The Achievement Gap: Our Take

Montgomery County and really Maryland as a whole is facing a challenge to its public education system: the achievement gap. Minority students from households and families of color fair worse in school as an overall trend than their non-minority ("white") classmates. For years, the achievement gap has been a phenomenon at the center of the national debate about education: what do we have to do to get kids to succeed?

We do not claim to have the "magic bullet" to make the achievement gap a footnote in history, but we do think we know of at least one ailment that has plagued our school system for far too long: bullying.

The author belongs to a minority. Both his parents are college graduates, they had dinner together a sa family several nights a week, and he grew up in a multilingual family--learning several alphabets by age 7. He has never attended school outside of Maryland, and benefited greatly from both a private and public school education, ultimately graduating from a blue ribbon public high school. 

But there was a demon in the author's life that hounded him for many years. One that, in American culture attracts only shame and accusations of weakness and guilt: the author was bullied as a child, and it did affect his grades, his temperament, and his decision to enter politics. For the first time ever, the author is revealing this side of him, and doing so in a very public way. We hope in doing so, that we might highlight the need to address bullying in our schools, and begin the culture change needed to end bullying once and for all. 

American society, especially when talking about classroom culture awards the socially popular, while punishing the "weird," "strange," and "different." The role this plays in the classroom and the way it affects the lifetime academic performance of students is well documented. A student who does not feel valued often feels apathetic towards schoolwork, and moreover, falls into a cycle of hopelessness and social insularity that can severe consequences in the long run. 

***

A Very Personal Aside

To speak from a very personal place: following September 11th, 2001, a classmate of the author inflamed racial and social tensions at his high school by constantly harassing and humiliating students of a particular minority background. The author (and others) complained to the school's administration and to at least one member of the guidance team at their high school. No action was taken to discipline or at least confront the classmate's behavior. Several years later, the student had an altercation with a very well-liked and respected high school teacher. The teacher was suffering from depression, and the classmate (whose behavior remained incorrigible years later) one Friday afternoon told them to go home and die. The teacher committed suicide that weekend. Indirectly, school administration was complicit in aiding and abetting bullying to the extent that lives were endangered. The author believes this strongly.

The author knows of two other students from that same high school, who committed suicide before ever graduating. In both cases, friends circles, the sense of hopelessness and the feeling of social isolation played a serious role. In simpler words: bullying does kill.

***

In America, succeeding academically is not viewed in the same light as in other developed countries. In Japan, families pressure (sometimes beyond rhyme and reason) their children to succeed academically, and lives and career paths are generally decided in that very hierarchical society by the end of eighth grade. In Germany and much of the European Union, students excel because society and their families expect and encourage them to do so. In our society: good grades aren't cool, and not being cool can be a devastating weakness just when young people need a proper education most: in high school.

But bullying as an institution does not end with high school graduation. Some students are just late bloomers, who need the part-time and transient educational environment offered by community colleges. That is where societal pressure and the achievement gap's expectations gap kick in; the pressure to attend a four year college right out of high school is so high in Montgomery County, that many times we ignore the obvious (emotional, financial, social, and logistical) benefits of a young person attending Montgomery College for a semester or more. Success does not have to be a pass or fail, sink or swim sort of equation. It can and should be a gentle arc of achievement culminating in a meaningful addition and presence in human society. 

The peer pressure on students of certain minority backgrounds to not succeed academically is well-known. The author felt it too, at times, but luckily grew up in an environment that was diverse enough to not be pressured to act, talk, or behave a certain way in order to "fit in". Many other students, across the state, are not as lucky. More must be done to secure a sense of safety in the classroom for all students, regardless of their background. 

Conclusion

To conclude: there are countless systematic failures not enumerated in this post relating to why we have an achievement gap. We do not dare to belittle any of them. But one factor we encourage the Board of Education on both the county and state level to investigate more thoroughly, is just how many young people's academic careers are we losing to peer pressure in general, and bullying in particular. We speak anecdotally in saying: the problem does exist, and lives are being ruined simply because enough is not being done to end American Academia's ugliest of traditions. 

Dispelling the Myths About Low Voter Turnout

Myths 1 & 2: The Incumbents & Slated Candidates Like Low Turnout
No matter what people say: in America few, if any, politicians like the idea of low voter turnout. One incumbent in Montgomery County, Councilmember George Leventhal, was furious at the disastrously low turn out in Montgomery County this June. Leventhal, who narrowly beat challenger and future MoCo superstar Beth Daly could be said to have benefited the most from poor turnout, as he and Daly were neck-and-neck by most accounts for the fourth at-large seat on the county council. Had turnout been a shy bit higher, Daly could have won, to the hurrahs and cheers of Millennials and Environmentalists everywhere.

Still, Leventhal was not thrilled at all that so few voters exercised their right to vote, and neither were his incumbent colleagues. MoCo's penultimate statesman Phil Andrews and the county's progressive powerhouse Marc Elrich also spoke out against the county's dismal voter turnout (read Bill Turque's WaPo article quoting all three of them here).

Slated candidates running for the first time together with incumbents do not like low turnout either. What possible advantage does a newcomer have by not building their own political base within existing voters? Absolutely none. To depend on the coattails of another candidate or elected official means to be doomed when said candidate suffers a political setback or serious public error in judgement. Just look at how quickly Barack Obama's majority in Congress withered away after the president failed to deliver on hope and change quickly enough for the voters following his 2008 slam-dunk victory over John McCain.

