- Announcer: The following program
is a PBS Wisconsin original production.
[gentle, dramatic music]
- Reverend Greg Lewis: We have to talk about
that elephant in the room.
- Reggie Jackson: Racism has been a part
of Wisconsin history since the beginning as a state.
- Alex Lindenmeyer: Gosh, as white folks,
we have so much to learn.
[somber music]
- Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara: History can help us understand
why we are where we are.
[gentle music]
- Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin in Black & White
is provided by
Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment,
DeAtley Family Foundation,
Joe and Mary Ellyn Sensenbrenner,
Lau and Bea Christensen,
The Evjue Foundation,
the charitable arm of The Capital Times,
Madison College,
National Guardian Life Insurance Company,
UnityPoint Health - Meriter,
donors to the Focus Fund for Journalism,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
- Hello, I'm PBS Wisconsin special projects journalist
Murv Seymour.
In a series of special reports, we take an in-depth look
at systemic racism here in Wisconsin.
Its history across the state is painfully complex
and opens lots of old and new wounds.
In this episode of Wisconsin in Black & White,
we took a look at the history
of race and education in this state.
Educators and students weigh in on longtime challenges
Black and brown students face in the classrooms
throughout Wisconsin,
and we hear about the work being done
to increase opportunity
and put all students on equal footing.
[children laughing]
[teacher sounds out letter 'D'] - Children: Oh.
- 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.
- We continue our reporting
on race and education
in the state of Wisconsin here from the campus
of the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Here to continue the conversation,
we're joined by Dr. Alex Gee
from the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership and Development.
Mr. Kaleem Caire, Superintendent of One City Schools
here in Madison,
and Dr. Courtney Bell, who is the director
of the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research.
As I've traveled and talked to folks across the state
about this issue,
I get the sense that it's a very touchy subject.
Is there something to that?
- Race is a touchy subject in the United States.
I think, when we think about systemic racism,
which exists in education,
we think about these sort of interlocking layers
of systems and policies, right?
So, you only need to think about
how do we draw the district boundary,
and the way that interacts with the neighborhoods,
the neighborhood attendance zone,
the teachers the school can attract,
the outcomes that then wind up in that neighborhood,
that those are interlocking systems.
So, it is contentious, I think partly because people do care,
but the persistent inequalities are hard to look at
in this state, in particular.
- Dr. Gee, why are people afraid to talk about this?
- Because I think it's difficult
to face up to the culpability.
We like to quote statistics, but we don't really want
to look at our ownership in the problem
or why we've allowed it to persist.
In educational services systems,
we want to fight against racism,
but when we don't properly address it,
the educational systems themselves
become breeding grounds for racism.
And I think we just like to pass the buck
to someone else without taking full responsibility.
- I think they're both absolutely spot on,
but I also think that we have divorced ourselves
from the problem.
That it is not only something that I'm embarrassed
or don't want to be culpable in,
but it's been persistent for so long,
and if I know about it, I'm tired of hearing of it,
and so, it brings me down.
I've heard people say that, like,
"I can't focus on the problem 'cause it just brings me down.
"'Cause it's like we've not solved it,
it's not gonna be solved."
And so, I think there's a lot of hopelessness.
I also think that we also live in a state that,
by and large, has been privileged for a very long time,
particularly in the area where we are in Madison.
And so, when you're privileged, and things are going okay,
and you don't have to focus on the issue,
you act like it doesn't exist.
- But this lack of success that we're seeing,
is it more to blame on the teachers,
or is it more to blame on students?
- I think there's enough blame to go around, actually.
But I think, if we ignore the systemic issues,
and only point fingers to the parents, the students, teachers,
not look at the larger issue,
I think we continue just to kick the can down the road.
And so, I think we have to look at really how we got here.
I think what makes it even more difficult is
that education has been deemed the great equalizer.
Education is what brings you into the mainstream,
and it keeps you from being discriminated against.
It keeps you from being poor.
And when that system that's meant to elevate us
is keeping certain people down
it's the antithesis to what we think
of when we think about education.
And then, we have to really begin
to ask ourselves real tough questions.
But we're trying to educate children
in a system, in a world, in a reality
where there's so much brokenness and pain,
and disregard for who they are,
their pain, and their culture.
So, I think we really need an overhaul
in how we even look at what education means for us.
- And we know a lot of times we find solutions looking
at other communities, other school districts,
things like that.
Dr. Bell, we know you work across the world, the country,
looking at different ways people do research
to solve these kinds of issues.
Is there any district out there anywhere
that's doing things well in terms of addressing these issues
with Black and brown students falling behind?
- You know there are success cases.
My colleague Gudiel R. Crosthwaite is the superintendent
in Lynwood Unified, which is in LA.
They have community-based schools.
They have colleagues of color, professionals of color
in those school buildings.
Not only colleagues of color, but some.
They are committed.
They believe that all those kids can learn.
