One of the enduring themes here at YSDA is that everything in this world is not about race and gender.
My biggest concern, among many, with the Madison school board is that they seem to believe just the opposite. Case in point is their comments when they awarded themselves a big pay increase the other night.
According to a story in the Wisconsin State Journal, board member Ali Muldrow, who proposed the increase, noted that six of the seven board members are women and a majority of members are people of color, and that “devaluing our labor has a historical connotation and reality to it that we have to confront.”
Huh? One of their main reasons for increasing their pay was that it would somehow attract people with lower incomes who weren’t white to run for the board. But, as Muldrow points out, the board is already much more female and much less white than the Madison population as a whole. So, it looks like they’re fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.
In addition, their labor is not being devalued because of race and gender or anything else. The current $8,000 stipend is pretty much in line with what other school districts of similar size are paying. It made sense to adjust it for inflation since the last increase a decade ago, which would have brought their compensation to about $11,000. Instead, the board increased their pay to $15,000 which now makes it much closer to the highest paid board in the state, which is Milwaukee. But Milwaukee has more than twice the number of students.
The latest test scores just came out and they’re dismal. While the scores for Madison nudged up insignificantly, they still run five to 10 points below the statewide average, depending on subject.
Why? Because this district’s leadership is laser focussed on the wrong problem. It’s not all about race and gender. In fact, the yawning racial achievement gap is the same as the difference in scores between middle class and poor students. That suggests that the problem is income, not race.
I’m more than happy to value this board’s labor when they do something worth valuing.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
“In fact, the yawning racial achievement gap is the same as the difference in scores between middle class and poor students. That suggests that the problem is income, not race.”
What is the problem? Obviously rich kids are going to test better on average than poor kids. If you can find a district in this country where poor kids are acing the ACT, let me know.
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Right. The problem is that, as a general rule, families with less resources tend not to place the same value on education, maybe there aren’t books in the home, maybe the parents are too busy to make sure the kids do homework, maybe the home is generally dysfunctional… there could be lots of problems. Again, only as a general rule — of course there are exceptions — families are successful when they’re stable and financial security is a big part of that. My point is that the key factor here is not race, but income. So solutions that focus on racial discrimination as the problem are doomed to failure because they’re chasing the wrong problem.
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