Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Making the promise of Roanoke
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
- An elementary problem with SOLs
From the RoundTable blog
Shallow generalizations such as Linda Whitlock wrote in her Aug. 16 column, "Pay attention, single moms," aren't at all helpful in building stronger communities.
Whitlock would have us believe that children of single moms are destined to run afoul of the law or become high school dropouts and to think otherwise is to deny reality.
Am I to believe then that my daughter's chances for success died along with her father? Should I stop off at the daddy store on the way home from work today to pick out a replacement model?
I'm rarely rankled by even the most outrageous of comments, but this simplistic myth purported as reality that children are doomed if not raised in homes that mirror Ozzie and Harriet's is offensive. But I suspect middle-class moms and dads like me aren't the main target of Whitlock's admonitions. What she really laments is the high rate of black men murdered or imprisoned or jobless coming from single-mom homes.
OK, let's talk about that one, and let's finish the thought: Children from poor, minority neighborhoods raised by single, under-educated parents and children raised in homes where English isn't spoken start and end life at a disadvantage; if they are lucky, the best they can do is muddle through the middle without too much hardship or heartache or burden on society.
We've come to believe this tenet partly because we struggle with these challenges in our city schools; the failure is staggering. As the student population has grown poorer and darker skinned, the dropout rate has grown accordingly. City schools haven't left just one child behind, they've left nearly half of them.
It's easy to pass off the blame on poor parenting skills and uninvolved parents and to start erroneously thinking that economically challenged students aren't as bright or as capable as more well-off students.
We can wring our hands that there is only so much the schools can do and if students only had daddies or better mommies test scores would rise.
Or we can face reality: Our community cannot succeed unless our children do. An illiterate, untrained and untrainable work force cannot attract industry or support job growth. Disadvantaged parents aren't going to turn this around without help.
Fortunately, Roanoke has reached this epiphany. Come Nov. 12, the public will learn details about The Promise of Roanoke, a partnership between the city, the school system and Virginia Tech that relies on the business community to step up and become involved in the schools.
Mayor Nelson Harris explained that the initiative began when Virginia Tech invited Suzanne Morse, author of "Smart Communities: How Citizens and Local Leaders Can Use Strategic Thinking to Build a Brighter Future," to join its Center for Organizational and Technical Advancement. This in turn spawned meetings with the city and the formation of an alliance willing to work toward a high-performing public school system.
The Promise of Roanoke, led by Tech's Susan Short, invited 125 people from businesses large and small to join in. "We ask the businesses to release their employees for a couple hours a week," Harris said.
The results are encouraging. Short said 80 neighborhood and business people are serving on seven action teams to look at ways to improve school readiness, third-grade reading levels and high school graduation rates by employing Morse's seven strategies.
"Since early May we've had 100 team meetings. The level of participation is very exciting," Short said.
This week the teams will gather together to hone their list of major actions. Later this fall they will be presented to the public and to the city and schools to adopt.
One idea, Harris said, is to ask employers to free their employees a few hours each week to volunteer in "struggling, underperforming schools in stressed neighborhoods." He cites a relationship between the 1,000 hours donated yearly by parents at Crystal Spring with its high-achieving students and that of the 60 hours at underperformer Hurt Park.
"This is involving the community in a higher and more meaningful way," Harris said.
In Peter Schrag's outstanding essay for the September edition of Harper's magazine, "Schoolhouse crock: Fifty years of blaming America's educational system for our stupidity," he bemoans the decades-old trend of demanding that our public schools shoulder the burden of correcting all of our societal woes.
It is encouraging that in Roanoke, members of the community recognize that schools can't do it alone. Neither can parents, single or married.
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
