"Equity and Access" in Education vs. Balancing Needs against Resources

There was a recent article in the NYTimes on China's efforts to redistribute access to the more competitive universities as a force combatting poverty:

China Tries to Redistribute Education to the Poor, Igniting Class Conflict

Students in Mianyang, China, did review work in May as they prepared for the national college entrance exam, known as the gaokao. The exam gives the admissions system a meritocratic sheen, but critics say it reinforces the divide between urban and rural students. CreditImaginechina, via Associated Press

BEIJING — Cheng Nan has spent years trying to ensure that her 16-year-old daughter gets into a college near their home in Nanjing, an affluent city in eastern China. She wakes her at 5:30 a.m. to study math and Chinese poetry and packs her schedule so tightly that she has only 20 days of summer vacation.

So when officials announced a plan to admit more students from impoverished regions and fewer from Nanjing to local universities, Ms. Cheng was furious. She joined more than 1,000 parents to protest outside government offices, chanting slogans like “Fairness in education!” and demanding a meeting with the provincial governor.

“Why should they eat from our bowls?” Ms. Cheng, 46, an art editor at a newspaper, said in an interview. “We are just as hard-working as other families.”

These battles are all too familiar in the U.S. While I believe these types of efforts and policies merit the respect and goodwill of the general public, it can also be a sign of lazy leadership.

While Mandarin Immersion programs have been getting off the ground here in the U.S., the "equity and access" discourse also took hold in their shaping. Battles broke out at mid-levels (and they continue) amongst parents and educators over who would shape the "access" to "successful" MI. And thusly, who would be the intended beneficiaries in terms of "equity."

I have long held the belief that as the limits of China's economic boom were reached, the interest in the U.S. to learn Mandarin would gradually wane. Americans simply underestimate the scale and complexity of China's own poverty. I, myself, would have never known had I not been able to accompany my father on many trips to China in the 1990's and given tours of efforts in those circles of engineers trying to tackle infrastructure development.

The millions-to-be-made motivation (seriously, how many times did I hear from parents in MI programs that their main aspiration for their kids learning Mandarin was to be able to make money in China?) would fade by the time my kid was in college or grad school, at least. Well, it happened a lot faster. Hehe.

China has its own problems, as this article can attest. The answers do not lie in lazy one-directional policies. For China to improve everyone's plight, there must be as much effort in pushing out talent and technologies, efficient and equitable systems, as there would be the pulling in of promising students from the outer provinces to the big cities. And while the leadership has stated aspirations of doing so, then both communication and comprehensive alignment of policies must be robust.

Access to education has never been completely fair. But could Ms. Cheng the art editor mom in this article be assisted in comprehending that reality in its full, concrete detail?

The battle is, in fact, over numbers in seats (sometimes phrased more crudely, butts-in-seats). As I've explained in this blog, MI programs in America needed the proper number of butts-in-seats that created balance, in order to meet targets for effectiveness. Two-way programs needed the right ratios of EO kids to MP kids (EO=English-Only, MP=Mandarin-Proficient). One-way programs needed to accept that volume was directly proportional to the effectiveness of one, single, lonely MP teacher. And in all cases, parents' own abilities, expectations and implemented supports were directly correlational to results.

China's equity and access problems face the same challenges. If the universities in Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing accept too many students from the outer problems, then the communities and student-support systems would be overwhelmed by the needs of these students. That is not at all saying that these students are not worthy. But every student, regardless of background, arrives with their own mix of social, emotional and academic needs that require the right mix of support in order to be optimally successful.

Students from these high performing universities are naturally supported by their families who are more likely to be local, than not. While one is struggling through demanding studies, the comforts of home are not far away. This contributes to their "success." A student from a far-flung province doesn't benefit from that easy, accessible comfort. The government would need to provide private, on-demand jet service in order to make the situation more equitable.

"Successful" language education is just like all of education, itself. To be effective, there are myriad social, emotional and academic supports that contribute to success. Many of those supports for effective language education have been largely invisible to Americans. Hence my effort in starting this blog...

In America, the talk is also about access to the schools, as if education lived in the walls of the school buildings, themselves. Education lives in people. If you take all the people out, just like you would gut a house to its basic frame, and nothing else, do you still have a functioning house?

When you overwhelm a school community with needs and not enough resources to meet those needs, people who have resources and can leave will leave, thereby leaving only the high needs. A dynamic community shapes a school. Authentic engagement is necessary. And leadership that is not lazy or dishonest about the realities we face.

I have left 2 high-needs MI schools at this point - one public, one private. In both cases, the balance of needs vs. resources to meet those needs tipped far out of balance to warrant staying. And worse, still, in both cases, the leadership of these schools was lazy. Too lazy to acknowledge the reality of the imbalance of Needs vs. Resources creating the difficulties.