They have tons of AP courses in those high schools.
They are starting with early Pre-K.
And so, they hold them tight,
and they treat them with dignity,
and those families with dignity the whole way up.
- Now Kaleem, you've built a pretty unique environment
in One City.
What are some of the things that you're doing
that you feel like other districts can learn from?
- Well, there's quite a few things.
First and foremost, it's the number of our young people
that are coming to us who are so far behind academically.
Doesn't matter the grade level that they're at,
but it's even more depressing
when they come to you in 9th and 10th grade and who have a...
We have a third of our kids are at the--
somewhere between 1st and 4th grade level in math and reading.
It's like you just pass them along to 9th and 10th grade
without intervening to address their real core challenges.
First six to eight weeks, we get to know our kids.
Then we pivot 'cause we see where they're at.
We test 'em, we look at what they're,
how they interact in school,
how they show up as students every day.
And two hours in the morning students are in math.
Two hours in the afternoon, they're in language arts,
and it's not just instruction all day.
The first part of that is instruction at their level.
And then we bring in tutors that we've trained.
We've trained over 50 tutors to come in,
and work with them one-on-one, no more than one-on-two
to help them to get up to grade levels.
So we have a personalized learning environment for them
so we can move them forward.
So we won't be passing kids in our school forward
to 9th and 10th grade who aren't ready to be there.
- Dr. Gee, you've got one superpower I'm gonna give you
to fix this problem.
What are you gonna do with it?
- We've got to really embed the importance
of helping students to...
and I'll speak specifically to our work
with African American children
with really understanding and appreciating the culture.
You know, if we were to go back in time 60 years ago,
we would not be having this conversation.
Black people were going to
historically Black colleges and universities.
Building historically Black colleges and universities,
building churches and businesses,
highly successful educationally with integration.
And one of my mentors,
and she probably has mentored all of us,
Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings has always said,
"But, Alex, remember, with integration,
30,000 Black teachers lost their jobs
'cause they did not, they were not integrated."
- Seymour: That's right.
- Black students were, Black teachers weren't,
and many of them became domestics.
And so, we have to understand that this is somewhat new.
Because again, 60 years ago, we weren't saying,
"How do we educate our Black children?"
We were probably asking, "How do we vote?"
But Black children were becoming
dentists and doctors and nurses and professors,
and then something happened.
So my superpower would be, let's get them in places
where teachers can relate to them, understand them,
celebrate them, and where they see themselves in textbooks.
I came to Madison advanced in 2nd grade,
but I had a Black teacher in 1st grade who told me
I was gonna be the president of the United States.
She's 102 years old, and we're still pen pals.
We're talking is if we have to fix Black children.
What we have to really ask ourselves is,
"How are we breaking Black children?"
- So, we know most parts of Wisconsin
have a very tiny population of students of color,
if any at all.
So when you talk about the folks that sit at home right now,
and say, "This has nothing to do with me."
How do we get those folks to have a stake
in this game to make things better?
- I'd like to go back to something that was said earlier
about the function of education in,
and I'll say, a democracy.
This affects all of us, every single one of us,
no matter what our racial background is,
no matter where we live.
If we do not have democracy,
that functions with civility,
where people can consider issues of science
in the public domain of policy around all manner of things:
housing, power, you name it,
all the things, social services, farm subsidies,
whatever it may be.
We need an educated citizenry.
That's what the country was founded on.
So for me, this is about all of us.
These are all of our children; this is our country.
- And I would say America's at risk.
If you produce children who lack an interest,
and passion to solve the big problems of today and tomorrow,
who's gonna be there to solve them?
We have to focus on education and make it, I believe,
our number one priority in this country.
And if we want a country that's not divided,
we also have to have a education that unifies people
rather than divides them.
And so if we do those things, we'll succeed.
If not, you know, our demise is we already have signs
of what it will look like.
- If we don't learn how to work together,
and work for and with, be educated by,
and educating people who don't look like us,
we can't fool ourselves in thinking
that we're ready for a global market,
that we want to compete in the global market.
And so, we can't boast of having
world-class school districts or universities
if we don't know how to talk to people
who are from our own state who look different.
And so, I think we have to own the broader problem.
Otherwise, we can't boast in producing people
who can compete internationally for jobs,
or awards, or opportunities.
- Seymour: We'll have to leave it there, Dr. Gee.
Thank you, sir. - My pleasure.
- Kaleem Caire, thank you. - Thank you.
- Dr. Courtney Bell, we appreciate you.
And we thank you folks at home for joining us as well.
[gentle, poignant music]
- Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin in Black & White
is provided by
Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment,
DeAtley Family Foundation.
Joe and Mary Ellyn Sensenbrenner.
Lau and Bea Christensen.
The Evjue Foundation,
the charitable arm of The Capital Times,
Madison College,
National Guardian Life Insurance Company,
UnityPoint Health - Meriter,
donors to the Focus Fund for Journalism,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.