Education Week - December 11, 2019 - 18

OPINION
REDEFINING
OPPORTUNITY
There has been a groundswell of interest in the
field lately in understanding racial disparities in
education outcomes not as an "achievement gap"
but as an "opportunity gap." Why? And what does
that distinction really mean?

Skip Sterling for Education Week

In this special Opinion package, researchers and
educators explore how even subtle language
distinctions can reflect and inform how we think
about student potential, particularly when those
students are perceived to be at a "disadvantage."
Original research from the Education Week
Research Center rounds out this project with
concrete survey data on teachers' attitudes,
perceptions, and language surrounding disparities
in student outcomes (see page 21).
This special section is supported by a grant from The
Wallace Foundation. Education Week retained sole
editorial control over the content of this package; the
opinions expressed are the authors' own.

The Roots of Inequality
Our institutions are the problem-not our students

By Jenny Muñiz
MUÑIZ is a senior program
associate with the Education
Policy program at New
America. Previously, she was
the lead bilingual teacher at
an elementary school in
San Antonio as part of the
Teach For America corps.

n explanation for why students of color fail is taking
hold in schools across the
country. The thinking goes
like this: Students of color
fail because they're not motivated enough. They're not
well-behaved enough. They're not "gritty" enough.
Parents are to blame, too. They're not involved
enough. They don't care about education enough.
Some don't understand English enough. If these students are to succeed, this narrative goes, parents and
students will need to make some drastic changes.
This popular thinking is flawed. During my
first year as a bilingual elementary school
teacher in San Antonio, I attended a professional
development session that helped me understand
why when an historian taught us about the city's
long history of red-lining.
San Antonio's story is a common one: In the
early 20th century, the federal government
created color-coded maps which signaled that the
city's predominantly low-income, West Side and
East Side neighborhoods were "hazardous" for
lending, based on the notion that Black and Latinx
neighbors were high-risk borrowers and would
undercut property values. Those neighborhoods
received little financial investment, and because
the schools in the area were funded primarily by
property taxes, they deteriorated and segregated
more with each passing year.
Understanding the roots of San Antonio's inequity
transformed my thinking about my students. It
became clear to me that it wasn't deficiencies in
students, their families, or their cultures that created
the city's infamous "racial achievement gap."
Rather, it was the deficiencies of laws, policies, and
norms of schools and society that propagated this
gap. It is this institutional racism we must fix.
You can't tackle a problem you can't see.
Educators and education leaders at all levels
must understand that institutional racism is

18 | EDUCATION WEEK | December 11 , 2019 | www.edweek.org/go/opinion

sewn into the fabric of our school systems. They
must also recognize other types of institutional
biases that are based on, for example, students'
disability status, socioeconomic background, home
language, or country of origin.
Institutional racism is the reason it's so hard to
find curriculum that isn't Eurocentric. It's why so
many schools with large numbers of Black, Latinx,
and Native American students are routinely staffed
with the newest, least qualified teachers. And
it's also why these schools have poorer facilities,
fewer resources, and are more likely to focus on
discipline over counseling.
These institutional inequities are borne out
by hard numbers. Consider funding: A recent
EdBuild report found that predominantly White
school districts receive a striking $23 billion more
in funding than school districts who mostly serve
students of color.
If we downplay the existence of these structural
inequities, we risk harming students who deal with
them in their daily lives. Not only does it allow us
to abdicate our responsibility to remediate these
disparities, but it also harms students in another way.
One 2017 study leveraged longitudinal data to
assess this phenomenon, finding that students
who both experienced inequities and believed that
society is meritocratic were more likely to exhibit
risky behavior and lower self-esteem in their
middle school years. Social psychologists speculate
that students of color who accept the widely held
view that society is fair may therefore conclude
that their own racial group does not succeed
because it is inferior.
Far too many teachers continue to believe that
schools provide an even playing field where all
students are naturally rewarded when they work
hard. Why is that?
Part of the problem is that most teachers are
not required to learn about institutional biases.
In a recent study, I examined teaching standards
in all 50 states. While only 28 states ask teachers

to confront their own personal biases, even fewer
(only Alabama, Minnesota, and Washington)
explicitly ask teachers to educate themselves about
institutional biases that affect student success.
This matters because a state's teaching standards
generally influence the types of teacher-preparation
curriculum, professional development sessions,
and evaluation systems teachers will encounter
throughout their careers.
It's time to raise the specter of institutional
racism in education. Teacher preparation and
professional development ought to sharpen
teachers' structural awareness, inviting frank
conversations about harmful school norms,
historical denials of opportunity, modern school
segregation, and more-and give them the tools to
explain these realities to their students. Teachers
can take charge of their own learning, too, by
engaging with literature, groups, and Twitter chats
centered on equity.
To be sure, examining institutional injustices
openly and honestly can be difficult. Social
psychologists may have an explanation as to why:
We like to cling to the belief that schools and society
are meritocratic because it offers us a sense of
stability and makes us feel good about ourselves.
This is what experts call a "system justifying belief."
Indeed, it allows those at the top to believe that
they earned their place while others earned their
place at the bottom. It's no surprise, then, how
uncomfortable many of us feel to uncover that the
status quo isn't so fair after all.
But we've reached the point where comfort
cannot be our highest consideration. Today's
learners are more diverse than ever, and they're
living and learning against the backdrop of rampant
racial bullying and unequal access to just about
anything-education, healthcare, and even clean
air. If we continue to ignore the greater structural
forces behind these disparities, we waste a powerful
opportunity to build a teaching workforce that is
committed to pushing for institutional change. n

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Education Week - December 11, 2019

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