On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day I want to set aside worries about coping with the pandemic for a moment, to address the attempts to close the Black/White educational gap at our school.

Some 50+ years ago, Dr. King pivoted and joined the fight to eradicate poverty. He became convinced that the only way to end poverty was to do so directly, with guaranteed income for all. He rejected indirect means, including improving education, as unreliable. And then he was assassinated. 

Since that time, most of those engaged in the antiracist cause have ignored or implicitly rejected Dr. King’s conclusions. Instead, we have concentrated on improving our teaching: our classroom style, our pedagogy, and curriculum. We have implemented CM, CR, GRR, CRT (the original “culturally responsive teaching”), UDL, teaching for SJ, etc. Some of these – or maybe all – have had a positive impact on what has been called over the decades “persistent academic disparities,” “minority underachievement,” “the racial predictability of academic and health outcomes for Berkeley’s youth,” “the achievement gap,” and “the opportunity gap” – but the impact has been “modest at best.” (Atlantic)  For fifty years, we have tried ineffectually to make an unfair system work. 

Meanwhile, studies in the past couple decades have shown that Dr. King was right: socioeconomic inequality is by far the primary factor in producing educational inequality – teachers have comparatively little to do with it. SES inequality has eclipsed race as a factor as well. And that inequality, which has been growing for five decades, is now exploding in massive wealth gains for the richest 0.1%.

And so I call upon you, my colleagues, to rejoin Dr. King’s fight, to engage in collective action to end the massive socioeconomic inequality, not just because it affects our Black kids disproportionately. (But yes, we should continue our efforts to improve our antiracist teaching practices. We need to do both, not just one.) We could begin by joining the California Nurses Association and many others in fighting for Medicare for All. 

History teaches us that collective events – protests and work stoppages – can be effective. Even if we are not immediately successful, I believe that we have a moral obligation to protest this system, which is so very damaging to our kids. We see it every day in our classrooms. (This year, seven of my ten Black students in sophomore math are juniors or seniors, meaning that they’ve failed math at least once.) 

To say that we are politically powerless is unduly pessimistic – there are 3.5 million teachers in the US, and there is still some respect for us. There would be more respect, I believe, if we were seen fighting on behalf of our kids and their families. To remain silent says that inequality is acceptable.

What do you say? What should we do?

Dan Plonsey, 

Math Teacher, Berkeley High