When my family moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, it had, so I am told, the highest per-capita income of any city in the country. In my K-12 years from 1945 through 1958, it had one of the nation’s leading public school systems. For a decade or so thereafter, wherever I went, people had heard of Shaker because of its wealth and its school system. Very few Blacks then went to its schools.
The year before I graduated, Shaker was one of the country’s first cites to resist blockbusting by realtors using race to frighten Whites into selling fast and cheap so that they could resell fast and costly to Blacks wanting a better life for their families and better schools for their children. Its efforts, nationally touted, resulted in a win-win for everyone. It protected housing values and, by preventing race-panic pricing, enabled middle-class Blacks to move into the city. Shaker has become a roughly racially balanced community. So far, so good, though inter-racial issues abide.
After my time, racial rebalancing in the schools has also involved inter-racial issues. Disparities in socio-economic and educational backgrounds have conditioned persistent difficulties. Some inner-city Blacks have resisted academic norms of a social, cultural, and educational environment defined by suburban Whites. Some Black students trying hard to get a “Shaker education” as their parents desired have been taunted by other Black students for “acting White” and not being authentically Black. Educational metrics continue to show racial disparities. Shaker has tried to address these problems; despite its best efforts—some say and I agree that they have not been enough or good enough—, the District has failed. In fairness, for 65 years, the Shaker Heights community and its public school system have opposed racist bigotry and supported racial justice.
In truth, in that time, as the racial proportion has shifted from a few Blacks in sixteen hundred students to a student body half Black/half White and Asian, the quality of Shaker’s public education has dramatically declined. From being one of the top ten public school systems in the country, it is now not even in the top ten in Cuyahoga County. Correlation is not causation, but, for whatever reason, growing numbers of Black students have contributed to the decline of a “Shaker education.”
That education uses a meritocratic approach structured with lower, middle, and upper tiers of programs and courses. So Shaker assigns students according to academic performance but adjusts assignments if it changes. Problem: differences in backgrounds fall along racial lines and reflect structural racism—disadvantages to Blacks, advantages to Whites—in employment, housing, health care, nutrition, and education. The effects of structural racism appear when Black students from inner-city schools enroll in suburban schools. Many Blacks have weak, a few have strong, academic backgrounds, which guide their assignments to programs and courses. Racial disparities result: in remedial or special ed courses, more Blacks than Whites; in advanced or enriched courses, more Whites than Blacks. These disparities, or gaps, reflect the effects of structural racism, but, since they reflect performance, not race, they are not racist—a crucial distinction.
However, in today’s center-to-left anti-racist opinion, many regard meritocratic gaps as proof of racism. Among other proposed remedies to perceived racism, Shaker seeks to abolish one gap by ending advanced or enriched courses in the name of deceptively labeled “equitable outcomes.” The proposal will fail not only to reduce racial inequality, but also to increase racial equity. It will be unfair to Black and White students enrolled in these courses by depriving them of a better education and its long-term advantages. It will be unfair by harming Black students who share classes—act White?—with White students and will harm White students who share classes with Black students. It will harm these highly qualified Black and White students without offsetting help to other students—no greater good for the greater number. An anti-racist remedy both unfair and harmful can achieve neither equality nor equity.
The perverse irony is that this proposal perceives students as members of racial groups—the basis of racism—, counts them, and determines that gaps in numbers or proportions reflect racism. What the proposal does not do is perceive these students as individuals and educate them in courses appropriate to their aptitudes, abilities, and interests. In short, the proposed remedy, opposing the philosophy of a Shaker education and discrediting Shaker’s efforts to address racism, is both anti-educational and racist.
Still, the question is why Shaker’s efforts have failed. One answer: Shaker has not assigned better teachers or more resources to help students with weak backgrounds. I doubt that Shaker, like most schools, whatever their racial make-up, has assigned its best teachers to lower-tier classes; I also doubt that it has skimped on resources. Another answer: some Black parents and students have retained cultural and social inclinations which make them unreceptive, even hostile, to meritocratic education, and fault-finding of or blame-shifting to teachers and principals. Perhaps the harder Shaker has tried, the more readily some Blacks have perceived its efforts as Whites-know-best patronizing. I know of no Black leaders who have tried to help newly arrived Black parents recognize the need for them and their children to accept and adjust to Shaker’s academic norms to get the education for which they relocated to Shaker in the first place.
Its failure notwithstanding, Shaker deserves credit for past efforts. But, to reverse its educational decline and restore educational quality, it must consider all options. One is more of the same. But its 65-year failure to improve the education of its weakest, often Black, students rightly makes this option dead on arrival. Another is this anti-racist, social-engineering proposal to end tiers, build open classrooms, award high grades—and fake equality and feign equity. It may fool parents, but not students; they know who is smart and held back, and who is not and helped not, though some may err in thinking Blacks previously poorly educated stupid, per stereotype. This trendy woke proposal for equality will accelerate Shaker’s decline into worse than educational mediocrity.
I offer a third option, not only for Shaker, but also for other cities with similar problems: efforts based on curriculums and instructional methods which worked in Shaker’s heyday, with one difference: special emphasis on the educationally neediest students. That is, Shaker must ensure an equitable education for all students, one matching their aptitudes, abilities, and interests. My experience testifies that, with rigorous courses and stand-and-deliver teachers, students of any color can overcome their disadvantages and achieve satisfying academic success.
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