Closing the Participation Gap: A Thought Piece

with John Goodland, Deborah Meier, Larry Myatt, Pedro Noguera, and George Wood

The faltering participation gap and the stagnating intellectual achievement gap in America are major issues related to each other. To address them, requires a renewed focus on the purposes of a democracy and the practices of education.

There are strong indicators that participatory democracy in America is in a state of grave decline. Connections to civic and religious groups are fewer; people are less connected to family and friends, more Americans live alone; people are less informed about public affairs; and trust in key institutions is low. Disturbingly, the decline in all these categories has been most pronounced among people with the least education (America's Civic Health, 2006, pg 5).

In 1975, most college graduates (58%) had participated in some kind of community project within the last year. By 2005, that proportion had been cut to 35%- a 40 % drop. For those without high school degrees, the decline was from 32 % to 15% a drop of almost 55%. Today, few high school dropouts leave their schools having participated in any community projects—an especially serious problem for the hundreds of communities in which the drop out rate is high— (America's Civic Health, p.11, Balfanz' data on drop-outs).

A new study by Robert Putnam (2007, p.11)shows that as American cities have become more diverse, its inhabitants tend to withdraw from collective life, have more distrust of their neighbors, and regardless of the colour of their skin withdraw even from close friends. They volunteer less, give less to charity, work less often on community projects, register to vote less, and have less faith that they can actually make a difference to improve the quality of life in their community.

If we are to build a more inclusive citizenry and a more equal and free America, we need to direct attention to the quality of education provided by our public schools and the ways in which participation in our schools can improve civic life. For this to happen, we need policies and practices to help every student make the connection between in-school learning and issues of larger communities, and we need local school boards to tap into the talents, time and resources of their communities to strengthen public schools. The Forum for Education and Democracy proposes the following points for national discussion as to how to educate students successfully for valued and valuable citizenship:

Education should build upon student interest
The literature on student achievement, student attrition, and apathy to school are replete with descriptors of boredom, irrelevance of the curriculum, and students not believing? why "school stuff" is so important to learn. On the other hand, students who do well in school are interested in the topic or they believe there is a payoff down the line if they do well, regardless of how meaningless the topic may seem to them at the moment. Too often educators feel pressure to ignore strategies aimed at increasing student motivation and engagement. Put most simply, students matter, and higher levels of achievement and improved schools are not possible unless students choose to work harder and develop a desire to seek out knowledge and ideas.

As obvious as this might seem very few schools have strategies to get students to care and invest themselves in learning. The operating assumption in many schools has become that improving schools is a task for adults. The fact is that students make choices that affect their education: they choose how hard they will work or study, whether or not they will enroll in challenging courses or if they will come to school high or intoxicated. The choices they make matter and profoundly influence the character of schools and vice versa. Unless schools consciously devise strategies to get students to care about their education and invest in learning, it is unlikely that gaps in achievement will ever close.

Students must enjoy authentic relationships with adults and peers, and be genuinely interested in, and see the relevance of, what they are learning. For example, students might become more interested in learning geometry equations if they can see how such knowledge helps them build a miniature house. Another robust example is a teacher of environmental science in West Oakland who designed a unit on the effects of lead in the environment. After touring the neighborhood surrounding her school and noticing that many homes were located near highways and heavy industry. After teaching students how lead from industrial waste and car exhaust enters the atmosphere and becomes embedded in the soil, she had her students test the soil in neighborhood gardens for lead content. Upon learning that many of the gardens in the neighborhood were contaminated with lead (and recognizing that many families were eating vegetables from those gardens) the students insisted that they had a responsibility to do something about the dangers they had discovered. Recognizing this to be an extraordinary learning opportunity, the teacher compiled the student work into a report that she sent to the County Health Commissioner who in turn responded by mailing a letter to residents of West Oakland warning them about the harmful affects of the toxic soil and offering any household that wanted it free top soil.

Powerful learning opportunities like this remind us that when students can see the relevance of what they learn and when they understand that the knowledge and skills they acquire can be applied to help their families, communities and themselves, their interest and motivation can significantly increase. Regardless of what age; it is in the action, performance, and demonstration of the work itself that piques a student's interest and commitment.

Schools and school programming should reflect the fact that students need to examine, challenge, and improve upon conventional assumptions.

In a democracy, education should be a process whereby students make their own decisions based on choices, consequences, and reasons, rather than an indoctrinating students in conventional beliefs. Very little in a democracy is absolutely right or wrong and an orientation of respectfully challenging doctrine is essential. But challenge often leads into controversial areas. For example Sanford Levinson (2006), a highly respected Yale University Law Professor states in his recent book that the U.S. Constitution violates the one-person, one-vote rule essential to democratic government and gives examples after example of where an individual, a minority of citizens, or states override the rule of the majority. Regardless of the correctness of Levinson's analysis, we agree that citizens of a democracy should be educated to examine for evidence and perspective, and make their own conclusions as to what is right and wrong. In schools, we have to support such critiques and protect students' freedom to reason and express his/her own conclusions.

