Features ==1

2006 Presidential Address

From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt:
Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools
by Gloria Ladson-Billings

The achievement gap is one of the most talked-about issues in U.S. edu- dynamic, turbulent, and at times seemingly chaotic community. And
cation. The term refers to the disparities in standardized test scores what is more, nothing anywhere in the training of social scientists,
teachers, or social workers now prepares them to understand, to cope
between Black and White, Latina/o and White, and recent immigrant with, or to change the normal chaos of ghetto communities. These
and White students. This article argues that a focus on the gap is mis- are grave lacks which must be remedied soon if these disciplines are
placed. Instead, we need to look at the "education debt" that has to become relevant [emphasis added] to the stability and survival of
our society. (p. xxix)
accumulated over time. This debt comprises historical, economic,
sociopolitical, and moral components. The author draws an analogy Clark's concern remains some 40 years later. However, the para-
with the concept of national debt-which she contrasts with that of a dox is that education research has devoted a significant amount of
its enterprise toward the investigation of poor, African American,
national budget deficit-to argue the significance of the education debt.
Latina/o, American Indian, and Asian immigrant students, who
represent an increasing number of the students in major metro-
politan school districts. We seem to study them but rarely provide
I have spent a better part of this year reading the presidential
addresses of a number of former AERA presidents. Most take
the kind of remedies that help them to solve their problems.
To be fair, education researchers must have the freedom to
the wise course of giving addresses about something they pursue basic research, just as their colleagues in other social sci-
know well-their own research. Of course, I was not fully per- ences do. They must be able to ask questions and pursue inquiries
suaded by their wisdom. Instead, I attempted to learn something "just because." However, because education is an applied field, a
new, and, unfortunately, the readers will have to determine field that local states manage and declare must be available to the
whether I learned it well enough to share it with my professional entire public, most of the questions that education researchers ask
colleagues. need to address the significant questions that challenge and con-
The questions that plague me about education research are not found the public: Why don't children learn to read? What accounts
new ones. I am concerned about the meaning of our work for the for the high levels of school dropout among urban students? How
larger public-for real students, teachers, administrators, parents, can we explain the declining performance in mathematics and sci-
policymakers, and communities in real school settings. I know these ence at the same time that science and mathematics knowledge is
are not new concerns; they have been raised by others, people like exploding? Why do factors like race and class continue to be strong
the late Kenneth B. Clark, who, in the 1950s, was one of the first predictors of achievement when gender disparities have shrunk?
social scientists to bring research to the public in a meaningful way. The Prevalence of the Achievement Gap
His work with his wife and colleague Mamie formed the basis for
One of the most common phrases in today's education literature is
the landmark Brown v. BoardofEducation (1954) case that reversed "the achievement gap." The term produces more than 11 million
legal segregation in public schools and other public accommoda-
citations on Google. "Achievement gap," much like certain popu-
tions. However, in his classic volume Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of
lar culture music stars, has become a crossover hit. It has made
SocialPower,first published in 1965, Clark took social scientists to
its way into common parlance and everyday usage. The term is
task for their failure to fully engage and understand the plight of
invoked by people on both ends of the political spectrum, and few
the poor:
argue over its meaning or its import. According to the National
To my knowledge, there is at present nothing in the vast literature of Governors' Association, the achievement gap is "a matter of race
social science treatises and textbooks and nothing in the practical and and class. Across the U.S., a gap in academic achievement per-
field training of graduate students in social science to prepare them sists between minority and disadvantaged students and their
for the realities and complexities of this type of involvement in a real, white counterparts." It further states: "This is one of the most
pressing education-policy challenges that states currently face"
I Educational Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 7, pp. 3-12 1 (2005). The story of the achievement gap is a familiar one. The

