- Look at how Black students are doing.
It is... terrible.
[gentle, somber music]
- Whatever efforts there have been by the federal government
to create integrated schools have not worked.
- Education is the conduit to freedom.
- We have a lot more work to do.
- Murv Seymour: Wisconsin.
- We're a microcosm of the nation.
- We want to create change.
- Seymour: A conversation about race and education
in this state.
- It is a complex one.
We've never given full education access to everyone.
- Seymour: Author and retired University of Wisconsin Education Professor,
Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, travels the world
learning, teaching, and training people about education.
- It's Thomas Jefferson who says,
"Listen, we are not gonna be able to maintain a democracy
unless the common folks are educated."
- It goes all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
- Seymour: Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara
is a UW-Madison history professor,
and also works with the Madison Organization, Nehemiah.
She's an instructor in its Justified Anger
"Black History for a New Day" course.
Nehemiah focuses on strengthening
the African American community in Wisconsin.
The nine-week course teaches people
about race, history, and justice.
She and Ladson-Billings help explain why the playing field
of education began to take shape
out of balance across the country,
including here in Wisconsin.
- Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara: The laws against teaching enslaved people to read
actually come into play
after the founding of the nation,
in response to enslaved people
doing things like forging fake passes.
- Seymour: Written by their owners,
passes were required for slaves to leave the plantation
for extra work or errands.
- When we're talking about access to education,
post-slavery, you just have cities, states,
and counties
not investing in the education
of Black people, who are taxpayers.
They would have inferior school buildings,
inferior materials, inferior books, or notebooks, right?
The teachers were paid less.
And so, it was an active disinvestment.
My father was functionally illiterate.
His family was poor,
and he was sharecropping cotton most of his life,
and his labor was essential to his family's survival,
and the school that he could attend was underfunded.
- Seymour: During the civil rights era,
Milwaukee was the epicenter of protests,
demanding compliance
to end continued segregation in schools.
- We tend to think about the Civil Rights Movement,
like the institution of slavery,
as something that is uniquely Southern, and it was not.
- Seymour: While the US Supreme Court's
Brown versus the Board of Education ruling
in the late 1950s
ordered all US schools to desegregate,
Milwaukee and other parts of the state,
like much of the nation, didn't do so for decades.
- The schools in Milwaukee are not in line
with Brown versus the Board of Education until 1979.
- Reggie Jackson: The city of Milwaukee's public school system decided,
"Well, we're gonna build new schools,
but we're gonna build them on the south side,
which is primarily the white part of town, right?"
- The schools that Black people have access to
were severely underfunded.
- Ion Meyn: What you saw in Black communities
was a continual kind of decline in the tax base,
and the ability to support public education
in those communities.
- Seymour: A declining tax base
due to declining property values in housing like this
in Milwaukee.
- Housing policy is education policy.
You go to the schools in your neighborhood,
and we tend to fund schools
through property taxes.
Better than 60% of Black and brown kids
still go to segregated schools.
- Seymour: Schools in the Milwaukee metro area
are more segregated for Black and white students
than any other metro area of the country.
That's comparing Milwaukee schools
to those in the surrounding counties
of Ozaukee, Washington, and Waukesha.
- Whatever efforts there have been by the federal government
to create integrated schools have not worked.
- There are many white children
who go to all-white districts,
and nobody says, "Oh, this is a segregated district."
They say, "This is a good district."
If you look at performance,
Black and brown kids
continue to lag.
- Seymour: Those students test below white students in math,
in the early grades,
and it's not just math.
- It speeds over a hundred miles an hour.
- Seymour: If there's one indicator
of how students will perform...
- Woman: Reading proficiency is important
across the races.
- Seymour: ...It's their ability to read by 3rd grade,
and state assessments show that just one year later
in the 4th grade,
reading scores for Black and Hispanic students also lag.
- The most revolutionary thing we could do
is teach these kids how to read.
Whoa!
[leaf blower humming]
- Seymour: But educators across Wisconsin are working
to reverse these trends.
At One City grade school in Madison,
the focus on reading is key.
- Yeah! It kind of continues on.
- Seymour: 3rd grade teacher, Kirsty Blattner
teaches reading skills at this public charter
where more than 80% of the students
are Black, Hispanic, or multiracial.
Blattner is passionate about making sure
her students embrace reading.
- Kirsty Blattner: I have a deep passion for helping scholars
that are struggling academically.
If you have a scholar
that doesn't feel confident and comfortable with reading,
then they'll find other ways
to sort of mask that.
