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Page 6 September 7, 2016 O PINION Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. Re-examine BA Requirement for Preschool Staff We agree, rule will narrow path to diversity f ranCes s allah and m olly d ay As the co-directors of Early Learning Multnomah, we add our support to the call for a re-exam- ination of the Bachelors of Arts degree requirement for Preschool Promise providers. “Preschool Promise Conflict, New Require- ments Fail Kids of Color,” Port- land Observer, July 20.) We do not have enough af- fordable high-quality preschool in Multnomah County. With by funding from Preschool Prom- ise, a state-funded initiative ad- ministered by United Way of the Columbia-Willamette and Mult- nomah County, Early Learning Multnomah is able to support the creation of 192 high-quality pre- school opportunities for low-in- come children. It is a small step forward in providing preschool for the thousands of children who would benefit from this important foundation for school success. We want to make this first step a smart one. In our work with families from communities of color we hear time and again their desire for teachers and caregivers who mirror the communities they serve. Fami- lies want to send their children to high-quality preschools staffed by teachers who speak the language of the children, share their racial and ethnic backgrounds and reso- nate with the families’ life experi- ences. We want to be able to use Preschool Promise funds to reach that goal. Unfortunately studies and re- ports from the Center for Amer- ican Progress, Brookings Insti- tution, and others highlight the challenges of achieving a diverse preschool teacher workforce. Af- rican American early childhood teachers make 84 cents for ev- ery dollar earned by their white peers, who are already among the lowest paid professionals in this country with an average sal- ary of $30,000 year. Wage par- ity and strategies to attract and retain minority teachers must go hand in hand with the demand for a highly-educated teacher workforce. Ron Herndon, director of the Albina Head Start Program and Kali Thorne-Ladd, founder of Kairos PDX have effectively ar- gued that a B.A. requirement for providers will narrow, rather than expand the path for those who are best able meet the needs of our underserved communities. (“Well Intended, but with Devastating Consequences,” guest opinion piece, Portland Observer July 20 issue.) We agree. That is why we will continue to push for in-classroom experience as a proxy for a formal educational degree and work to offer continuing education oppor- tunities and training to raise the profile and pay for those who do this important work. In a statement addressing teacher diversity, U.S. Secretary of Education, John B. King Jr. said, “Achieving a diverse teach- er workforce must be a long-term policy goal with a suite of long- term strategies put in place to help minorities succeed in college and to encourage them to return to the classroom to help the next genera- tion of students. Our failure to do so will keep us stubbornly in the same vicious cycle in which low teacher diversity contributes in a myriad of ways to low minority student success in K-12 and col- lege, which results once again in low teacher diversity.” We hope that others interested in educational success for all stu- dents will join us to advocate for achieving a diverse teacher work- force and will re-examine the B.A. degree requirement for Preschool Promise providers. Molly Day and Frances Sallah are co-directors of Early Learning Multnomah, one of the state’s Ear- ly Learning Hubs that work within Oregon’s Early Learning Division to support young children and families to learn and thrive. Make Sure Every Student is in School Every Day Every child needs to feel welcome m arian W right e delman As a new school year begins, parents, teachers and administrators are all thinking about how to make it the best year ever. One of the keys to stu- dent success sounds very simple but can make a profound difference: making sure every stu- dent is in school every day. This is not the case in many schools and school districts across the coun- try. The Department of Education estimates that five to seven and a half million students miss 18 or more days of school each year or nearly an entire month or more. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10 percent of school days in a school year for any reason. As part of the President’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative, the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice have joined together to launch Ev- ery Student, Every Day: A National Initiative to Address and Eliminate Chronic Absenteeism. I was honored to participate in their national symposium to share what the Children’s Defense Fund has learned since our first report in 1974, Children Out of School in America. We found from examining cen- sus data at the time that at least 2 million children were out of school for at least 3 months, including 750,000 between 7-13 years old. We learned that the large number of by these children had physical, men- tal, or emotional disabili- ties. Another large group were children pushed out by discipline policies who never returned to school. In Holyoke, Mass., we found children who had recently migrated from Puerto Rico staying home when it got cold because they had no winter coats. In rural Maine, we found chil- dren who couldn’t afford the local school district’s transportation fees and were unaware that the state would reimburse the local district for transportation costs. In other states like Kentucky the key barri- ers were book fees. We wrote: “If a child was not white, or was white but not mid- dle class, did not speak English, was poor, needed special help with seeing, hearing, walking, reading, learning, adjusting, growing up, was pregnant or married at age 15, was not ‘smart enough’ or was ‘too smart,’ then, in too many places, school officials decided school was not the place for that child. In sum, out of school children shared a com- mon characteristic of differentness by virtue of race, income, physical, mental or emotional ‘handicap,’ and age. They were for the most part, out of school not by choice but be- cause they had been excluded. We’ve made enormous progress since then, especially for students with disabilities. But we haven’t solved the children out of school crisis. Children on the margins re- main at greatest risk for some of the same reasons we documented more than 40 years ago. A recent National Public Ra- dio story on absenteeism featured Johns Hopkins scholar Robert Bal- fanz, who studies chronic school absenteeism, and a high-poverty elementary school in Baltimore making strides tackling the prob- lem: “[Balfanz] has studied high school dropouts for years, and in his research he kept seeing a red flag: chronic absences in elemen- tary and middle school. Students who miss a couple days a month fall behind in reading — and if they can’t read, they can’t pass tests. eventually drop out of school.” Chronic absenteeism is not to be confused with the problem of children being truant from school. Often when a child skips school, he is labeled as a discipline problem and ends up being suspended or ex- pelled and sometimes even referred to law enforcement for action. We must prevent suspensions and ex- pulsions for truancy. I have never understood why we put a child out of school for not coming to school instead of finding out why the child is not in school. The Department of Education is now collecting the right data and doing something about chronic ab- To miss a month of school when you’re 11 and 12, there’s got to be something behind that. The list included things like tooth decay, mental health issues, and not having a winter coat. — Robert Balfanz, Johns Hopkins scholar ‘To miss a month of school when you’re 11 and 12, there’s got to be something behind that,’ Bal- fanz says — and at Wolfe Street Academy, there was. ‘The list in- cluded things like tooth decay, mental health issues, and not hav- ing a winter coat.’” The Department of Education sees chronic absenteeism as: “a primary cause of low academic achievement and a powerful pre- dictor of those students who may senteeism by promoting ideas we know work. One common sense idea goes all the way back to our days of knocking on doors: More school districts are starting each morning by having staff call or visit every family whose child is absent from school to find out why. Others also connect with fam- ilies as the school year begins. Some schools are making strides connecting eligible but unenrolled children with health insurance as they enroll in school, allowing those children to get the regular care they need to stay healthy and ready to learn. Some are partner- ing with health clinics to allow children to be treated on-site for chronic conditions like asthma that contribute to days of lost class time and which can now be addressed in a few minutes out of class. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is partnering with the Department of Education to promote housing stability for families so children aren’t kept out of school when they move fre- quently and lack necessary school records. Wraparound services also help keep children in school. Wolfe Street Academy in Baltimore, for example, provides a box of do- nated coats and other clothes in the cafeteria and like other com- munity schools, provides mental health and dental services and a wide range of programs encourag- ing parents to get involved in their school community. Many schools provide mentor- ing services to make sure students feel supported, nurtured, and en- couraged to be there. The simple truth is every child needs to feel welcome at school and know that they will be missed by someone at school if they miss a day. Schools must make learning engaging and fun and always keep the children at the center. Those are the schools every child will look forward to going to every day. Marian Wright Edelman is pres- ident of the Children’s Defense Fund.
