S9E9 – Centering Civil Rights in the Fight for Education

S9E9 - Centering Civil Rights in the Fight for Education

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools podcast. I'm Andrew, a White Dad from Denver.

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is centering Civil Rights in the Fight for Education. And Val, we are back!

Dr. Val: We are back. Happy New Year! It's been a couple of weeks since we had a chance to be together, but we have been planning this episode and so we are happy to share it with our listeners today.

Andrew: Yes, I am looking forward to it. I'm very glad to be back in conversation with you, and we've got a bunch of great stuff coming up here soon. So, let's jump into the conversation today - centering civil rights in the fight for education.

Dr. Val: You know, this episode is gonna come out right around Black History Month. I would argue Black History Month starts on Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, but, and goes until Juneteenth.

Andrew: Oh!

Dr. Val: [laughs] Yeah. So, what are your ideas when you hear the word civil rights?

Andrew: Yeah, it's interesting. So, inevitably my mind immediately goes to the past.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: I immediately conjure images of the civil rights movement that in my mind have been, which I think, is like, intentional have been relegated to the past. That they, we had the civil rights movement and then they solved racism, probably like White people helped them solve racism. And then now, like we're kind of past that and that the civil rights movement is in the past. And it's, it's really just in kind of like grappling with the conversation we're gonna have today, that I realized that my inclination is to kind of relegate that fight to the past.

Dr. Val: Yeah, one of my associations is that it happens only in our justice system. That it's the work of attorneys and litigators and judges, and not the work of everyday people like ourselves. And so I'm excited. I'm excited. So tell us who we get to listen to today.

Andrew: So we have two education researchers and deep thinkers and people who have shaped my thinking in so many ways that, uh, yet another one of those places I can't believe I get to be in conversation with.

Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond has been a researcher in education, in integration, in equity…what good schooling looks like, what the future of learning looks like for a really long time. And I've been reading her stuff forever. And so to get to be in conversation with her is just, uh, one of the things I never thought would never really happen.

And then in what is like a really beautiful, beautiful thing to get to witness, she has recently co-authored a book with her daughter, Dr. Kia Darling-Hammond, who is someone whose work I have also followed. And so the two of them recently wrote a book called The Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning, Five Essentials for Equity, and they're gonna join us to talk about it.

Dr. Val: Yeah, it's a short book, but it's a powerful book. And so they outline five essentials for equity. I'm just gonna quickly review them for our listeners so that they know what's going on.

The first one being safe and healthy communities, that every child deserves to grow up and live in a safe and healthy community. A well resourced system was the second one. And so making sure that school funding is fairly distributed. Um, the third one, safe and inclusive schools, and this speaks particularly to the classroom cultures, making sure that they are restorative practices used in schools, and that there's supports for all types of learners. Quality teaching, which is one that I am biased toward. How do we make sure that each of our young people has access to quality educators? And then of course, a quality curriculum, because as we know what students are learning in addition to how they're learning and where they're learning matters, right?

And so, you know, I thought a lot about those five essentials and what I recognized, even as a privileged parent with insights into the field of education, there was really only one that I kind of, sort of had control over at this point.

Andrew: As a parent.

Dr. Val: It was shocking to me and a little bit, um, said, right, because I feel like I have some insider's knowledge and I still couldn't guarantee anything other than a safe and healthy community. And you know, much of that is the luck of the draw in terms of where I'm able to raise the kids, et cetera, right?

And so for some people, none of these five essentials are things that they have control over. And so they're counting on us collectively,, as a small city, a district, a state, a community, a country to figure out how we provide this for all of our students. And if you don't take away anything else from this podcast, understanding those five essentials is really important. And being able to advocate for those feels like some necessary foundations to hold onto when you're engaging in conversations with other caregivers.

Andrew: Yeah. I appreciate that because I think there's a way that you can sort of see them and be like, Ooh, like why bother? And I think this, you know, ties back to maybe one of the reasons that in your mind, civil rights goes to the lawmakers, the lawyers, the Supreme Court justices, because it feels like, well this is the system. You know, a well-resourced school system well like, what do I have to do with that? You know, safe and inclusive schools, like what do I have to do with that? But I think that one of the great things about this, this book is that they really highlight that there's roles for everybody. There's roles for lawyers, there's roles for judges, there's roles for, you know, senators and, and Congress people and, and policy makers. But there's also roles for community members. There's also roles for parents.

And so we get to hear some of those things that we can all do to contribute to that because I think in some ways we like abdicate our own responsibility when we blame something on the system because in the end, and this is not to, to ignore the real ways in which people are not kind of equally empowered to impact the system, but on some level the system is us, right? Like we make up the system.

Dr. Val: Oh no. On the level… [laughs]

Andrew: [laughing] On the level. Yeah. The system is us, and we don't all have like, equal input into it, we don't all get to drive it in the same ways, but we all have some role to play in upholding it. And so I think we have to take that seriously and I think this, uh, this book and this conversation gives us a good place to start that.

Dr. Val: Yeah, I think something else that is coming up for me now, you know, knowing that we all have a role, is that even in racially isolated communities, that we can still advocate for quality curriculum that's inclusive. We can still advocate for teachers that demonstrate high quality and inclusivity, right? Those are not things that only work in integrated school spaces. Those are things we need in every space.

Andrew: What I really love about this conversation is that I think they do a great job of tying this idea of, you know ‘What does schooling look like? What does education look like? What should it look like?’ I think it's easy to point to the ways that our education system is falling short, but I think what they highlight really clearly in this is that we can't try to solve that individually. That I can't go and try to solve getting a better education for just my kid because actually it doesn't give my kid a better education and it doesn't create the world that my kid wants to live in. That we actually all, we need to come together collectively to create better education for everyone.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Uh, I think we need to hear some of this fire that they are about to spit in this interview. Um…

Andrew: Get ready y’all.

