Sameness as Fairness?

[Part I]

This week, we bring our attention to a largely unspoken but profoundly influential tenet of American thinking: that for everyone to have their fair share, everyone must have the same share; that fairness is only achieved through sameness. Indeed, the belief that sameness is fairness. Each of the readings this week examines this belief from a different perspective.

Each of our readings focus on case-studies that help us to identify the influence of the belief in sameness as fairness, and how real life confounds this belief. Some make steps toward dismantling this belief, and the rest of the work of arguing for or against sameness as fairness will be up to us. Our discussions will blend the abstract with lived experiences.

Kris Gutierrez (Chapter 7 in Literacy as Snake Oil) addresses this tenet most explicitly. Her chapter depicts the investment that various parties have in maintaining this belief.

Purcell-Gates (Chapter 8 in the Skin that We Speak) explores, through her story of how a mother, Jenny, is dismissed by school personnel, the intimate violence of ridiculing the mother tongue.

Ladson-Billings (Chapter 7 in the Skin that We Speak) theorizes the practices of "permission to fail" that she observed in classrooms. She presents an example of a teacher who refuses to allow students to fail, a teacher who refuses sameness as fairness.

Jackson and Cooper (Chapter 16 in Adolescent Literacy) lay out best practices for working with underachieving students.

However, nothing brings these loosely related but still disparate perspectives together like the following TED talk by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell's thesis of giving up the pursuit for the perfect Pepsi in exchange for the pursuit for the perfect Pepsis, has wildly interesting implications for how we as a nation, as communities, think about fairness, and about schooling. (An aside: funny that we draw such a powerful extended metaphor from marketing after our discussions of neoliberalism.)






[Part II]
The second part of my blog for this week is aligned with the "Abbott Schools Debate" discussion prompt on the discussion board.

Ideas of sameness, fairness, and equality through differentiation of resources, instruction, and curricula are surely less muddled in the abstract. It is when brought to the realm of the real that generally held commitments to fairness, true everyone-gets-their-needs-met-and-their-dreams-cultivated fairness, start to unravel.

Consider the case of the Abbott School Districts, in New Jersey. If you are unfamiliar with this case, some internet searching will bring you up to speed, but here are the highlights. In 1981, the Abbott vs. Burke case was filed, arguing that the State of New Jersey failed to meet its constitutional obligation to provide all students with a thorough and efficient education. Plaintiffs provided evidence that urban and poor-districts were provided inadequate public schooling. The case was eventually heard before the New Jersey Supreme Court. Their 1985 ruling was unprecedented, because they argued that urban, poor school districts had the rights to the same quality of education as enjoyed by wealthier districts. They did not set a baseline, or a minimum degree of adequate education, but rather, ruled that poor students should have access to the same quality of education that wealthy students access.

A few years later, little had been done to realize this ruling, but a 1990 shift in finance law yielded the economic structure for this change. Recognizing that the widely used school financing formula in which property taxes fund school budgets was the major contributor to ongoing disparities between poor schools and wealthy schools, the state agreed to pay the difference in per pupil spending between poor districts and wealthy districts. If property taxes and set state funding in a wealthy district would result in $14,000 per-pupil spending, and property taxes and set state funding resulted in $9,000 per-pupil spending in poor districts, the state would provide funds, in this case $5,000 per student, to match the wealthiest districts.

Parents, administrators and elected representatives in wealthy districts vehemently contested this decision before the ink was dry.

Over the past almost twenty years, there have been a series of Abbott decisions meant to equalize schooling outcomes in New Jersey. These decisions, some say, have done little to mitigate high concentrations of poverty, drop-out, violence, and incarceration rates in urban centers. There are many debates on how the additional funding to the 31 districts, called Abbott districts, should be used. There have been some instances of corruption, and misuse of funds.

For our purposes, this case serves to flesh out the complexities of sameness as fairness. Wealthy parents who may agree in the abstract that all students deserve a quality education became outraged that low-income students would benefit by the same per-pupil spending as benefited by their children. Questions of deservedness- of who deserves better schools because they have paid for them, of who deserves the best, who deserves to be poor- run deep in this debate.

For critics of the Abbott decisions, sameness as fairness means that the state provides the same funding for every student, and funds that property taxes generate on top that result in disparities in per-pupil spending are just a part of life. For advocates of the Abbott decisions, sameness as fairness means that every student has the same per-pupil spending, though the ratio of state-provided and property-tax generated funds may vary widely.

Since taking office, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has refused to comply with the Abbott ruling. Last month (2011), the New Jersey Supreme Court rules that Gov. Christie absolutely must comply with the Abbott funding parity. Christie's response? As your classmate Mandi posted on the discussion board on June 12, Christie has announced a plan to privatize 200 of New Jersey's lowest performing schools, including the Abbott schools. His education commissioner advising him? Former President of Edison Schools, Inc. (a for-profit education management organization) Christopher Cerf.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/11/chris-christie-schools_n_875262.html?ref=fb&src=sp

When I have talked about this with students, friends and colleagues, they often remark that no one, no parent, will ever easily say, "Yes, give more to that child than to my child." It can be expected that any parent will want the most for her child, especially in education. However, like in the case of Academia Semillas discussed by Gutierrez, debates over sameness and fairness are waged in relationships of uneven power. Many ask, "Who would ever deny a child a comprehensive, free, complete education?" (Comprehensive, free, complete, and compulsory are the goals listed in the 2000 Dakar Framework on Education) The answer is, lots of people, if they believe that the education of other children somehow jeopardizes the education or possibilities for success of their own children.

Take all of the thoughts that you are having as you read and post to the discussion board.

Can't wait to see what you make of all of this!