OCTOBER 2006 1
numbers speak for themselves. In the 2005 National Assessment Down the Rabbit-Hole
of Educational Progress results, the gap between Black and Latina/o Let me begin the next section of this discussion with a strange
fourth graders and their White counterparts in reading scaled scores transition from a familiar piece of children's literature:
was more than 26 points. In fourth-grade mathematics the gap was
more than 20 points (Education Commission of the States, 2005). Alice startedto herfeet,for it flashedacross her mind that she hadnever
In eighth-grade reading, the gap was more than 23 points, and in before seen a rabbitwith either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take
eighth-grade mathematics the gap was more than 26 points. We out ofit, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it,
can also see that these gaps persist over time (Education Com- andfortunately wasjust in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole
mission of the States). under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice after it, never
once consideringhow in the world she was to get out again.
Even when we compare African Americans and Latina/os with
incomes comparable to those of Whites, there is still an achieve- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
ment gap as measured by standardized testing (National Center
for Education Statistics, 2001). While I have focused primarily The relevance of this passage is that I, like Alice, saw a rabbit with
on showing this gap by means of standardized test scores, it also a watch and waistcoat-pocket when I came across a book by econ-
exists when we compare dropout rates and relative numbers of omist Robert Margo entitled Race andSchooling in the American
students who take advanced placement examinations; enroll in South, 1880-1950 (1990). And, like Alice, I chased the rabbit
honors, advanced placement, and "gifted" classes; and are admit- called "economics" down a rabbit-hole, where the world looked
ted to colleges and graduate and professional programs. very different to me. Fortunately, I traveled with my trusty copy
Scholars have offered a variety of explanations for the existence of Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) Metaphors We Live By as a way to
of the gap. In the 1960s, scholars identified cultural deficit theories make sense of my sojourn there. So, before making my way back
to suggest that children of color were victims of pathological to the challenge of school inequality, I must beg your indulgence
lifestyles that hindered their ability to benefit from schooling (Hess as I give you a brief tour of my time down there.
& Shipman, 1965; Bereiter & Engleman, 1966; Deutsch, 1963).
The 1966 Coleman Report, Equality of Educational Opportunity National Debt Versus National Deficit
(Coleman et al.), touted the importance of placing students in Most people hear or read news of the economy every day and
racially integrated classrooms. Some scholars took that report to rarely give it a second thought. We hear that the Federal Reserve
further endorse the cultural deficit theories and to suggest that Bank is raising interest rates, or that the unemployment numbers
there was not much that could be done by schools to improve the look good. Our ears may perk up when we hear the latest gasoline
achievement of African American children. But Coleman et al. prices or that we can get a good rate on a mortgage refinance loan.
were subtler than that. They argued that, more than material
But busy professionals rarely have time to delve deeply into all
resources alone, a combination of factors was heavily correlated
things economic. Two economic terms-"national deficit" and
with academic achievement. Their work indicated that the com- "national debt"-seem to befuddle us. A deficit is the amount by
position of a school (who attends it), the students' sense of con-
which a government's, company's, or individual's spending
trol of the environments and their futures, the teachers' verbal
exceeds income over a particular period of time. Thus, for each
skills, and their students' family background all contribute to stu-
budget cycle, the government must determine whether it has a
dent achievement. Unfortunately, it was the last factor-family
balanced budget, a budget surplus, or a deficit. The debt, how-
background-that became the primary point of interest for many
ever is the sum of all previously incurred annual federal deficits.
school and social policies.
Since the deficits are financed by government borrowing, national
Social psychologist Claude Steele (1999) argues that a "stereo-
type threat" contributes to the gap. Sociolinguists such as Kathtyn debt is equal to all government debt.
Au (1980), Lisa Delpit (1995), Michde Foster (1996), and Shirley Most fiscal conservatives warn against deficit budgets and urge
Brice Heath (1983), and education researchers such as Jacqueline the government to decrease spending to balance the budget. Fiscal
Jordan Irvine (2003) and Carol Lee (2004), have focused on the liberals do not necessarily embrace deficits but would rather see the
culture mismatch that contributes to the gap. Multicultural edu- budget balanced by increasing tax revenues from those most able
cation researchers such as James Banks (2004), Geneva Gay (2004), to pay. The debt is a sum that has been accumulating since 1791,
and Carl Grant (2003), and curriculum theorists such as Michael when the U.S. Treasury recorded it as $75,463,476.52 (Gordon,
Apple (1990), Catherine Cornbleth (and Dexter Waugh; 1995), 1998). Thomas Jefferson (1816) said, "I... place economy among
and Thomas Popkewitz (1998) have focused on the nature of the the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the great-
curriculum and the school as sources of the gap. And teacher edu- est of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must
cators such as Christine Sleeter (2001), Marilyn Cochran-Smith not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."
(2004), Kenneth Zeichner (2002), and 1 (1994) have focused on But the debt has not merely been going up. Between 1823 and
the pedagogical practices of teachers as contributing to either the 1835 the debt steadily decreased, from a high of almost $91 million
exacerbation or the narrowing of the gap. to a low of $33,733.05. The nation's debt hit the $1 billion mark
But I want to use this opportunity to call into question the wis- in 1863 and the $1 trillion mark in 1981. Today, the national debt
dom of focusing on the achievement gap as a way of explaining and sits at more than $8 trillion. This level of debt means that the United
understanding the persistent inequality that exists (and has always States pays about $132,844,701,219.88 in interest each year. This
existed) in our nation's schools. I want to argue that this all-out focus makes our debt interest the third-largest expenditure in the federal
on the "Achievement Gap" moves us toward short-term solutions budget after defense and combined entitlement programs such as
that are unlikely to address the long-term underlying problem. Social Security and Medicare (Christensen, 2004).

