Egalitarian In Theory

by Josh Miller.

I believe a huge problem at Santa Monica High school are the racial disparities with regards to enrollment in AP/Honors classes, Post-Secondary education, and academic achievement. I believe this imbalance in numbers stems from unfortunate societal truths, and the school cannot be held responsible for the inequalities; however, I strongly believe SAMOHI, and the district, can do a lot to solve these problems. To stay true to there egalitarian nature, public schools must offer all students an equal shot to succeed; so in theory, if all students have an equal opportunity to succeed, statistics should not fluctuate among races & ethnicities. But they do, and they do dramatically. As a result of trends in our society, the disparities can possibly be credited to the following two variables: socioeconomic influence, and social class. However, because within a public high school your families wealth is irrelevant to the opportunities available to you, we cannot accurately target socioeconomics as a reason for the differences. Although, we can justify that social class, and differences in family educational & social histories, have an affect on students. It is the one variable, that is not constant between students, that could potentially have a dramatic affect on a student’s success at SAMOHI. If your parents never attended college, and have never taken an AP or Honor class, then they are a whole lot less likely to push you to take advanced classes than a student who has college-educated parents. A lack of parental knowledge and experience has a drastic effect on the way parents govern and guide their children, and it is something that a school cannot change. So if the playing field isn’t even from the get-go, then how do you provide every student with an equal shot to succeed?
In my opinion, you must take the factor that is not constant between students, and you must develop a way to standardize its availability within the school system. If not every student has the benefit of going home to a parent who is going to push him/her to get good grades and pursue a post-secondary education, then you need to create an authority within the school system that will take on that same role. We must create, what I have elected to define as, Standard Institutional Guidance (SIG).
The most logistically & economically sound way of doing this would be to give teachers the responsibility of guiding a select number of students. In middle school, each student would be assigned a teacher that would act as their SIG counselor from 6th-8th grade. When they reach high school, they would be assigned a new teacher, from that high school, that would act as their SIG counselor from 9th-12th grade. Middle & High school teachers would act as SIG counselors to roughly 30 students each, and would be given the responsibility of meeting with each student once a month, during their prep periods, for 20-30 minutes each session. This would create little change to teachers current dailey routines, and in effect, would give students all the benefits of both their guidance & college counselors, put into one. This system would also make for a more personal and effective experience for the students, and would allow current counselors to act as aides to the SIG counselors, carrying out specific tasks and research. For example, if student John Doe decides he wants to be a mechanic, he can tell his SIG counselor who would then notify a supervising counselor (what are current guidance counselors) who would then research the best way to achieve that goal (community college, technical college, etc.), and relay that information back to the student and the SIG counselor. By utilizing existing counselors in this way, teachers would feel little added stress by taking on the role of an SIG counselor. If students have counselors that they meet with on a regular basis, that track and monitor their progress throughout there entire high school career, they will be more able to make more realistic & opportunistic decisions relating to their futures, and in turn, would eliminate racial inequalities and disparities at Santa Monica High school.

View "Tracking to Nowhere" on the Grip Doctrine - Art page.