Dr. Val: …like, woo, boom, bam, wham, ma'am. You'll need a pencil for this one.

Andrew: That's right.

Dr. Val: Let's take a listen to Dr. Kia and Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond.

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Dr. Kia: Dr. Kia Darling-Hammond, developmental and social psychologist. Also former teacher and school superintendent, or acting superintendent cuz it was an interesting little arrangement. I'm also the CEO of an education and research firm called Wise Chipmunk, LLC, which is deliberately silly. My mother really wanted me to name it something else,[Andrew laughs] but that was a nickname that I was given affectionately that I thought really represented the work I was trying to do. And yeah, co-author of the Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning with my mom, who's also here.

Andrew: That’s so exciting.

Dr. Linda: Linda Darling-Hammond, and I am the president of the Learning Policy Institute and a Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.

Andrew: Both of you now have had distinguished careers in education. Certainly, you're both Dr. Darling-Hammonds. Dr. Darling-Hammond, the senior, what brought you to this work? Why do you care about educational equity? Why do you care - you know, how do you find yourself in this field in the first place?

Dr. Linda: Well I benefited from schools, and it was an upward mobility engine for my own family, and taught during college and after college. And the equity dimensions of schools became readily available as soon as you get a little bit of distance from your own experience and you can reflect on it. And the importance of getting an equitable education for all kids as a means to both improve their lives and the lives of the society as a whole was a very early commitment for me, and I've been working on it ever since.

Andrew: Yeah. And how about you, Dr. Darling-Hammond the junior.

Dr. Kia: You can just call me Dr. Kia thanks. It's funny to be called a junior though, of course cuz that's so gendered. This is the first time I've been called a junior in my life and I'm vibing off of it.

Dr. Val: Nice.

Andrew: Okay.

[everyone laughs]

Dr. Kia: I never knew I could be a junior, but here I am. Sorry, forgot the question. What brought me to this work?

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Did you have much choice? I feel like I have a story for myself of like, my own self-directed version of it that I got myself here, and then I look at my history, the work that my mom has done, that my sister, like in my family. And I realize I probably actually didn't have nearly as much individual free will in it as I thought.

Dr. Linda: Free will…

Andrew: Yeah. How did you come to care about this and be engaged in this work?

Dr. Kia: The legacy dimension is real. We are a family of educators. My father is a law professor. My mother is an education professor and researcher. My sister is an educator. My brother, like we're all in the business, in the family business. And there's always been a focus on social justice.

In my case, I was not gonna be an educator. I was not gonna do it. But I realized when I was the director of some youth programming in Poughkeepsie at an organization and I kept sneaking away from my desk to go hang out with the teenagers in the teen center and like help with homework and just see what was up and blah, blah, blah. And my partner at that time was like, why don't you just become a teacher that seems to be your jam? And I was like, oh, that's definitely what I wanna do.

[Val and Andrew laugh]

Dr. Kia: And education is a big part of our family legacy, and it's clearly a powerful lever for gaining access to opportunity in this country. And so those things are all a part of the fabric of how I understand myself in the world. And then, I met my students and then I was like, oh, this is, these are my people. This is the community I need to serve.

In many cases, I was the first Black teacher any of my students had ever had, and I was also the first out queer teacher that most of my students had ever had. And so I ended up becoming this kind of island of safety for a lot of my students and a model, a possibility model. And that really shaped the contribution I wanted to make in this work.

Dr. Val: That's awesome. Dr. Kia, you and I have a similar story. I come from a long line of educators, and that was the last thing I was going to do, the last. [Dr. Kia and Val laugh] And that lasted for about a year. The first day of school I was like, oh man, they were right. This is where I'm supposed to be. So I totally understand that. And so thank you Dr. Darling-Hammond, for leading and guiding, and also thanks to my mom who did the same, who got us to this place. We are very happy to carry on the legacy.

Dr. Linda: I actually, as I'm reflecting, would tell one more story about what activated my interest, which is that when I went into high school teaching, I was student teaching in Camden, New Jersey. And I walked into that summer school program, there were no books in the book room for me to teach from. I needed to pay for every supply that I was at, ditto sheets and all the rest of it for my students from my own very meager paycheck. And so it was clear that there were real challenges in the funding of schools.

It was clear also that I was under prepared for my work by the program by which I came into teaching. It was also clear that the design of the system was not one that was really focused on equitable access to curriculum for students or personalized relationships between and among the teachers and their students. So those learnings really were what propelled me then eventually to go back to graduate school and study policy and try to figure out what is it that shapes the environments within which teachers and students are trying to do this work, but they're handicapped in doing the work.

And then of course, the fact that the system, the set of policies which you know, have been discriminatory for a very long time in the United States of America, also sets up the whole sets of contexts and inequalities that people have to push back against in a variety of ways. It doesn't take long if you're paying attention, when you come into the educational system, to see that there are things that teachers alone cannot solve.

Dr. Val: It is heartbreaking and I agree, once you're a teacher and you recognize what is happening here. I was alternatively certified and I passed the test, they let me in. I'm like, this, I am not ready, but do you all let me in? You gave me students. I had a class of students who, they were retained, but no one had told me that. And so the kids were like, Ms. Brown, we read that last year. I'm like, no, you didn't. And they were like, we did, we were in ninth grade last year. I was like, oh my gosh. And so…

Dr. Linda: And so who else would they give them to but a first year teacher?

Dr. Val: Who else would they give them to?

Dr. Linda: Just to acknowledge, you're in North Carolina and there's been a lawsuit going on there for many decades about equity and education, which started out as a desegregation lawsuit, and then ended up becoming a school finance reform lawsuit.

