Ideas worth spreading

How America's public schools keep kids in poverty

2,028,244 views |

Kandice Sumner |

TEDxBeaconStreet

• November 2015

Why should a good education be exclusive to rich kids? Schools in low-income neighborhoods across the US, specifically in communities of color, lack resources that are standard at wealthier schools -- things like musical instruments, new books, healthy school lunches and soccer fields -- and this has a real impact on the potential of students. Kandice Sumner sees the disparity every day in her classroom in Boston. In this inspiring talk, she asks us to face facts -- and change them.

Why should a good education be exclusive to rich kids? Schools in low-income neighborhoods across the US, specifically in communities of color, lack resources that are standard at wealthier schools -- things like musical instruments, new books, healthy school lunches and soccer fields -- and this has a real impact on the potential of students. Kandice Sumner sees the disparity every day in her classroom in Boston. In this inspiring talk, she asks us to face facts -- and change them.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxBeaconStreet, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

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About the speaker

Kandice Sumner

See speaker profile

Kandice Sumner thinks we've been looking at the "achievement gap" in education all wrong.

Gloria Ladson-Billings | Educational Researcher, 2006 | Book

"From the Achievement Gap to Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools"

Gloria Ladson-Billings flips the term "achievement gap" on its head and purports that we have been looking at it entirely wrong as our country's economic history is tied very closely to its educational history. This essay makes it plain the connection between why and how our current educational system is racialized and how we need to adjust our thinking in order to make things better for the future.

James Baldwin | The Saturday Review, 1963 | Article

"A Talk to Teachers"

It's scary when words from decades ago still hold true today. Baldwin's speech to educators compels the molders of the future to conceptualize the black child's humanity and the many ways it is challenged within the classroom and greater school institution. "Any Negro who is born in this country and undergoes the American educational system runs the risk of becoming schizophrenic," Baldwin says. While the term is outdated, the sentiment is unfortunately no less valid.

John Tyack | Harvard University Press, 1974 | Book

The One Best System

Tyack makes plain historically how things got to its current state of affairs. From a historical standpoint, acting somewhat as a receipt of proof to how things are so inequitable and unequal in the American educational system, "One Best System" shows historically that things are currently the way they are by design — whether we like it or not.

Carter G. Woodson | 1933 | Book

The Mis-education of the Negro

This book operates as socio-emotional compass to conceptualize the psyche of the black child trying to exist in a school (and greater environment) not designed to cater to his/her needs as it does their white counterparts. This book helped me frame a lot of the questions that I was asking myself as a child and understand them now as an adult, and it gave context for other who may be struggling with the same.

Davis Guggenheim | Paramount Vantage, 2010 | Watch

Waiting For "Superman"

As public school systems continue to face ghastly and exponentially growing budget deficits, educational 'options' (like charter schools) are becoming a high commodity while very little is being done to fix the problem facing public schools at its root. This film gives faces and names of those being trampled by our current broken system.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxBeaconStreet, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TEDx.