""41
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER
 Even in those years when the United States has had a balanced • A relationship between the schooling/social capital of one's
budget, that is, no deficits, the national debt continued to grow. neighborhood and decisions by young people regarding
It may have grown at a slower rate, but it did continue to grow. their level of schooling, nonmarital childbearing, and par-
President Clinton bragged about presenting a balanced budget- ticipation in criminal activities. (pp. 2-3)
one without deficits-and not growing the debt (King, J., 2000). While these economists have informed my thinking, I have taken
However, the debt was already at a frighteningly high level, and a somewhat different tack on this notion of the education debt. The
his budget policies failed to make a dent in the debt. yearly fluctuations in the achievement gap give us a short-range pic-
ture of how students perform on a particular set of achievement
The Debt and Education Disparity measures. Looking at the gap from year to year is a misleading exer-
By now, readers might assume that I have made myself firmly at cise. Lee's (2002) look at the trend lines shows us that there was
home at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. What does a discussion a narrowing of the gap in the 1980s both between Black and White
about national deficits and national debt have to do with educa- students and between the Latina/o and White students, and a sub-
tion, education research, and continued education disparities? It sequent expansion of those gaps in the 1990s. The expansion of the
is here where I began to see some metaphorical concurrences disparities occurred even though the income differences narrowed
between our national fiscal situation and our education situation. during the 1990s. We do not have good answers as to why the gap
I am arguing that our focus on the achievement gap is akin to a narrows or widens. Some research suggests that even the combina-
focus on the budget deficit, but what is actually happening to tion of socioeconomic and family conditions, youth culture and stu-
African American and Latina/o students is really more like the dent behaviors, and schooling conditions and practices do not fully
national debt. We do not have an achievement gap; we have an explain changes in the achievement gap (Lee).
education debt. However, when we begin looking at the construction and com-
Now, to be perfectly candid, I must admit that when I con- pilation of what I have termed the education debt, we can better
sulted with a strict economist, Professor Emeritus Robert Have- understand why an achievement gap is a logical outcome. I am
man of the University of Wisconsin's Department of Economics, arguing that the historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral
La Follette Institute of Public Affairs, and Institute for Research decisions and policies that characterize our society have created an
on Poverty, he stated: education debt. So, at this point, I want to briefly describe each of
those aspects of the debt.
The education debt is the foregone schooling resources that we
could have (should have) been investing in (primarily) low income The Historical Debt
kids, which deficit leads to a variety of social problems (e.g. crime, Scholars in the history of education, such as James Anderson
low productivity, low wages, low labor force participation) that (1989), Michael Fultz (1995), and David Tyack (2004), have doc-
require on-going public investment. This required investment sucks umented the legacy of educational inequities in the Unites States.
away resources that could go to reducing the achievement gap. Those inequities initially were formed around race, class, and gen-
Without the education debt we could narrow the achievement debt.
der. Gradually, some of the inequities began to recede, but clearly
... The message would be that you need to reduce one (the edu-
cation debt, defined above) in order to close the other (the achieve- they persist in the realm of race. In the case of African Americans,
ment gap). A parallel is trying to gain a growing and robust economy education was initially forbidden during the period of enslave-
with a large national debt overhang. (February 6, 2006, e-mail) ment. After emancipation we saw the development of freedmen's
schools whose purpose was the maintenance of a servant class.
In addition to this informal discussion with Haveman, I read a During the long period of legal apartheid, African Americans
work by Wolfe and Haveman (2001) entitled Accountingfor the attended schools where they received cast-off textbooks and
Social and Non-Market Benefits of Education, which catalogues a materials from White schools. In the South, the need for farm
series of what they term "non-market effects of schooling." The labor meant that the typical school year for rural Black students
authors contend that "the literature on the intergenerational effects was about 4 months long. Indeed, Black students in the South did
of education is generally neglected in assessing the full impact of not experience universal secondary schooling until 1968 (Anderson,
education." Among the nonmarket effects that they include are the 2002). Why, then, would we not expect there to be an achieve-
following: ment gap?
"* A positive link between one's own schooling and the school- The history of American Indian education is equally egregious.
ing received by one's children It began with mission schools to convert and use Indian labor to
"* A positive association between the schooling and health sta- further the cause of the church. Later, boarding schools were devel-
tus of one's family members oped as General George Pratt asserted the need "to kill the Indian
"* A positive relationship between one's own education and in order to save the man." This strategy of deliberate and forced
one's own health status assimilation created a group of people, according to Pulitzer Prize
"* A positive relationship between one's own education and the writer N. Scott Momaday, who belonged nowhere (Lesiak, 1991).
efficiency of choices made, such as consumer choices (which The assimilated Indian could not fit comfortably into reservation
efficiency has positive effects on well-being similar to those life or the stratified mainstream. No predominately White col-
of money income) leges welcomed the few Indians who successfully completed the
"* A relationship between one's own schooling and fertility early boarding schools. Only historically Black colleges, such as
choices (in particular, decisions of one's female teenage chil- Hampton Institute, opened their doors to them. There, the Indians
dren regarding nonmarital childbearing) studied vocational and trade curricula.