And it's iterated through the system multiple times, and I have been an expert witness in the process of this, so that the grandchildren of the folks who were suing the first time are back in court, still in segregated contexts that are underfunded - deeply underfunded relative to other contexts.

And the court just came out with a big smack in the face decision, not only that, the legislature has to allocate over a billion dollars to a research action plan that I, along with many other researchers, was part of developing, but that the court is gonna insist that they actually do it. Because quite often, legislatures refuse to act even when they're ordered to act by courts to create the constitutional right to an education, which in North Carolina includes the right to well prepared teachers and principals, and the right to a sound basic education and a curriculum aimed at the skills that you need for the 21st century and so on.

So these battles go on in all kinds of states and you’re in a state that's been battling this and just may have had a victory. We'll see whether they can enforce their order. But in every state we have a state bird, a state flag, and a state school finance lawsuit, [Andrew laughs] which is trying to get this equitable allocation of resources and opportunities to actually be required.

Andrew: It sets us up perfectly. I mean, you both have had long careers and done wonderful things, but the most recent contribution to the whole field here is the book, The Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning, Five Essentials for Equity. And I'm wondering if you can give us the big picture overview of what the book is and why now.

Dr. Kia: Yeah. What the book is. It started out as a primer essentially to help people really think about the importance of these various touchpoints in the ecosystem of educational access and opportunity and equity. And in particular, it began with a desire to shore up the work of the CRDC, the Federal Civil Rights Data Collection, which was at the beginning of this project under attack, and I was commissioned to begin this research to really tell the story of access to deeper learning through this kind of civil rights lens. And of course I cited my mom a lot… [laughs]

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Kia: …before she eventually decided to join the project, which was amazing. It's very cool to be able to write a book with your own mom. That's very cool.

Andrew: That's awesome.

Dr. Kia: Yeah.

Dr. Val: It's very cool.

Dr. Kia: Yeah. It is, it's very cool to have that kind of intergenerational legacy engagement.

Andrew: That is super cool, so this project sort of started out highlighting the importance of the data collected by the CRDC, but then it seems to have really grown beyond that, into this broader question of what makes for a good learning environment.

Dr. Kia: It's very, just very clear that there's some aspects of this conversation that people are familiar with. It's more common to have the conversation about district funding and increasingly more common to have this conversation about school culture. But there are other dimensions of this that matter, and that's why we began with the safe and healthy community piece, that the conditions under which learning is happening and the conditions that inform this sort of opportunity gap that evolves as young people come into contact with these different systems, which aren't designed for their flourishing, for their thriving, but are designed for their, sort of survival and participation in the existing systems and institutions unless we intervene.

And so there's these five pillars. The first is that safe and healthy community, and then of course the well-resourced school systems, supportive and inclusive schools, high quality teaching, of course. Once you've got that school environment, you really want the teachers to be supported and well trained and able to, stay and succeed at doing their work. And then of course, the high quality curriculum, giving young people a lot to think about, that's invigorating and joyful and advances their intellectualism, their creativity, and their genius. I'm bringing Goldie in, Goldie Muhammad. So yeah, I'd say that's the overview. What do you wanna say, doc?

Dr. Linda: Hahaha. I would just say that I think there are different conversations that go on in the education community. You've got some people who are working over here on reforming schools and creating new innovations and so on. And then there's always the question, why don't those innovations go to scale?

And when you think about scale, you've gotta think about these systems. And I think very few people understand the degree to which inequality in access to healthy environments, to adequate school resources, to well qualified teachers permeates the education system. And so you can't get to deeper learning in every school unless you actually handle these other issues. And part of, I think our test was to raise that up and to say, look, this is really what we've gotta handle here. And there's a role for lawyers, there's a role for educators, there's a role for policy makers, there's a role for parents. And we have to understand the problem and the potential solutions, and the bright spots, so that we can lead towards those, but actually do the work that's necessary to get there.

Dr. Val: Something that struck me looking at these five essentials and, I said to myself as a parent, I control one of these things. And that's just barely, that's just barely. I'm in the financial position of where my kids are in a safe and healthy community, but outside of that, I have to work very hard as a parent and an educator and an activist to even get some of these things acknowledged or addressed in their school systems. And that pains me, that pains me. And I wasn't quite sure what to do with it, but I'm glad you all are surfacing these ideas because I don't think most people understand the system, the ecosystem and how the progress that we want to make has to include all of these elements.

Andrew: Right - like, we can't expect to create educational equity if we aren't addressing all of the factors that contribute to the existing inequities. So, it’s like we have to focus on addressing not just their learning needs, but their broader needs as humans.

Dr. Kia: What you're talking about is holistically paying attention to all of the aspects of a child's developmental needs - all the aspects of a child's developmental milieu. When we think about education and what we hope for our children, what we hope for our communities, our society, we can sometimes get caught up in how we understand schooling, which is not necessarily the same thing. And so part of what we're hoping to invite people to do is to anchor into education, the goals, that grand goal, and to understand at the root from a radical perspective, that there is this whole ecosystem. There's a holistic way that we have to think about it.

Andrew: You talked a little bit about that, like 21st century learning and deeper learning has come up. I'm wondering if you can define that. I think that's… lots of people will acknowledge the ways that our current education system is not preparing kids for the world that they're going to enter. I think people bring different perspectives to both, in what ways is that true? And then also, what are the answers to it? But can we start with, ‘What does 21st century learning look like? What should we be hoping that our schools are achieving?’