Because no one wants to be seen as not knowing.
Instead of, "I can't do this, I can't do this yet."
Instead of, "I'm not good at this."
"What are you good at?
Would you like to be good at this?"
- Sara Shaw: America has trouble talking about race, period.
- Seymour: Sara Shaw researches education
for a nonprofit think tank out of Milwaukee,
called the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
- There's a trope in literacy circles that
before 3rd grade, students are learning how to read.
And after 3rd grade,
students are reading to be able to learn.
Think of how many of your daily activities
become more difficult.
Everything from reading street signs, to menus,
to engaging in the legal system,
or going to the doctor's office.
- Education is the conduit to freedom.
- Seymour: From grade school achievement to high school
where one superintendent can boast the benefits
of a diverse student body.
- Tremayne Clardy: We're approximately 35% students of color here
in the Verona Area School District.
We celebrate diversity here
in the Verona Area School District,
and we understand that a diverse clientele
in the students that we serve
allows us to be a better district.
- Seymour: Inside the district's signature
$150 million high school, Verona Area school superintendent
Dr. Tremayne Clardy is straightforward
about his commitment and obligation
to create equity for all students in his district,
especially those that are Black and brown.
- It is our responsibility to move barriers
but never, never lowering expectations.
- Seymour: While recent statewide data
shows a gap in the graduation rates
of Black and brown students compared to white students,
Dr. Clardy and other educators
believe the difference in achievement
has less to do with performance,
and more to do with something else.
- It's opportunity.
It's definitely not skill.
It's not intellect.
There's not any other internal barrier
on behalf of our Black and brown students.
It is purely about access.
- Seymour: Opportunity and access are why this school
has windows in place of walls, and wide-open common spaces.
- We are modeling, you know, other students seeing
that collaborative process.
We set up our furniture that way.
We set up the classroom structure that day,
because you know the power of peer-to-peer interaction,
and what that means to strengthening education.
- Carri: What is that thing that's in you?
- Seymour: Meet guidance counselor Carri Hale.
- There's no typical day
in the world of a high school counselor.
- Seymour: In the spirit of strengthening education,
in 2018, the district sent her, and every other teacher
to the Nehemiah Justified Anger
"Black History for a New Day" course.
- We really had to get to the root and heart
of the history of the systems that have caused
barriers that we're trying to dismantle.
- Seymour: For Carri Hale...
- It just fed me.
- Seymour: ...the course has been life changing.
- It's just grown in me over the years,
and I realized at that time, there was so much I didn't know.
It benefits me as an educator so that when I'm working
with a student who doesn't look like me
or their family speaks another language,
whatever it might be,
that I can respect them and value them,
and see them, and honor them for who they are
in this space we're in.
- Gerald Montgomery: Well, I definitely struggled
trying to figure out who I was, just like everybody else.
- Seymour: Senior Gerald Montgomery says attending
this diverse high school
has made him more culturally aware than ever.
- When I came here, it was kind of like a cultural shock,
seeing not too many faces looking like me.
- Seymour: It's one of the reasons Gerald got involved
with the school's Black student union group...
- It's just more of, like, celebrating Black culture.
- Seymour: ...which anyone can join.
- The first BSU year, it was, like, small, like, 10 people,
when I was a freshman, and now it's like 80.
And just seeing like that group of Black folks around me,
I feel like that really helps keeping, like, that balance
of me going through school and everyday life.
- Seymour: Gerald says he plans to go to college.
If he goes to a University of Wisconsin school,
he'll be one of a few Black students doing so.
Enrollment numbers show that in 1975,
just 2.5% of students were Black.
Nearly 50 years later, their numbers in 2022
still make up just 2.9% of enrollment law.
While Professor Ion Meyn believes the numbers
should mirror the demographics
of the nation's Black population of about 14%.
- If that gets to 3%, is that progress?
No.
We're not close to progress.
We're not close to even reckoning with our problem.
- Seymour: The UW System lists diversity as a core value,
and its five-year plan calls
for boosting African American enrollment to 15% by 2028.
- Dr. Equan Burrows: College is a aspiration
that is not afforded to all.
It's our honor to serve
and be one of the only majority-minority institutions
in the state of Wisconsin.
- Seymour: Dr. Equan Burrows is the dean of students
at Milwaukee Area Technical College,
where more than half the full-time student population
are minorities.
- It's important that we level that playing field.
Look forward to being the mentors.