Education should enable students the capacity and choice to work and participate in communities different from the community of one's birth.
Many children are born into an identifiable race, economic class, ethnicity, religion, life style, and then they either have their "born-into identities" protected or reconfigured. The idea of single identity community is often extolled as the pride of a democracy. However, Nobel Prize winner economist Amartya Sen explains (2007) that group identity can aggravate inequities among humans, and be the root of societal and world violence.

Sen takes the popular media depiction of the world being in the midst of a culture clash between the west and east; two value systems, two different types of people, two different traditions, two different histories. To attribute certain common traits to a group both excuses an individual for his/her behavior and more importantly, reinforces the superiority of one group's claim in relation to the other group. Education can change such separations amongst people and help individuals develop their own identities.

The U.S. military is a good example of what is possible. Just thirty years ago, the military was stratified by race and ethnicity torn by group conflicts and dissension, now—although not perfect—it is the most integrated institution in America. Why? Because, leaders enforced laws against discrimination and educated soldiers to work together in acquiring common skills, including the skills to protect each other in times of stress. Now soldiers, after leaving the military, have more close friends of different ethnicities than do civilians. Similar strategies can be used in public education to involve students in different settings and provide them with the opportunity to learn about the experiences of groups that are different from their own.

Schools should be intellectually challenging places and involve students, faculty, parents, and community members in significant decision making.
Intellectually powerful schools act as magnets that draw students, parents, faculty, and other citizens to the liveliness and authenticity of classrooms and conversations. For example, one middle school is known for its rollicking theatre performances, another for intergenerational community service work, another for field experiences that students and parents have together, and another for scientific investigations with research scientists. What are common about such schools are lively halls, the ease in which students and adults talk with each other, the authenticity of the intellectual tasks asked of students, and the pride of student work prominently displayed and ever changing.

In many small towns public schools serve as the venue for many community gatherings. From town hall meetings to plays, concerts and athletic events, schools in many small towns across America are at the very center of civic life. The same is possible in suburban and urban communities if educational leaders understand and appreciate how community engagement can benefit schools. Any real estate agent will tell you that property values and the economic well being of a community are strongly related to the quality of public schools. Educators must utilize these shared interests to engage local residents, businesses and community agencies in partnerships with schools. Such partnerships can be used to generate volunteers who can serve as tutors and mentors for students, internships and jobs so that students can see how what they have learned in school can be applied in the workplace, and various services and in-kind support. By tapping into community resources schools become recognized as assets to their community and public education becomes an activity that the entire community cares about and supports.

In addition, community members should be invited to participate in the assessment of student performance in carrying out assignments as a form of true public accountability and standard-setting. This kind of challenging, "real-world" learning should be embraced by the community, and codified and credentialed as learning that carries equal, if not greater weight than paper and pencil tests.

A teacher who has taught for over 20 years in an exemplary school when asked why he stays, answers, "I stay because this school is fascinating. Teaching is hard in this school and our students have very tough lives and, of course, I have moments of despair but what keeps me here is because we learn so much from each other." We need to create more schools where the interest of students and faculty and parents open new doors to learning from and with each other.

Schools need to use a pedagogy of democracy throughout classrooms
A pedagogy of democracy is not the responsibility of only civic, history, or social studies teachers but is the responsibility of all classroom teachers to help For example, in Federal Hocking High, faculty, parents, and students developed graduation performance projects that have been in use for twenty years. The school requires a three part Portfolio's requirement for graduation. Three different faculty members assist the student; one as advisor, another as presentation coach, and the other as Portfolio presentation chairperson. One part is readiness to be an active citizen. The directions to students are as follows:

...include explanations or two ways in which you have been involved in the political processes of the school or greater community. There are a variety of ways to demonstrate this including, but not limited to, playing a role in some part of school governance, assisting with some effort in the community such as registering people to vote or working at the polls, being involved in a campaign, registering to vote and voting, being involved in the school's site-based committee, serving on the School Improvement Committee, being an officer in a club, working on the First Amendment Committee, and so on.

In essence, to prepare students to pass such examinations of an educated citizen demands the use of pedagogy of democracy which includes:

* Students and teachers work together to make students' learning a contribution to their larger communities
* Students demonstrate their learning in public settings and receiving public feedback
* Students have escalating degrees of choice, both as individuals and as groups, within the parameters provided by the teacher and school
* Students actively work with problems, ideas, materials, and people as they learn skills and content
* Students being held to high degrees of excellence in both their academic objectives learned and their contributions to a larger community

Students do not decide for themselves if, what, how they will learn, they need to learn basic skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics and the core content found in the humanities, science, and art. Furthermore, schools should avoid all students learning the same material at the same time, students should not be sitting and listening passively, and students should not be categorized, labeled, and placed in fixed ability groups and tracks.

Conclusion
Citizen education for students is traditionally thought of as Civic Classes, Character Education, History, Youth Leadership Development, Student governance, voting, service learning, community service, tolerance and diversity curriculum, student debates, student newspapers, and studies of the Fifth Amendment, and so on. All of these programs can be of great value but they don't make the whole of an educated citizen. We close the citizen participation gap and related achievement gaps in America only when our schools help students learn that their minds, their choices, and their wisdom make a difference in their lives and the lives of others, and provide them with real opportunities to exercise and practice that work.