Dr. Linda: So you know that, a lot of people refer to the Hewlett Foundation definition of deeper learning because they've done a lot of philanthropy around that. Those are mastering core academic content, thinking critically and solving complex problems, communicating effectively, working collaboratively, learning how to learn, and then developing academic mindsets, growth mindsets that allow you to be successful in an academic environment.

I think of it as access to thinking curriculum, to a curriculum that allows you to own the knowledge, to use it for purposes that you care about, an empowering kind of knowledge. And in this moment, it's so important that we grow up people who are not memorizing facts to spit them back on an end of the year test, but that they are really learning in ways that are allowing them to access resources, understand them, analyze, synthesize… all of these things.

There has been this knowledge explosion. I'm a Stanford professor and don't usually like to quote people from Cal Berkeley because that's our big competitor. But there are these couple of professors at Berkeley who have been doing this really fascinating research on the growth of knowledge in the world, and they found that between 1999 and 2003, there was more new knowledge created in the world than in the history of the world preceding, and knowledge is now increasing exponentially.

And so kids are gonna have to work with knowledge that hasn't been discovered yet, and they're gonna be using technologies that haven't been invented yet, and they're gonna have to solve enormous problems that we have not managed to solve, and that threaten the survival of the species. So it is not gonna be enough to say, here's a set of things to memorize over the 12 years of schooling, and then you're baked and done. You have to really prepare people to be able to learn deeply in ways that then allow them to act very proactively and very collaboratively to do this work that's ahead of them.

Dr. Kia: I would just add that a key dimension of that is knowing how to collaborate and having empathy and a sense of common purpose and common outcome, and it's not in our best interest to continue to be highly individualistic. We are actually needing to move toward collectivist ways of engaging with all of the challenges. And also young people are in the position to dream and imagine a different kind of way of being humans together and a different kind of future, a different potentiality that we haven't seen, we don't know quite how to imagine, as you said, doc. So the social emotional dimensions, the ways of coming together and connecting that sense of needing to be equitably appointed, those are all also critical pieces of this deeper learning and better future.

Dr. Linda: Absolutely. And that has to happen across all peoples, right? And so that's where you come back to this fact that we can't continue to divide, discriminate, think of what I get as a zero sum game - if you get more, I get less, that is actually not going to advance us in this world.

Dr. Kia: Just wanted to add, really quickly, so an interesting thing that happens with desegregation is it actually benefits children with privilege in some cases more than it benefits children with less privilege. It benefits all children from a resource allocation standpoint, but it benefits the young people who are otherwise positioned as succeeding in society and segregated from the rest of the society, and to some degree, the world, it actually enables them to develop a deeper engagement with their humanity and the humanity of others. So it's actually really critical since we're talking about integration, to acknowledge that all of our human possibilities and outcomes rely on eliminating segregation from each other.

Dr. Linda: I… just to elaborate on what Kia just said, there is a literature, there's a bunch of research about the benefits of integrated schools, including higher levels of measured achievement and that kind of thing, but also greater awareness of the world, critical thinking, civic engagement, relationship building. All of those are enhanced in thoughtful, desegregated settings. We do also point out that there can be thoughtless desegregated settings that are problematic, and that call for much more attention to the building of the community, the safe, inclusive settings in which belonging is possible and promoted for everyone in the setting. But when that's done, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts for everyone.

Dr. Kia: I wanna big up my little brother, Sean Darling-Hammond who worked on a study with Jason Okonofua and one other scholar, whose name I'm forgetting (Amada Perez). I apologize to that scholar. But they actually started to look at how to reduce implicit bias and one of the key dimensions was perspective taking. So, when we think about what research tells us about developing empathy and connectedness, it requires that people be together and communicate and engage with one another. And as my mom said, sometimes people are together and it's not great, but sometimes people are together and it's effective. And one of the ways that it's very effective is when people learn how to take a growth-oriented approach to relationships, which is to say relationships can evolve, people's personalities evolve over time, right? Our capacity for love and connection can evolve over time. And understanding another person's perspective is a critical piece of reducing bias, even the bias you may not be aware that you have. So, more exposure to and community with disabled communities… more exposure to and community with Black communities… more exposure to and community with immigrant communities and so on and so forth. And so that is the desegregation. It's really our spirits, our souls, our futures rely on us coming together.

Dr. Val: She just described our relationship, Andrew. She just described our relationship. She totally just did.

Dr. Linda: That's awesome.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: That’s the thing. That's what we try to do here every week. Yeah.

Dr. Val: Yep.

Dr. Linda: The connectedness term that Kia just used is just, I wanna say a little bit more about the research on that too, because there's psychological research that's very interesting. When people have ways to avoid other-izing each other and establish connections, uh, you see changes in the nature of the relationship, and you also see academic achievement indicators in schools, particularly for students of color.

Some teachers have been in a context where they've had the opportunity to learn, through explicit outreach to kids, where they have areas of connection. And where kids and teachers are able to establish five or more areas of connection, you see this dramatic difference in the level of trust, belonging, and achievement in classrooms. But you have to be explicit about that. I think of it as a teacher, I think of it as a two-way pedagogy. It's not just about me as a teacher telling you things that I want you to write down and tell me back at the end of the week on the test.

It's about me learning about you, understanding who you are, what you bring to the classroom, and as John Dewey said, bring the child to the curriculum and the curriculum to the child, like finding that meeting place. But also bringing us together, and bringing peers together, so they can see their connectedness, so they can see their shared humanity, so that they can learn the empathy and compassion that allows us to build a community. That has to be explicitly done in classrooms and in schools as a very mindful, conscious practice, if we're going to build the kind of communities that then are healthy and supportive.