Myth 3: Incumbents Benefit The Most From Low Turnout
Contrary to popular belief amongst politicos, the clearest winners of low turnout are not incumbents, though  as our fellow political blog The Seventh State points out, it sure didn't hurt them, either. Instead, special interests benefit the most from low turnout years, and we will try explain just how, below.

First off, understand that not all special interest groups are evil blood-sucking satanic monsters spawned from the one percent. Many (okay, most) are, but some others include your local PTA, Boy Scout Troop, Grass-Fed Kabob Dinner Club, and many more. In local politics, both the evil one percenters and local activist groups are present. Last year, a huge grassroots movement spearheaded by several prominent special interests groups (e.g. Sierra Club, Audobon Naturalist Society, Montgomery County Muslim Youth, etc.) came together to protect our local watershed and water-drinking supply from being paved over to make room for development. That should give all pause with what is about to be written: special interests groups can control votes, not just money. 

In a low turnout election, money and votes both matter. If a special interest group can accurately claim to a candidate running for state delegate that they control 800 votes in their district, the candidate is forced to listen. The reason is because in most cases 800 votes is larger than the margin of victory in a given Delegate race. That is where special interest groups thrive in an election: at the margin. If politicians are forced to only court low-hanging fruit in terms of votes offered or shepherded by various special interest groups, then democracy suffers; we need a much higher threshold of citizens to participate in order for the public's interests to be served.

The same argument can be made when discussing the role of the all might dollar in politics. Regardless of what our rabidly gynophobic male Supreme Court Justices claim, a corporation will never be a person, and money is not free speech. Whenever politicians are forced to rely on monied interests to help them engage and contact voters who are too busy to learn about the candidates and issues themselves, they are forced to keep in mind that they owe a favor (or at least some level of influence or personal availability to discuss their political agenda) to said monied interest. Without dropping names, many a progressive leader in MoCo has made a Faustian deal with those willing to pay good money to have them elected. That was never their hope, nor their intention, but with several candidates for office all vying for the same small group of voters, politicians sometimes feel they need to make moral compromises to have a shot and shaping the bigger picture once elected. Democracy is not supposed to work that way; voters should be actively seeking to engage their elected officials on their own volition, and not  be harangued into caring about their own welfare.

Myth 4: If Voters Aren't Voting, They Must Be Satisfied With Status-Quo in Government
Really? We live in a country where young people are moving across the world to Australia to find jobs (don't scoff, a former MoCo mayor's daughter has done just that!), where gas prices remain stubbornly high even after America becoming the world's largest producer of fossil fuel products earlier this year, and where large corporations and banks get financial bailouts while innocent families have their homes illegally foreclosed on everyday. We at Center State Politics refuse to believe that in any way that the people of Montgomery County-- who are a microcosm of the socio-political and socio-economic diversity of America--are satisfied with the status quo. Instead, we believe both anecdotally from speaking to countless voters and through academic evidence provided by Princeton University that MoCo's residents feel tired, weary, and outright disenfranchised from the democratic process that was designed to serve them.  Voter Apathy is therefore better termed as voter disillusionment.

In the coming weeks and months, we will compile a serious and exhaustive list of policy considerations to improve voter turnout in local elections in Maryland. Look for our upcoming series identifying the young rising leaders battling to change the county's political landscape by empowering voters and not special interests, and like us on Facebook today. 

The Plight of Party Politics: Millennials Aren't Buying In

A recent set of surveys conducted by Pew Research have uncovered some rather interesting facts about Millennials also known as America’s Most Screwed Over Generation Ever.  

For a decade now, Millennials have been asked to serve and die in two undeclared wars, work for free at stingy prestigious companies, and pay double the prime interest rate just to go to school. 

Furthermore, Millennials are at  high risk for chronic homelessness, as profit-driven property management companies drive up rents to take advantage of our nation’s desperate mass transit crisis, and cash in on a generation whose members are unlikely to own a home anytime soon.

But the author digresses; Pew has discovered that while Millennials are likely the most liberal generation in recent history, exactly half are politically unaffiliated.

There are plenty of reasons one could attribute to Millennials for bucking the trend of older generations to be a part of the dual-party system. One reason is the explosion of social media, which has made every political scandal reported in the news more easily accessible by a generation averse to traditional media.  The result is that these scandals are more easily assignable to either party’s elected members, driving up cynicism and distrust of institutional political players.

An aside: that’s why candidates like the youthful Beth Daly are so important to Maryland’s political future. Beth’s entire field operation was driven by Millennials who felt that they could connect and rely on her to look out for their interests.

Another potential reason is the Obama Hangover Effect: young people turned out in record numbers to deliver a message of hope and change at the ballot box in 2008. Six years later, unemployment, job prospects and financial hardship are bywords for the everyday existence of young people in America, and the lack of tangible progress in tackling any of these has left America’s uber-liberal Millennial generation feeling more to the left than Democrats are willing to go, or at least more creative and out of the box in how they would tackle these problems.

Whatever the case may be, for Montgomery County’s newly elected Democratic and Republican Central Committees (the local party affiliates of either national party) will have their work cut out for them: how do you get Millennials to buy back into the dual party system?