Brightly colored posters announcing startling facts about the U.S. K-12 education system stopped students at the south end of Baker-Berry Library on Sunday afternoon. One of the five proclaims, “schools are more segregated now than they were 40 years ago,” while another says, “many U.S. teachers comes from the bottom third of college graduates. In top performing countries teachers come from the top third of college graduates.”
Students for Education Reform at Dartmouth organized the display, which includes facts and space for students to comment on their experience with educational inequities.
A large poster asks each passerby to write about an experience with “educational injustice.” Anonymous responses covered the display within hours after it was set up Sunday afternoon.
“People from my hometown though I would drop out of Dartmouth,” read one comment. “Low expectations are unjust.”
Others mentioned cuts to language programs, underfunded schools, apathy and a lack of racial diversity.
Students for Education Reform is a national organization with over 140 chapters at undergraduate institutions that aims to empower students to address educational inequality and reform K-12 education.
Dartmouth’s group holds weekly meetings, open discussions on topics like socioeconomic integration and charter schools and hosted a Google hangout with Amy Vreeland, founder and CEO of TrueSchool Studio, a nonprofit that works to boost innovation among educators.
Millen Abselab ’13 started Dartmouth’s chapter in fall 2011. The club was inactive last fall following Abselab’s graduation, chapter co-leader Maggie Finn ’16 said. The transition to a second group of leaders was difficult, but Finn said she believes it is important to have the organization on campus.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people who feel like ‘We’re in college. We just got out of the K-12 system, so why is that important?’” Finn said. “But they are the future leaders of the country, and they have a valuable perspective to share now because they just went through that system.”
Finn said that this term the chapter focused on raising awareness, while several of its peer chapters across the country have focused on reform itself.
The display in Berry, she said, provides an opportunity for students to reflect on both their individual privileges and the disadvantages of their K-12 education.
“People talk about privilege and class,” Finn said. “So much of your K-12 education is based on your social class, what town you lived in, your zip code. I think that informs a lot of who we are here and how we interact with each other on this campus.”
Brendan Caldwell ’17 said he joined the group this term after being exposed to issues surrounding education in his writing seminar.
The chapter’s operations manager Allison Carswell ’17, who is considering becoming a teacher, said she became interested in education and reform efforts because of her work as a summer camp counselor and tutor.
“I think it’s a problem that’s always present, even if some of us don’t see it,” Carswell said.
Finn said she has been determined to teach ever since taking an education course and interning at Students First, a national non-profit and lobbying organization.
“I realized the best way to make change was to get in a classroom,” Finn said.
Finn said she hopes the display will spur discussion by presenting shocking facts and including interactive elements. The display includes a poll that asks students to guess how many years black, Latino and poor students of all races are behind their wealthy, predominantly white peers in reading and math by the end of high school. The answer will be revealed on March 7.
Bianca Jackson ’15, who stopped in front of the display on Sunday, said she thinks the display comes at a relevant time, as the recently-released “Freedom Budget” brought many of these issues to the forefront of campus discussion.
Michelle Egeolu ’15 also paused after being intrigued by the question, and said it is good to acknowledge injustice and give students a space to share their experiences.
Finn said she placed the display in the library after seeing various exhibits there over the last year.
Some commenters wrote that they do not feel the display is accurate or effective.
“This poorly researched and utterly useless display exists at a so-called elite academic institution,” one comment read.
One of the display’s posters originally stated that 40 percent of high schools students in America drop out, but later corrected the poster to clarify that the 40 percent statistic only describes the approximately 1,500 schools labeled “dropout factories.”
Finn said she fully supports the display, noting that the facts are accurate and the information is from credible sources, including the Civil Rights Project 2012 report, director of “Waiting for Superman” (2010) Davis Guggenheim’s public comments and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s 2013 report.
“These facts have a shock factor,” Finn said. “We wanted people to stop and think and ask new questions and to open up a dialogue.”
The article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction appended: March 3, 2014
The original version of the article misreported the message of one of the group's posters, which says thatmany U.S. teachers come from the bottom third of college graduates. The group corrected the poster to read "many" teachers, not "the majority of" teachers, on Sunday.
