A little background

Back before The Real Shakur was a full-time student, The Real Shakur worked for a virtual public school.

Working in the enrollment department gave me the chance to talk to people throughout the country about the future of public education. At the beginning, I went through the unofficial list of official questions and asked basic stuff like:

Hey Girl, how you doin?

But then I realized I was missing a golden opportunity, so I started asking more questions. Namely:

Why are you leaving your local school system?

I won’t tell you how many times people said they were leaving their neighborhood schools because *gasp* the Blacks were moving in and I also won’t mention the fact that all those calls came from parents in Ohio.

I got nothing against Ohio. Cleveland rocks.

But I will mention the number of parents who were disappointed in the curriculum their schools had to offer. I will also mention that a father in Ohio told me a frustrating tale of his son spending entire days in reading class, only for me to have the same conversation with a mother in Arizona a few days later.

All of those parents felt like they were alone and the only way they could give their kids the education they deserved was to give it to them themselves. But I was lucky. Sitting in my little office in Bodymore, Murderland, I saw the patterns. It wasn’t just that one school in Ohio that had a problem and it wasn’t that one school in Arizona. It was (sadly) all of them.

That’s part of the reason I’m studying education policy; kids with promising futures are being pulled out of the schools and they’re taking their parents with them. And this, dear reader, is a problem because I think parents who are dedicated enough to teach their kids at home are probably dedicated enough to help improve public schools.

Whatever and Ever Amen

Now, The Real Shakur did grow up in Central Pennsylvania and The Real Shakur was one of the very few Black students in the school, but The Real Shakur was never accused of "acting white."

Two of us in one class!

Who knows how long the phrase "acting white" has been around, but it was institutionalized in a study in the 1980s by Fordham and Ogbu. In an attempt to understand the achievement gap between Black and White students, Fordham and Ogbu studied a group of Washington D.C. students.

The way I understand it, they figured that Black students had a few choices when it came to succeeding in school:

Now you see my grades - now you don't!

• camouflaging their success
• forgetting their Blackness and becoming, in essence, raceless
• not succeeding at all

Fordham and Ogbu suggested that in order for Black students to be successful, they didn't just have to do well in school, they had to figure out how to make it jive with their Blackness. This added pressure was apparently too much for some kids, so they decided to not deal with it by failing.

WHICH MEANS that a big reason Black kids weren't doing well in schools was because they didn't want to.

Ok, so there are a lot of problems with their "acting white" theory, which a lot of sociologists and researchers are still writing about, but surprisingly it has still remained a legitimate way of thinking about Black students (and other students of color, for that matter).

Hopefully by now you see a problem with it too. Are we to believe that an entire contingent of kids aren't doing well because they don't want to?

Sociologists Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey suggest that the real reason "acting white" became an acceptable reason for the achievement gap was that it put the blame on the kids; no longer were the schools totally at fault for the achievement gap - the kids were!

Well, I took all those AP and Honors classes (except for the science ones because that was never my thing) and I never thought doing well in school meant I was "acting white." I admit Green Day and Ben Folds Five were my jams back in the day, so maybe that put me in ambiguous territory, but it sure wasn't my grades.

Studies show that a lot of Black students relate with The Real Shakur. According to some recent papers, "acting white" exists but it has nothing to do with being a good student. And assuming that really is the case (which I think it is), then HALLELUJAH! There are issues in the schools, but it ain't the kids' fault.

No, they really named it Green for Grade$

It used to just be the parents with enough money to give a few bucks for each A on the report card who had to worry about the implications of paying for their kids' success.

Ain't nothing wrong with this!

Nowadays, some urban schools are doing the same thing by offering academically successful kids moolah. The first time I'd heard of a cash incentive program for students was back in my AmeriCorps VISTA days. when I worked with a community development organization in Baltimore, Maryland.

I met some people who worked for some program (it was that long ago and I don't remember the name of the group) that paid kids for attending their after-school classes. The students got money for showing up, for participating in certain activities, and for showing improvement on their report cards.

I couldn't quite figure out why, but something about that seemed wrong. It also seemed too easy: instead of teaching the kids why schooling was important, they just paid them?! Now, I still think there's something fishy about cash incentive programs, but I'm willing to wait until the research is done.

In the mean time, I can't help but think about the moment when one of my many aunts got mad at me for majoring in English and wanting to be a teacher. "Anyone as smart as you," she yelled, "should be a doctor!"

It's possible that she wanted me to feel the pride of saving someone's life or the power of pulling The Plug, but I can't help but think that she thought I was simply being naive by not choosing a more marketable major. Maybe she was right - The Real Shakur ain't rollin in the money. But that's not the point!

I've seen the future and it looks good

See, she was getting mad at a 17 year old (moi) for not thinking about the relationship between my academic path and future bank account. Keeping in mind that most of the kids in these cash incentive programs are high schoolers (14-18 years old), then is the program really teaching them something immoral or just speeding up the process?

Is it that we have a problem with money playing a starring role in young peoples’ lives... or are we afraid that the line between childhood and adulthood will be a little less defined?

This is normal, right?

Remember back in the early 1900s when little kids worked in the coal mines and factories? You probably couldn't tell a kid nothing back then because s/he was earning her/his own stuff and was usually contributing up to 40% of the family's income. But, some Progressives got mad (and Labor Unions argued they couldn't compete with little kids anymore) so the kids got pushed out of the workforce and back into childhood. Ever since, there's been a more definite line between what it means to be a kid and what it means to be an adult.

Maybe we’re really afraid that giving kids money for doing well in school will supplant the idealism we want them to have. Instead of the idealist notion that going to school is a beautiful thing because it fills kids’ minds with pretty images and hopes for better tomorrow, they’ll begin to understand that schools are social institutions working to prepare them for the workforce.

But, like I said, I’m not saying for sure that I’m for cash incentive programs or against them. The idea of an entire school getting paid (instead of the few kids with parents who can afford it) is new and the researchers are still out there learning about it.

If you want to follow along, here are some programs to read about:

• Green for Grade$ in Chicago, Illinois
• REACH in New York, New York
• Capital Gains in Washington, D.C.