s racist? Not exactly.

 

In the courses I teach on racism I tell my students that when talking about institutional or systemic racism we need to distinguish between intent and impact. It does not matter what a person or a government or school system intends to do, it’s the impact of what it does that really matters.

 

So for instance, in the issue of school closings we look at impact. These decisions were made by a black superintendent – how could it be a racist decision? Look at the impact. According to one report I saw, black students make up 58% of the students in the school system, but make up 81% of the students affected by the school closings. White students make up 14% of the students in the system, but only 4% of students affected by closings are white.  We don’t need to know what Dr. Hite and the SRC intended in the decisions they made, we just look at the impact.

 

So first when talking about racism we need to look at impact not intent.

The second thing about racism is that we can’t talk about in isolation from other forms of discrimination.  When we look at the way public education is funded we need to take this into account. Racial segregation is important to note but it become much more critical when we see it linked to  what I call economic segregation. This dual form of segregation is evident in the way we have established communities in our wider metro area and the way schools are funded.

One of the examples I often think of in this regard is a comparison of Overbrook High School and Lower Merion High School. The schools are less than 4 miles and 10 minutes apart on the map, but they exist in different worlds when it comes to education.

 

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2012 the average funding per student in Lower Merion was $21, 399. In Philadelphia (of which Overbrook is a part) the average funding per student was $11,078. That’s a difference of $10,000 per student. In practical terms that means students in Lower Merion have smaller class sizes, more technology in the classroom, more highly trained teachers, overall newer facilities, larger and more contemporary collections in their libraries and an overall higher quality educational experience.

PA Dept. of Ed  reports that in 2012, Lower Merion HS had 98% of the students entered 9th grade graduate; By contrast, only 56% of the ninth grade students of Overbrook graduated.

 

This why on the POWER Education Team we have been researching fair funding formulas for the State of PA. Pennsylvania is one of only 3 states in the US that doesn’t use some fair funding formula. As compared to other states PA depends most heavily on local property taxes to fund their schools. This is why Lower Merion ends up so much more per student – they have higher property values and even though their tax rate is lowerthan Philadelphia, the amount of money they take in is much higher.

 

And while money is not the only issue, it does translate (as we can see) to higher rates of success.

 

Why this is important is because we know that there is a correlation between getting a high school diploma and success and other areas of life.

 

There is a correlation between…

The reason we must address this issue of education is because so much else hinges on the kids in our school system getting a fair shot at making it in life.

 

Now one of things we need to remind ourselves is that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. In other words just because two things happen at the same time, that does not mean they necessarily caused the other. For instance,  dropping out of school does not necessarily cause joblessness, or poverty or violence. Often when you see correlations like this there is a third factor causing both. And I think the cause for both dropping out and the other social problems is despair.

At its root in POWER we are battling despair, people just giving up and throwing in the towel.

Once we get the funding solved, and WE WILL, our job is not finished.  The racism we are facing is multi-faceted and multi-layered and requires a long, committed struggle. Down the road we will need to to look at what’s happening with charters, the privatization of the public schools,  curriculum, teacher training and innovative ways of doing education for specialized learners. More than that we need a vision of what the Philadelphia School System can and must be.

 

Dr. King inspired the people 50 years with his vision of a dream. We need to help the students, parents, teachers and administrators of PSD develop a vision beyond just surviving and keeping schools open. We need a  dream of quality education that can pull us forward. Then and only then will we live out the legacy Dr. King left us 50 years ago, a dream toward which we are still reaching.