OCTOBER 2006 [5
 Latina/o students also experienced huge disparities in their Although the historical debt is a heavy one, it is important not
education. In Ferg-Cadima's report Black, White, and Brown: to overlook the ways that communities of color always have
Latino School DesegregationEfforts in the Pre- and Post-Brown v. worked to educate themselves. Between 1865 and 1877, African
Board of Education Era (2004), we discover the longstanding prac- Americans mobilized to bring public education to the South for
tice of denial experienced by Latina/os dating back to 1848. His- the first time. Carter G. Woodson (1933/1972) was a primary
toric desegregation cases such as Mendez v. Westminster(1946) and critic of the kind of education that African Americans received,
the Lemon Grove Incident detail the ways that Brown children were and he challenged African Americans to develop schools and cur-
(and continue to be) excluded from equitable and high-quality ricula that met the unique needs of a population only a few gen-
education. erations out of chattel slavery.
It is important to point out that the historical debt was not
The Economic Debt
merely imposed by ignorant masses that were xenophobic and vir-
ulently racist. The major leaders of the nation endorsed ideas As is often true in social research, the numbers present a startling
about the inferiority of Black, Latina/o, and Native peoples. picture of reality. The economics of the education debt are sober-
Thomas Jefferson (1816), who advocated for the education of the ing. The funding disparities that currently exist between schools
American citizen, simultaneously decried the notion that Blacks serving White students and those serving students of color are not
were capable of education. George Washington, while deeply con- recent phenomena. Separate schooling always allows for differ-
flicted about slavery, maintained a substantial number of slaves on ential funding. In present-day dollars, the funding disparities
his Mount Vernon Plantation and gave no thought to educating between urban schools and their suburban counterparts present
enslaved children. a telling story about the value we place on the education of dif-
A brief perusal of some of the history of public schooling in the ferent groups of students.
United States documents the way that we have accumulated an The Chicago public schools spend about $8,482 annually per
education debt over time. In 1827 Massachusetts passed a law mak- pupil, while nearby Highland Park spends $17,291 per pupil. The
ing all grades of public school open to all pupils free of charge. At Chicago public schools have an 87% Black and Latina/o popula-
about the same time, most Southern states already had laws for- tion, while Highland Park has a 90% White population. Per pupil
bidding the teaching of enslaved Africans to read. By 1837, when expenditures in Philadelphia are $9,299 per pupil for the city's
Horace Mann had become head of the newly formed Massachu- 79% Black and Latina/o population, while across City Line Avenue
setts State Board of Education, Edmund Dwight, a wealthy Boston in Lower Merion, the per pupil expenditure is $17,261 for a
industrialist, felt that the state board was crucial to factory owners 91% White population. The New York City public schools spend
and offered to supplement the state salary with his own money. $11,627 per pupil for a student population that is 72% Black and
What is omitted from this history is that the major raw material of Latina/o, while suburban Manhasset spends $22,311 for a student
those textile factories, which drove the economy of the East, was population that is 91% White (figures from Kozol, 2005).
cotton-the crop that depended primarily on the labor of enslaved One of the earliest things one learns in statistics is that corre-
Africans (Farrow, Lang, & Frank, 2005). Thus one of the ironies lation does not prove causation, but we must ask ourselves why
of the historical debt is that while African Americans were enslaved the funding inequities map so neatly and regularly onto the racial
and prohibited from schooling, the product of their labor was used and ethnic realities of our schools. Even if we cannot prove that
to profit Northern industrialists who already had the benefits of schools are poorly funded because Black and Latina/o students
education. Consider the real source ofNew England's wealth (from attend them, we can demonstrate that the amount of funding
Farrow, Lang, & Frank, p. 6): rises with the rise in White students. This pattern of inequitable
"* By 1860, New England was home to 472 cotton mills, built funding has occurred over centuries. For many of these popula-
on rivers and streams throughout the region. tions, schooling was nonexistent during the early history of the
nation; and, clearly, Whites were not prepared to invest their fis-
"* Just between 1830 and 1840, Northern mills consumed
more than 100 million pounds of Southern cotton. With cal resources in these strange "others."
shipping and manufacturing included, the economy of Another important part of the economic component of the
much of New England was connected to textiles. education debt is the earning ratios related to years of schooling.
"• By the 1850s, the enormous profits of Massachusetts indus- The empirical data suggest that more schooling is associated with
trialists had been poured into a complex network of banks, higher earnings; that is, high school graduates earn more money
insurance companies, and railroads. But their wealth remained than high school dropouts, and college graduates earn more than
high school graduates. Margo (1990) pointed out that in 1940 the
anchored to dozens of mammoth textile mills in Massachu-
average annual earnings of Black men were about 48% of those of
setts, southern Maine, and New Hampshire.
White men, but by 1980 the earning ratio had risen to 61%. By
This pattern of debt affected other groups as well. In 1864 the
1993, the median Black male earned 74% as much as the median
U.S. Congress made it illegal for Native Americans to be taught
in their native languages. After the Civil War, African Americans White male.
worked with Republicans to rewrite state constitutions to guar- While earnings ratios show us how people are (or were) doing
antee free public education for all students. Unfortunately, their at particular points in time, they do not address the cumulative
effect of such income disparities. According to economists Joseph
efforts benefited White children more than Black children. The
landmark Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision meant that the seg- Altonji and Ulrech Doraszelski (2005),
regation that the South had been practicing was officially recog- The wealth gap between whites and blacks in the United States is
nized as legal by the federal government. much larger than the gap in earnings. The gap in wealth has impli-