Dr. Kia: Two things come to mind -the power relationship and adultism, right? We have so much to learn from young people, and yet the way we construct a lot of our learning environments, as my mother said, that I'm delivering curriculum to you, you're receiving. And a lot of what I think a lot of us who are adults have experienced in schools also, is a context where people choose control over relationship. And I get it, like I've had to take care of 30 children all at one time before, and it's like we have to have some agreements about safety at the very least because… 30 children.

But, and we talk about this in the school culture safe and inclusive schools chapter, any kind of control, coercion, punitivity, undermines relationship. When we're making fear-based decisions, we are getting in the way of this thing that we're describing that we want, right? We're disempowering children, we're failing to see them as agentic and authoritative whole humans. And, as mom was saying, the relationship piece is so important, and in fact, I think it's the most important piece, maybe even before and above and beyond the curriculum itself.

Dr. Linda: One of the things they find when schools bring in explicit and purposeful social and emotional learning programs, and restorative practices, which are really about developing a knowledge base and empathy for one another, when that happens, achievement also goes up, because it is not a distraction from the academics, it is a pathway to the academics. And if you want kids to tackle rigorous, challenging work that they're gonna have to lean into and revise and continue to iterate around, they've gotta feel safe. They've gotta feel supported to do that kinda work, or they'll just check out.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Kia: And they also have to feel seen and affirmed, right? They get to be whole. They are themselves a whole human person coming to this from their own unique perspective.

Dr. Val: While we're talking about this desegregation effort, something that comes up for me and we've had conversations about it, and we just had a parent who identifies as low income come onto the show, because the audience is primarily White and affluent folks, and we're asking White and affluent folks to invest in their public schools, and there's a dynamic there when White and/or affluent folks are entering schools that are usually underfunded with sometimes low income, Black and brown kids. What are some things that should be considered when thinking about that dynamic?

Dr. Linda: The first thing we have to do, back to the civil rights piece of this, is correct that premise that schools that serve Black and Brown students will be underfunded, and under-resourced, right? Because in fact, when you have schools, and successful magnet schools are one place that shows this, where not all magnet schools are successful, but the ones that really do invest in high quality programming and exciting curriculum with adequate resources, you know, people wanna go there, they want to take advantage of it.

But we often also see the reality. We… I saw this in my own kids' experiences. We created a program in one high school where it was a very, it was a highly tracked, factory model high school with segregation in the tracks. You'll often see that the upper track is, primarily White, and the bottom tracks are where the 50 or 60% of the African American students are, potentially Latinx students are also relegated. But we created a little program in a ninth grade, interdisciplinary, project based, untracked environment. It was beautiful. One of my kids got to attend it, Kia's sister, Elena, open to all kinds of kids.

So successful that the next year, the parents of the mostly White gifted and talented group wanted to take it over and make it only for those kids, right? So you often see that when you create something beautiful for kids educationally, that there is this dynamic of who gets to have it. And we've gotta stop thinking about educational excellence as something that gets rationed to those with the most clout and power. That it has to be that when we create something that is desirable and that brings people together and educates them well, that then gets expanded. That we do more of it rather than rationing it to then reaffirm the existing status quo of privilege.

Andrew: I wonder if some piece of the success of that program was the diversity of the student body, was the fact that you were open to everybody, was the fact that you had a broad, different group of kids who were all bringing their unique perspectives into the space, that's what made it successful. If we think of it as what made it successful was he had this great curriculum, then you can just take the great curriculum and give it to the rich White kids but you're not actually gonna get the same experience in that. Like the, if you were to remove the diversity of the student body, you don't actually get the same positive educational outcomes, I would guess.

Dr. Linda: The whole is always greater than the sum of the parts, right? And it is the fact that the curriculum was created and the teachers were engaged around a way of collaborative work in a community of practice that required all the players, all the kids, as well as all of the faculty.

Dr. Kia: Yeah, like growth, learning and development are all socially mediated, even for the grownups, right? We wanna come together, we wanna be together, we wanna be joyful together.

I think there's also a dimension of this that has to do with scarcity mindset, right? This idea that there's not enough to go around and there's a way for, especially people with wealth and influence, to engage in shifting that, and that’s to change the way that resources are allocated at the municipal, county, district, state level. And we know that we operate in a highly punitive, fear-based society. So we put our money towards things that we think will keep us safe. These things don't really keep us safe. So we have an overabundance of resources going into certain pots, and I think it's really important, especially for people who are White and paying attention, to let other people who are White who want to pay attention know that there's a funding allocation dimension here, right? That you can advocate for a reallocation of resources to public schools. And when that happens, it's so powerful.

The scarcity dimension shifts the way that taxes are levied, make sure that, and if you're affluent, I know you don't wanna pay more taxes, however, when the tax base for schools relies on a particular segment of the population, there's a need there, there's a responsibility there, and we're all better off. So I think there's a way that people need to activate their peers into a kind of activism that's not just for the benefit of their children.

Dr. Linda: Yeah, if I could just add onto the allocation of resources point, starting in the 1980s, there was a big push to invest in incarceration, to build basically the prison state which we did very much so in this country. We have more people in prison, in this country, proportionally and numerically than any other country, including China, which is much bigger than the United States and so on. And so, that was serving a particular constituency, which also became the private prison sector. But in California, for example, the corrections budget went up by 900% over the two decades starting in the 1980s. It had been 2% of the state budget, it became 12% of the state budget. And the higher education budget, which had been about 12%, fell down to about 9 or 8% because of the scarcity at the level of the overall budget. And then K-12 education spending plummeted.

And so the trade off was that we were not paying attention to the fact that we were paying $45,000 per inmate to keep young people who we wouldn't spend $10,000 per pupil on to make sure that they were getting an adequate education in the public school system.