- Seymour: Dr. Burrows runs a mentoring program
with about a hundred Black male students
called the Men of Color Initiative.
- The goals are to educate and empower students.
- Seymour: The program hopes to give students
like Jeremiah Crawford a better chance to finish college
and keep pace with other students
who eventually gain their bachelor's degree.
- Just kind of depends on...
- Jeremiah: I've always wanted to go to college.
My home life was a shambles.
It was rough having a father on drugs.
- Seymour: If that wasn't enough.
- Jeremiah Crawford: High school was a point where I started
to retreat into myself.
- Seymour: Jeremiah has something else
that makes learning and life more difficult.
- Jeremiah: My sickle cell stood in the way.
- Seymour: He copes with the blood disorder
sickle cell anemia.
- The last thing that you wanna do is pick up a book,
and my illness would just take over.
The Men of Color give us an opportunity to meet,
and share our emotions and our feelings,
and struggles we're having.
- Seymour: When it comes to reading...
- It's a skill that a lot of people are missing
in this day and age.
- Seymour: Jeremiah knows its importance.
Every day he says he does...
- About an hour to two hours of reading.
I would set an alarm for 15 minutes.
Read, stop reading, take a break.
- Seymour: He agrees with experts like Dr. Ladson-Billings
who say, reading about things you like
organically leads to more reading.
- If you like self-help books, you should look for that.
If you want to learn how to work on a car,
you should read those type of books.
- I think that's really good; I liked it.
- Seymour: Hitting the books is often new
for a population that schools can leave behind.
People whose incarceration cut learning short.
An innovative program hopes to change that.
- There are many, many justifications
for higher education in prison.
- You opened up a really important conversation.
- Seymour: This college classroom is inside a prison.
Odyssey Beyond Bars conducts this college-level
English composition course at Racine Correctional
and three other prisons across the state,
on behalf of the University of Wisconsin.
- Peter: It transforms how they look at their lives.
Virtually all of our students have reported to us
at the end of the class
that the experience in Odyssey
has made them want to take more college classes.
There are people in prison
who look around and think,
"I don't ever want to be back here again,
"and I want to do something about my life
that ensures that I don't."
- I gave the, quote commencement speech
at Oakwood Correctional Center.
- Seymour: Each time, Dr. Ladson-Billing says,
she'd ask one question.
- "Raise your hand if you were ever suspended?"
I've never had less than 100% of the hands go up.
[gentle poignant music]
- Seymour: Suspensions and expulsions from high school
can lead to what has been called,
"the school-to-prison pipeline,"
and at the very least, disrupt graduation,
and college attainment.
- Now the prisons are having to go back and say,
"Listen, let's make sure you get the education
you should have gotten."
- Seymour: If fixing the opportunity gap
for Black and brown students is a puzzle,
another important piece of it
is the shortage of minority teachers.
- They talked about how my dad would move out,
and how me and my sister...
- Our students want and deserve to see someone
that looks like them.
- Seymour: For his part, Superintendent Clardy is proud
of his efforts in his district to diversify its staff
with people like Kabby Hong, Teacher of the Year.
- And then, if you look at this paragraph.
For so many kids of color,
they've never had
a teacher of color.
A lot of the university programs are not diverse.
So if your feeder pool of teacher applicants
is not diverse,
then, of course, you're not gonna have
a diverse teaching workforce.
- Seymour: In 2020, researchers at the Wisconsin Policy Forum
took an extensive look into the racial diversity
of Wisconsin teachers, and the student-to-teacher pipeline.
The takeaway... - I want you to...
- Sara: [exhaling] We have a lot more work to do.
- Seymour: Shaw says, ideally...
- That the diversity of the student body would be reflected
in the diversity of the teacher population.
- Seymour: While almost one third of students in Wisconsin
are students of color, only about 6% of their teachers are,
and many don't stay.
- Teachers of color who come into the workforce are leaving
at a faster rate than our white teachers.
- Okay?
- Seymour: Many educators say a diverse teaching staff
positively impacts all students in a lot of different ways.
- We see positive impacts across everything
from student motivation
to strong student-teacher relationships,
to absenteeism, graduation rates and going on to college.
- When you look at the educational inequities,
I think it is just intrinsically tied
to the inequities that are in society,
but it's gonna take policy changes--
not just talk.
- For his part, Verona Superintendent Clardy
is moving beyond talking and taking action.
- I'm not a worrier; I'm a doer.
And so we're about doing the work.