-61 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER

 cations for the social position of African Americans that go far the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress might well decide to shift the
beyond its obvious implications for consumption levels that house- advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its
holds can sustain. This isbecause wealth is a source of political and victims. (South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 1966; U.S. Department of
social power, influences access to capital for new businesses, and Justice, Civil Rights Division, 2006)
provides insurance against fluctuations in labor market income. It
It is hard to imagine such a similarly drastic action on behalf of
affects the quality of housing, neighborhoods, and schools a family
has access to as well as the ability to finance higher education. The African American, Latina/o, and Native American children in
fact that friendships and family ties tend to be within racial groups schools. For example, imagine that an examination of the achieve-
amplifies the effect of the wealth gap on the financial, social, and ment performance of children of color provoked an immediate
political resources available to blacks relative to whites. (p. 1) reassignment of the nation's best teachers to the schools serving the
most needy students. Imagine that those same students were guar-
This economic analysis maps well onto the notion of education
anteed places in state and regional colleges and universities. Imag-
debt-as opposed to achievement gap--that I am trying to advance.
ine that within one generation we lift those students out of poverty.
So, while the income gap more closely resembles the achievement
The closest example that we have of such a dramatic policy move
gap, the wealth disparity better reflects the education debt that I
is that of affirmative action. Rather than wait for students of color
am attempting to describe.
to meet predetermined standards, the society decided to recognize
The Sociopolitical Debt that historically denied groups should be given a preference in
The sociopolitical debt reflects the degree to which communities admission to schools and colleges. Ultimately, the major beneficia-
of color are excluded from the civic process. Black, Latina/o, and ries of this policy were White women. However, Bowen and Bok
Native communities had little or no access to the franchise, so (1999) found that in the case of African Americans this proactive
they had no true legislative representation. According to the Civil policy helped create what we now know as the Black middle class.
Rights Division of the U.S. Department ofJustice, African Amer- As a result of the sociopolitical component of the education debt,
icans and other persons of color were substantially disenfran- families of color have regularly been excluded from the decision-
chised in many Southern states despite the enactment of the making mechanisms that should ensure that their children receive
Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 (U.S. Department of Justice, quality education. The parent-teacher organizations, school site
Civil Rights Division, 2006). councils, and other possibilities for democratic participation have
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is touted as the most successful not been available for many of these families. However, for a brief
piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by the U.S. Congress moment in 1968, Black parents in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville sec-
(Grofman, Handley, & Niemi). This act represents a proactive tion of New York exercised community control over the public
attempt to eradicate the sociopolitical debt that had been accu- schools (Podair, 2003). African American, Latina/o, Native Amer-
mulating since the founding of the nation. ican, and Asian American parents have often advocated for improve-
Table 1 shows the sharp contrasts between voter registration ments in schooling, but their advocacy often has been muted and
rates before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and after it. The dra- marginalized. This quest for control of schools was powerfully cap-
matic changes in voter registration are a result of Congress's bold tured in the voice of an African American mother during the fight
action. In upholding the constitutionality of the act, the Supreme for school desegregation in Boston. She declared: "When we
Court ruled as follows: fight about schools, we're fighting for our lives" (Hampton, 1986).
Indeed, a major aspect of the modern civil rights movement was
Congress has found that case-by-case litigation was inadequate to
the quest for quality schooling. From the activism of Benjamin
combat wide-spread and persistent discrimination in voting,
because of the inordinate amount of time and energy required to Rushing in 1849 to the struggles of parents in rural South Car-
overcome the obstructionist tactics invariably encountered in these olina in 1999, families of color have been fighting for quality edu-
lawsuits. After enduring nearly a century of systematic resistance to cation for their children (Ladson-Billings, 2004). Their more

