One town shows example of why US has failed disadvantaged learners

Natchitoches, Louisiana, oldest town in the Louisiana Purchase

Carol Forsloff - The idea was welcomed by a large swath of the townspeople.  Meetings were held; committees were formed.  People were enthusiastic about a new idea to help disadvantaged learners.  What happened that reveals why the United States has failed disadvantaged learners?

In Natchitoches, Louisiana in 2007 a revolution in education was embraced to help disadvantaged students, but soon it was a forgotten mission  just like the rest of the country.

Natchitoches,Louisiana is just one town in thousands across the United States with failing schools, according to statisticians and educators.  Education Nation, the special by CNN,  and Waiting for Superman, the documentary,highlighted education's problems; but one wonders if they went far enough in examining the equation of why schools are actually failing.

No one speaks of these films and programs anymore.  In fact education remains a backburner item, especially when it comes to disadvantaged students.

What happened in one town in the United States, Natchitoches, Louisiana,might shine a light on why schools fail and why it is the adults who must change.

Pat Cooper, a school superintendent in Mississippi, arrived in Natchitoches to a crowd of support, both liberal and conservative, at a major meeting where the public was invited.  Even the Chamber of Commerce became highly involved in the message of Pat Cooper.  His message before that assemblage was education should be treated like Hillary Clinton's thesis in "It Takes a Village."  He maintained at the time that a community must value education and that it should be reinforced at every
level of the community.

What happened in Natchitoches, however, is what often happens in communities with good intentions.  The ideas fell apart because of vested interests, racial differences, political bickering and power bases that could not give up any turf so children could learn.

The school board, divided racially, divided particularly on the selection of a Superintendent of Schools, on discipline issues and even on the nature of the problems themselves.  For each side, black and white, the problem was the other side.  All of this shows up again in the elections, as sides are often pitted against each other in increasingly high-pitched claims for the school board who are elected officials in Natchitoches and therefore have political power.

The racial divides, however, are not always core issues, despite the claims that are made.  The problem, according to members of both the black and white communities, is that people retain old beliefs regardless of more and more new findings about what works and what doesn't.  Those
well-meaning, dedicated people who wanted to help and to move education forward were left with just too many fights.

"Vested interests in the status quo," was a problem," John Winston said those years ago. Winston is an African American man with a background in school leadership.  He saw both the racial divide as well as management inertia at the heart of the problems in Natchitoches.

Unions, school administrator relationships with national textbook companies,cultural differences and how children should be treated in human relationships in classrooms are at the core of the nation's problems in education, along with the specifics in quality teachers and methodologies in how to teach children.  Without a focused desire to change that overrides adult needs and egos, the children are left with no answers--and no education, as has happened in Natchitoches,Louisiana.

The schools in Natchitoches continue to struggle, folks say. And what will happen in the town of Steel Magnolias and the descendants of Uncle Tom's cabin and places like it when adult concerns and biases override those of their children?

It will mean a desperate future for many children.  The notion it takes a village, that sounds all well and good, does not happen as theoretically explained; and children drift helplessly on.