What factors shape our schools?

After reading the introduction through chapter 2 of Fruchter and the Anderson and Summerfield article, it seems to me that there is no single overriding factor that shapes our schools, and in particular urban schools. While Fruchter’s argument seems to be that race is the overriding factor that shapes our urban schools, I am not convinced that it isn’t more complex than that. While in certain school districts, especially in the South, this might be true, I think it is a broad over-generalization to claim this as the main factor shaping urban schools in the country as a whole. Anderson and Summerfield main argument is that a belief in rural ideals as “American” ideals is shaping our public school policy, and that those ideals are forced on urban schools where the populace is “foreign,” or un-American. Again, race is implicated, though less overtly. While I agree that race and school segregation are major factors that shape our urban schools, I think the issue, like almost every other human activity or interaction, is too complex to attribute to just one or two factors.

While I agree with Fruchter’s premise that segregation of America’s schools is a major force in the shaping of those schools, and that segregation must be addressed to close the achievement gap that children of color have with their white counterparts, I am not convinced that addressing only those factors would solve the problem. Although it is never stated, Fruchter seems to imply that simply busing urban children of color to a white school or changing what he calls the “culture of schooling,” which involves everything from the curriculum to the discipline system, would help to solve the achievement gap.

His use of the DoDEA schools to show that the culture of schooling determines student performance actually seems to me to show that social and community factors play as large a role as the culture of schooling. While the way the schools are run no doubt has a factor on the performance of their students, the DoDEA schools operate within a vastly different community and framework than our urban public schools. To his credit, Fruchter admits this. However, he seems to disregard the societal influences, and his two paragraphs (on page 22) devoted to refuting the social and community influences offer little in the way of supporting data. Based on the two chapters I have read so far, Fruchter has convinced only that his “culture of schooling” is only one of many factors that must be addressed to improve failing schools. I am unconvinced that schools can be changed independently of the communities and societies they are a part of.

Anderson and Summerfield similarly fail to offer any persuading supporting data to support their claim about the imposition of rural schooling values on rural schools. While the idea is one that seems to make sense based on the recent Republican party convention and all the talk about “small towns” as the exemplar of America ideals, Anderson and Summerfield offer little in the way of supporting examples or data. The examples they do offer are specific and I would hesitate to use them to represent anything beyond what they specifically show. I see the “rural ideals” as one of many factors shaping our schools, not only one or the major one.

Again, I state my belief that all schools are shaped by many factors. Societal, cultural, economic, racial and a host of other factors all play a role. The weight any particular factor has most likely differs from region to region and school to school. It seems to me that to attribute any single factor as the shaping force of all schools, or even all suburban, rural, or urban schools, is a dangerous oversimplification. When we do such a thing, we run the risk of overlooking things our pre-conceived notions don’t want to see. We must look at all schools as part of a larger framework in which they are shaped by their communities, and in turn help to shape their communities.