Table 1
Black and White Voter RegistrationRates (%) in Selected U.S. States, 1965 and 1988

March 1965 November 1988

State Black White Gap Black White Gap

Alabama 19.3 69.2 49.9 68.4 75.0 6.6

Georgia 27.4 62.6 35.2 56.8 63.9 7.1
Louisiana 31.6 80.5 48.9 77.1 75.1 -2.0
Mississippi 6.7 69.9 63.2 74.2 80.5 6.3
North Carolina 46.8 96.8 50.0 58.2 65.6 7.4
South Carolina 37.3 75.7 38.4 56.7 61.8 5.1
Virginia 38.3 61.1 22.8 63.8 68.5 4.7

Note. From the website of the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Rights Section (http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/intro/
intro_c.htm), "Introduction to Federal Voting Rights Laws."

0OO6E
limited access to lawyers and legislators has kept them from accu- and rational debate, but the real danger of our discussions about
mulating the kinds of political capital that their White, middle- morality is that they reside solely in the realm of the individual.
class counterparts have. We want people to take personal responsibility for their behavior,
personalresponsibility for their health care, personalresponsibility
The Moral Debt
for their welfare, and personal responsibility for their education.
A final component of the education debt is what I term the However, in democratic nations, that personal responsibility must
"moral debt." I find this concept difficult to explain because social
be coupled with social responsibility.
science rarely talks in these terms. What I did find in the litera- What is it that we might owe to citizens who historically have
ture was the concept of "moral panics" (Cohen, 1972; Goode & been excluded from social benefits and opportunities? Randall
Ben-Yehuda, 199 4 a, 1994b; Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Robinson (2000) states:
Roberts, 1978) that was popularized in British sociology. People
in moral panics attempt to describe other people, groups of indi- No nation can enslave a race of people for hundreds of years, set
viduals, or events that become defined as threats throughout a them free bedraggled and penniless, pit them, without assistance in
society. However, in such a panic the magnitude of the supposed a hostile environment, against privileged victimizers, and then rea-
sonably expect the gap between the heirs of the two groups to nar-
threat overshadows the real threat posed. Stanley Cohen (1972),
row. Lines, begun parallel and left alone, can never touch. (p. 74)
author of the classic sociological treatment of the subject, entitled
Folk Devils andMoralPanics,defines such a moral panic as a kind Robinson's sentiments were not unlike those of President Lyndon
of reaction to B. Johnson, who stated in a 1965 address at Howard University:
"You cannot take a man who has been in chains for 300 years,
A condition, episode, person or group of persons [that] emerges to
become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature remove the chains, take him to the starting line and tell him to run
ispresented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the race, and think that you are being fair" (Miller, 2005).
the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and Despite those parallel lines of which Robinson speaks, in the
other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce midst of the Civil War Abraham Lincoln noted that without the
their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or... 200,000 Black men who enlisted in the Union Army, "we would
resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates be compelled to abandon the war in 3 weeks" (cited in Takaki,
and becomes more visible. Sometimes the subject of the panic passes 1998). Thus, according to historian Ron Takaki (1998), "Black
over and is forgotten, except in folklore and collective memory; at men in blue made the difference in determining that this 'govern-
other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and
ment of the people, by the people, for the people' did 'not perish
might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even
from the earth' " (p. 21). What moral debt do we owe their heirs?
in the way society conceives itself. (p. 9)
Think of another example of the ways that the labor and efforts
In contrast, a moral debt reflects the disparity between what we of people of color have sustained the nation. When we hear the
know is right and what we actually do. Saint Thomas Aquinas word "plantation," our minds almost automatically reflect back to
saw the moral debt as what human beings owe to each other in the antebellum South. However, the same word evokes the Palolo
the giving of, or failure to give, honor to another when honor is Valley on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where there were camps
due. This honor comes as a result of people's excellence or named "Young Hee," "Ah Fong," "Spanish A," "Spanish B," and
because of what they have done for another. We have no trouble "Alabama" (Takaki, 1998). This last camp-"Alabama"-was a
recognizing that we have a moral debt to Rosa Parks, Martin Hawaiian plantation worked by Black laborers. Each of the groups
Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Elie Wiesel, or Mahatma Gandhi. that labored in the Hawaiian plantations-the Native Hawaii-
But how do we recognize the moral debt that we owe to entire ans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Filipinos, the Koreans, the Por-
groups of people? How do we calculate such a debt? tuguese, the Puerto Ricans, and the Blacks-drove a sugar economy
Typically, we think of moral debt as relational between nation- that sated a worldwide sweet tooth (Wilcox, 1998). What do we
states. For example, at the end of World War II, Israel charged owe their descendants?
Germany not only with a fiscal or monetary debt but also with a And perhaps our largest moral debt is to the indigenous peo-
moral debt. On the individual level, Fred Korematsu battled the ples whose presence was all but eradicated from the nation. In its
U.S. government for 40 years to prove that Japanese Americans 2004-2005 Report Card, the Bureau of Indian Affairs indicates
were owed a moral debt. In another 40-year span, the U.S. gov- that its high school graduation rate is 57%, with only 3.14% of
ernment ran a study of syphilis patients-withholding treatment its students performing at the advanced level in reading and
after a known cure was discovered-and was forced to acknowl- 3.96% performing at the advanced level in mathematics. One
edge its ethical breaches. In his 1997 apology to the survivors and hundred and twenty-two of the 185 elementary and secondary
their families, President Bill Clinton said, "The United States schools under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs failed
government did something that was wrong--deeply, profoundly, to meet Average Yearly Progress requirements in the 2004-2005
morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity school year (Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Indian Education
and equality for all our citizens ... clearly racist" (Hunter-Gault, Programs, 2006).
1997). Today, all human subject protocols reflect the moral debt The National Center for Education Statistics report Status and
we owe to the victims of that study. Trends in the Education ofAmerican Indians andAlaska Natives
David Gill (2000) asserts, in his book Being Good, that "we are (Freeman & Fox, 2005) indicates that the dropout rate among
living today in an ethical wilderness-a wild, untamed, unpre- this population is about 15%, which is higher than that of Whites,
dictable landscape" (p. 11). We bemoan the loss of civil discourse Blacks, or Asian/Pacific Islanders. Only 26% of American Indi-

