Chicago schools by themselves can never close the academic gap between poor black and Latino students and their more affluent white and Asian counterparts. Schools cannot eliminate the racial academic achievement gap because schools did not create it. This gap comes to schools with children from their homes, families and communities.
The gap, which is well-established before kindergarten, widens during the first three years of schooling. And from third grade through high school, the academic achievement gap remains relatively steady. A recent survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development shows the racial gap's prevalence even among adults in the United States.
Until the proper roles and limitations of schools are understood, they will almost always fail at educating poor, ethnic students. Effective teachers and administrators are critical to the successful educational process, but they are not miracle workers. Very few teachers can compensate for years, decades and sometimes even centuries of educational deficiencies in homes, families and communities.
Parents, families, communities, societal structures, value systems, peer groups, networks, cultures and community institutions are the best sources of education for children. Without these structures and institutions in place and operating optimally, even the best schools will struggle to educate children.
At a minimum, for schools to succeed, they must have students with basic skills who want to learn, actively engaged parents who are invested in their child's educational success, and teachers and administrators who are skilled and passionate about their profession.
For at least the past 70 years, we have been asking public schools to do what no school can do. We ask schools to substitute for broken family structures and decimated communities; to impart moral and spiritual values to children; to teach children discipline and self-control; to teach them to want to learn and to inspire them to succeed; and to teach children to make positive and proper life choices.
Public schools were not designed to do any of these things well. And because schools spend so much time trying to teach things that they cannot teach, many times they fail at teaching the things that they ought to be teaching - reading, writing, math and science.
Government and schools have important roles and responsibilities for educating children. However, their first responsibility is to powerfully engage parents and communities in their children's educational lives.
Effective parents, families and communities can do what no school can do: create the culture, lay the foundation, set the trajectory, establish the momentum, insist upon high academic standards and model the behaviors and habits necessary for globally relevant learning and the educational and life success for all children in every community. This is what no school can do.
Phillip Jackson is the founder and executive director of The Black Star Project