And then of course, everyone suffered as the public investments in higher education went down. So there's a lot of trade offs that are going on in the society as a whole about where we are investing our resources. Of course, there's a lot of data about how many inmates are functionally illiterate, high school dropouts, also have experienced learning disabilities that were never diagnosed, treated, or supported. If you make those investments on the front end, everyone is better off. And when people in a society are able to come through, become functioning, contributing members, pursuing their passions, making their contributions, paying their taxes, everyone else is better off because all of the things that people rely on in the social compact are better actualized when we invest in every single member of the society. Which of course then makes for healthier, happier human beings in a much more productive society.

And everyone who is worried about opportunity for their own kids needs to understand that's tied to opportunity for other people's children, as Lisa Delpit would put it.

Andrew: Yeah. That piece is so big and I think that is, that seems to me to be the thing that kind of draws people to, to our work for sure, the like, sense of collectivism, the sense that we are only all okay if we are all okay, that no one is free until everyone is free, right?

I hear you laying out all of the ways that deeper learning can and should happen, all of the ways that's important to building a future society and this kind of other side, which feels like a long term project, but like shifting the way we allocate resources at a societal level. But for a parent who's like, I need my kid to be successful in the future, what's the argument against opting out of - to look at the public school that's near you, and it is a factory model high school that is highly tracked. Why shouldn't I pull my kid out of that and go to the fancy private school down the street that's gonna give my kid the 21st century learning skills, ‘cuz every private school website says that's what they're offering? What am I not getting? Or what's the harm in that kind of, I need to take care of my own kid and then I'll also vote for the tax increase so that I'm worried about the other kids.

Dr. Linda: Well, I mean there are a lot of… I'm always into my studies, but there are a lot of studies that show that if you control for the characteristics of students, public schools actually do a better job for kids than private schools. What you get a lot of times if you're buying private schooling is segregation. You get to choose the peer group.

But I think that the problem I have with your question is that it's another individualistic take on it. Like me as my own individual parent, why should I do this? If you're thinking about it individualistically, there's not a great and easy answer to that. But you gotta think about, you know, the various ways in which you can work with other parents, work with other educators, come to be a part of a community, collaborate in a process that is both operating at the individual school level, and if you are a parent with clout and privilege, then activate that at the district level too. Use that clout and privilege to look at this question of how are resources allocated, and what kind of curriculum is gonna be in this school, and what are the ways that a variety of kids can get the opportunities that they need.

So we can't actually win that problem from an individualistic framework. We have to take a collective, both mindset, but also activity set, around how to transform the settings. If you're in a district and you're looking at what's ahead in the schools that are coming up, work with other parents, be active with the school board, work on the agenda that needs to be voiced - voice matters. I think we have to take a collective framework in addressing these issues.

Andrew: Yeah and I would add to, to answer my own, to answer my own question a little bit too, the power that comes from collective action is undeniable, but to figure out what that collective action should be requires being in community. Because, if I'm opting my kid out of the neighborhood school and then thinking that I know how to go and advocate on behalf of that school, I'm going to miss what the actual needs of that school are. If you care about collectivism, the need to have skin in the game, to be part of the community first, feels really important.

Dr. Kia: Yeah, and I, so back to that adultism thing, revolutionary efforts need to be led by the people who are closest to the oppression that's being weathered. And it is almost always the case that when somebody has a great idea to go and change something, somebody else has already had that idea and is already doing the work, but they might not have a website and they might not be getting very good funding. So there's a way that people who are accustomed to living in privilege need to cultivate in themselves curiosity and humility, and a willingness to become learners, and to seek out the leadership of people who are already doing this work. And, I know that can be very difficult, and I know it's especially difficult when people are thinking about parting with resource, but that is part of the work. If you are in that community of people who benefit from the structures and institutions, you are not equipped to lead the effort, but you are potentially equipped to resource the effort.

It does require a willingness to learn about what has been done, why it's been done, how it's been done. And we'll actually be hopefully rolling out some really interesting education related to this over the course of the next year. More on that soon. But yeah, that collectivism, that willingness to think about it through the lens of what would a community schooling approach to this school in front of me look like, I think could really do a lot of work.

Andrew: That's beautiful. I just, I want to thank you both so much for the time, for the energy, for all the work you've done. The book is a great contribution and I think you have both made wonderful contributions to the state of education in the country. We have lots more work to do, but certainly we are all better equipped to do it because of a lot of the work that you have both done. I've followed your careers for a long time, and just really grateful for the opportunity to be in conversation.

Dr. Val: Thank you so much.

Dr. Linda: Thank you.

Dr. Kia: Thank you.

Dr. Linda: Nice to meet you.

Dr. Val: Thank you, Dr. Junior. Okay.

—---------------------------------

Andrew: So Val, what did you think?

Dr. Val: It feels important for me right now, just given some of the conversations that are happening nationally, to open the conversation with something that, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond said around when schools bring in explicit and purposeful social and emotional learning programs and restorative practices, which are really about developing a knowledge base and empathy one for one another, when that happens, achievement goes up. And I think, you know, that's something really important to understand, especially if caregivers and parents find themselves in a race for their students to be the top, right? in a way that sacrifices some of this really purposeful social and emotional engagement in schools.

And we know that, for students, um, anxiety is going up, right? It's a stressful time. I believe that achievement in school has to be about more than a grade point average or the classes that you take, but really how you learn to engage with others.

I think one of the reasons why I feel committed to this work is because schools provide us a real opportunity to test interracial democracy in action, right? Like here we can practice, we can learn, we can broaden our perspectives, we are still nimble in our thinking as young people, there's still a sense of play and joy involved if we design it correctly, right? And, I think in a race to make sure your kid has the best or the most, we lose that in some way. And so when I think about our future, yes, we obviously need really smart, wicked people who can crunch numbers or write compellingly. And my follow up question is always to what end? And for me, the end is so that we can all live better together.