.8[ EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER

ans and Alaska Natives completed a core academic track in 2000, The Value of Understandingthe Debt in Relation
while 57% of Asian/Pacific islanders, 38% of Latina/os, 44% of to Past Research Findings
African Americans, and 48% of Whites completed core academic The second reason that we must address the debt is somewhat
tracks during the same year (Freeman & Fox). selfish from an education research perspective. Much of our
Taken together, the historic, economic, sociopolitical, and scholarly effort has gone into looking at educational inequality
moral debt that we have amassed toward Black, Brown, Yellow, and how we might mitigate it. Despite how hard we try, there are
and Red children seems insurmountable, and attempts at address- two interventions that have never received full and sustained
ing it seem futile. Indeed, it appears like a task for Sisyphus. But hypothesis testing-school desegregation and funding equity.
as legal scholar Derrick Bell (1994) indicated, just because some- Orfield and Lee (2006) point out that not only has school segre-
thing is impossible does not mean it is not worth doing. gation persisted, but it has been transformed by the changing
demographics of the nation. They also point out that "there has
Why We Must Address the Debt not been a serious discussion of the costs of segregation or the
In the final section of this discussion I want to attend to why we advantages of integration for our most segregated population,
must address the education debt. On the face of it, we must address white students" (p. 5). So, although we may have recently cele-
it because it is the equitable and just thing to do. As Americans we brated the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision, we can point
pride ourselves on maintaining those ideal qualities as hallmarks of to little evidence that we really gave Brown a chance. According to
our democracy. That represents the highest motivation for paying Frankenberg, Lee, and Orfield (2003) and Orfield and Lee (2004),
this debt. But we do not always work from our highest motivations. America's public schools are more than a decade into a process of
Most of us live in the world of the pragmatic and practical. So resegregation. Almost three-fourths of Black and Latina/o students
we must address the education debt because it has implications for attend schools that are predominately non-White. More than
the kinds of lives we can live and the kind of education the soci- 2 million Black and Latina/o students-a quarter of the Black stu-
ety can expect for most of its children. I want to suggest that there dents in the Northeast and Midwest-attend what the researchers
are three primary reasons for addressing the debt-(a) the impact call apartheid schools. The four most segregated states for Black
the debt has on present education progress, (b) the value of under- students are New York, Michigan, Illinois, and California.
standing the debt in relation to past education research findings, The funding equity problem, as I illustrated earlier in this dis-
and (c) the potential for forging a better educational future. cussion, also has been intractable. In its report entitled The Fund-
ing Gap 2005, the Education Trust tells us that "in 27 of the
The Impact of the Debt on PresentEducation Progress 49 states studied, the highest-poverty school districts receive fewer
In a recent news article in the business section of the Cleveland resources than the lowest-poverty districts .... Even more states
Plain Dealer, I read that affluent investors are more likely to be shortchange their highest minority districts. In 30 states, high
educated, married men (Torres, 2006). The article continued by minority districts receive less money for each child than low minor-
talking about how Whites make up 88% of wealthy investor ity districts" (p. 2). If we are unwilling to desegregate our schools
households, while Blacks and Latina/os make up only 3%. Asian and unwilling to fund them equitably, we find ourselves not only
Americans, who are 3.7% of the adult population, make up 5% of backing away from the promise of the Brown decision but literally
wealthy investors. But more salient than wealthy investor status to refusing even to take Plessy seriously. At least a serious considera-
me was a quote in the article from former Federal Reserve Chair- tion of Plessy would make us look at funding inequities.
man Alan Greenspan: "My biggest fear for this country's future, In one of the most graphic examples of funding inequity, new
competitively speaking, is that we're doing a poor job in education. teacher Sara Sentilles (2005) described the southern California
If we can resolve our educational problems, I think we will main- school where she was teaching:
tain the very extraordinary position the United States holds in the
At Garvey Elementary School, I taught over thirty second graders in
world at large" (Torres, p. G6).
a so-called temporary building. Most of these "temporary" buildings
As I was attempting to make sense of the deficit/debt metaphor, have been on campuses in Compton for years. The one I taught in
educational economist Doug Harris (personal communication, was old. Because the wooden beams across the ceiling were being
November 19, 2005) reminded me that when nations operate eaten by termites, a fine layer of wood dust covered the students'
with a large debt, some part of their current budget goes to service desks every morning. Maggots crawled in a cracked and collapsing
that debt. I mentioned earlier that interest payments on our national area of the floor near my desk. One day after school I went to sit in
debt represent the third largest expenditure of our national budget. my chair, and it was completely covered in maggots. I was nearly sick.
Mice raced behind cupboards and bookcases. I trapped six in terrible
In the case of education, each effort we make toward improving
traps called "glue lounges" given to me by the custodians. The blue
education is counterbalanced by the ongoing and mounting debt
metal window coverings on the outsides of the windows were shut
that we have accumulated. That debt service manifests itself in permanently, blocking all sunlight. Someone had lost the tool needed
the distrust and suspicion about what schools can and will do in to open them, and no one could find another.... (p. 72)
communities serving the poor and children of color. Bryk and
Schneider (2002) identified "relational trust" as a key component Rothstein and Wilder (2005) move beyond the documenta-
in school reform. I argue that the magnitude of the education tion of the inequalities and inadequacies to their consequences. In
debt erodes that trust and represents a portion of the debt service the language that I am using in this discussion, they move from
that teachers and administrators pay each year against what they focusing on the gap to tallying the debt. Although they focus on
might rightfully invest in helping students advance academically. Black-White disparities, they are clear that similar disparities

OCTOBER 2006 E
exist between Latina/os and Whites and Native Americans and In a recent book, Michael Apple and Kristen Buras (2006)
Whites. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Rothstein and Wilder suggest that the subaltern can and do speak. In this country they
argue that addressing the achievement gap is not the most impor- speak from the barrios of Los Angeles and the ghettos of New
tant inequality to attend to. Rather, they contend that inequalities York. They speak from the reservations of New Mexico and the
in health, early childhood experiences, out-of-school experiences, Chinatown of San Francisco. They speak from the levee breaks
and economic security are also contributory and cumulative and of New Orleans where they remind us, as education researchers,
make it near-impossible for us to reify the achievement gap as the that we do not merely have an achievement gap-we have an
source and cause of social inequality. education debt.

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 (pp. 1-72). Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. AUTHOR
Retrieved September 11, 2006, from http:11www.oecd.org1dataoecd/51 GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS, the 2005-2006 President of AERA, is
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12I EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER

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