Andrew: Collective liberation.

Dr. Val: Yeah, always. That's the end for me. And if we don't practice those skills in schools we really miss an opportunity and we're doing a lot of remedial.

Andrew: Right. Yeah.

Dr. Val: Here we are, you and I are learning how to talk to each other. I mean, we know how to talk to each other, but you know what I mean?

Andrew: No. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, right. It is, and I mean, you're right. The billion dollar DEI enterprise work in corporations is like remedial education for people who didn't learn how to get along when they were, when they were in school, and they potentially could have had the chance to do it.

I think there's two things I wanna pull out of what, of what you just said, one is the intentionality part. And this is something that I think both doctors Darling-Hammond mentioned, you know, like, you can't just throw kids together. And we've talked about this a bunch here too, right? That when there are intentionally well designed, integrated spaces, everybody prospers and, we have to acknowledge, that there are lots of desegregated spaces that are not well designed. That just throwing kids together has the potential to do more harm.

And so I think the ongoing work of constantly trying to like, build new systems and refine those systems and keep looking at those systems and, and being intentional about the creation of the social emotional learning context, the creation of the, you know, sense of belonging and community, the relationships between teachers and students, like all that stuff requires work and intentionality to build on. And, and that, that felt really powerful to me.

And then the other piece of what you mentioned is that, that's what good education is.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Like what, what good education is, requires us to be together, requires us to get to know each other. And this like, what feels a little like buzz termy of like 21st century education or like the future of learning. You know, everybody's talking about, oh, we are, equipping kids with schools for 21st century learning…

Dr. Val: Those skills. Yeah,

Andrew: And what they usually mean is like we're teaching them Mandarin or like we're teaching them to code. And like, all of those things are important,

Dr. Val: definitely the code… [laughing]

Andrew: Right. But I think what feels so powerful about this book and their work is that none of that matters if you're not doing the interpersonal stuff. If you're not doing the learning how to get along, learning how to find each other's shared humanity, the building a community where everybody can show up as their full selves and this real, meaningful, deeper learning can actually happen.

Dr. Val: Yeah. You know, you mentioning deeper learning makes me think about, they had multiple examples in the book of these deeper learning experiences. One of the things that stood out to me about it, was that it did not require lots of financial resources. It required well-equipped teachers who were able to ask good questions, able to push them and connect with them and so…

Andrew: Believe in them.

Dr. Val: Correct. And so when we think about what does it mean to be a part of a well-resourced school, like starting to think about how the human resources in that building are what really matter, right? How do we, how do we up the ante in that area?

Andrew: Yeah. That makes me think of something that I think Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond said, which was, you know, we have to stop thinking of good education as something that gets rationed.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: There's this like vision of, and we can go back to Heather McGhee, right? Like this zero sum, that there's a finite amount of good education and so if there is something good that's happening, we have to get it for our own kids. When like actually what I think their work shows, and the reason that there is this kind of focus on civil rights that undergirds all of their work here, is that, is that better education is only better if it's better for everyone. That like actually the way to 21st century learning, to 21st century skills, to the things that are going to allow the next generation to solve the problems that are facing our planet is collectivism, is everybody getting access to these things. And that it's not, there's not a finite amount of good education. You know, like, like these five, right? A safe and healthy community, a well-resourced system, safe and inclusive schools quality, teaching quality curriculum. There's no reason that everybody can't have access to those things, other than that we haven't chosen to do that yet.

Dr. Val: No reason.

Andrew: And, and so, you know, coming back to what we kind of touched on in the intro here is like, what is our role? We only have a little bit of control over one of those things, and yet we all have a role to play in advocating for all of them.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm. . You know, the fact that we don't advocate for all of them, just makes me wonder, what we know or what we think we know about schooling and education. Often caregivers will like use their own experience as a marker. So, here is my schooling experience. I want it to be similar or better than my schooling experience. It's understandable, right? You want your kid to have the best that you can provide for them.

I think what I always struggle with is the idea that we can't imagine that every parent wants the best that they can provide for their kid. That we somehow lead ourselves to believe that some parents might not care as much, or don't wanna be as involved, or aren't working as hard to make sure their kids have the things that are important to all of us, right? A safe community, a quality curriculum, high quality teachers. And so, I really don't know why we don't have this yet. [both start laughing] It's like all of that is to say, I don't know why we don't have this yet.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: It is 2023.

Andrew: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, racism . . . which we haven’t solved yet on this podcast.

Dr. Val: It's no, seriously, like what? Like… [laughing at the absurdity]

Andrew: Yeah, because…

Dr. Val: We haven’t solved it yet. It's 2023.

Andrew: I mean, it is as they say, a road to deeper learning, but like the vision that they lay out is one that pushes back on racism, that pushes back on…

Dr. Val: Oh, absolutely.

Andrew: …opportunity hoarding, that pushes back on zero sum mindsets, that pushes back on individualism versus collectivism. And I think there's a real power in their vision that actually collectivism gets us all to a better place than even those who have the ability to get the most out of an individualistic society. Like if I get my kids everything I can in White segregated spaces, that if I give them all the quote unquote advantages, right? I send them to the fanciest private school and they get into the best university and they get all of the private tutoring and coaching, whatever, like, the best that they can do is still not as good as we could all do if we buy into this like, vision of a collective education.

Dr. Val: I think it's important to communicate that what we're asking for might not show up as tangible benefits for an individual person. Right? So I recycle, and I'm hoping it helps out. I don't know.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: I'm hoping, you know, I'm trying to make choices that don't put other people in harm's way. And it's my hope that others act in the same way because we have a sense of collective care. I think we, humanity, might get lost in transactional type exchanges, right? So if I'm doing this, you know, if I'm sending my kid, my White privileged kid, to a majority Black and brown school, global majority school, then I should see my tangible benefit.

Andrew: Right?

Dr. Val: This year. [laughing]

Andrew: Yeah. Yes. In my notes right here I have in big, in big all caps… “Can't be opportunity hoarding”. Right, because, like, I think it's true, like I'm setting up my kids to have a more successful future, and that can't be the sole motivation, right? Like…

Dr. Val: It can't be.

Andrew: I've not made the choices that I did about their schooling in order to get them into a better university, in order to get them a better job or have them make more money or whatever. Like the ultimate goal is not self-benefit, but is collective benefit. And there is like real, I think, individual benefit too. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's both/and right. It's like, it's neither too much.

Dr. Val: No, I agree, it's both/and, and I think we have to include that sometimes it's not easy, it's not an easy road. It's not an easy road to walk. Choosing to go against the status quo will always be bumpy. And so folks might question themselves like, am I making the right decision for my child or my family? And I think those are fair things to grapple with, and I think that's why it's even more important to have a community around you to support you as you are trying to walk against the status quo.

Andrew: Absolutely. I think it's easy to, to slip into either saviorism or opportunity hoarding, right?

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: It's easy to slip into, I am doing this just to save the world. I'm sending my kids to these schools because it's going to make the whole world a better place. Aren't, aren't I, you know, lovely, don't I deserve a pat on the back, and like, look at the sacrifices that I'm making. And I don’t believe that.

But then it's also really easy to slip down the other side of that into like, look at all the things I'm getting for my kid and they're gonna have better jobs and they're gonna make better decisions, they're gonna make more money, ‘cuz they're going to be less likely to get fired. And I think all that's probably true too. And like it's easy to slip into that like, right, like my kid's resume will show that they hung out with 73 Black kids and 84 Latinx kids. You know what I mean?

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: One other piece that just like, comes back to me is this like importance of the social emotional learning to academic success. That the importance of creating spaces where everybody can kind of feel safe, at home, and belonging, and I think there's so much important work on that front that has been done looking at how do we create schools that, that create that environment for Black and brown kids, because we've never been intentional about that in the like, White educational system. And, you know, one of the, one of like the harms of the Brown decision, I think is, is that we lost the spaces that were really designed like that.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm. I was getting sad about it earlier when we, when we first talked about it, because the, our first attempt at integration during the Civil Rights movement…. There are some teachers that could have just done some miraculous things for young people and for our country.

Andrew: And I don't want to like, center my own, my own Whiteness here in this moment because that is, that is real. And that's why I wanted to start with that. But also like, not just for Black kids, right? Like those teachers would've done amazing things for White kids too. And when I think about the need for spaces where you can belong, I think it's easy for White people in our minds, particularly if most of our experience in life has been in all White spaces, to view all White spaces as spaces where it's easy to belong, and it's easy to feel safe and comfortable, and I think that's not right.

Dr. Val: Say more, yeah . . .

Andrew: I think that actually, that actually it is, it is diverse spaces where there is a wide variety of ways to be, as Summer Borden said back in the second episode of this whole podcast, that like you can be a whole bunch of different ways, that those are actually spaces - when they're done intentionally, right? like when they're done thoughtfully -there are plenty of those spaces that are not, but when those spaces are done creatively and thoughtfully and with care and with, you know, attention to the needs of all kids, that all kids benefit from that. And so, and again, not to come back to this like idea of, of opportunity hoarding, but I do think that like there is a, there is a toxicity in all White spaces that we ignore at our peril.

Dr. Val: Hmm

Andrew: I don't need you to opine on that…

Dr. Val: I, yeah,

Andrew: …but I, but I just wanna say it.

Dr. Val: I don't have any opines for all that… [both laughing] I'm just nodding my head over here on this side of the mic, folks. We want whole people, whole W H O L E, young people. And for the umpteenth time, our relationship has helped me learn more about myself…

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: …about you.

Andrew: Yeah, I am a much more whole person because of our relationship and that, and that's not the same thing that I get in relationships I have with people who are exactly like me.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Right. It is the best thing out here. I'm telling you folks…

[Laughter]

Andrew: Well, yeah, I'm just deeply grateful to both Doctors Darling-Hammond, uh, the senior and the junior. They're just, yeah, chock full of brilliance and so glad we got to share the conversation with the audience.

Dr. Val: Um, I should let the audience know that I did get another best friend contract signed.

Andrew: I know man, you're racking them up,

Dr. Val: I am racking them up.

Andrew: Good stuff. It's good stuff. Listeners, if you enjoyed the conversation and you wanna support our work, we would be grateful. Come on over… patreon.com/integratedschools. You can throw us a few bucks every month. We've got happy hours, we've got transcripts, we've got a message board. You can let us know what you thought of the episodes. You can come and hang out with us and have a drink on Zoom and tell us what you thought or ask us your burning questions… we would be grateful.

Dr. Val: Listeners, please make sure you share, listen and pick up their book, The Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning: Five Essentials for Equity. We'll make sure we share the link with you. This is the book from 2022 that is sticking with me. You know, I read a lot of books and this is the one that is sticking with me, so I wanna encourage folks to pick it up.

Andrew: Doesn't hurt that it's a quick, easy read too. It's packed, packed and powerful. And…

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh.

Andrew: A quick 200 and something pages and, and you're right through it. It's small, it's little, it's easy to dig into. Yes. Well, Val, I'm glad to be back. Happy New Year. We are back at it. Lots of great stuff coming up soon and it's always a pleasure to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time! We're back y'all!