When You Wake Up Thinking About Diversity in U.S. K-12 Schools, Higher Education, Changing Demographics, & You Have Numerous Questions

I'm not sure where I'm going with my questions, but when I woke up yesterday, my brain was churning with curiosity. As a fan of The Village of 100 people, I'm always trying to locate percentages that help me gain perspective...make it simpler and more digestible. I've always enjoyed working in super diverse environments and usually tell the story that I only experienced culture shock when I started teaching at college. The lack of diversity was shocking. I always knew small percentages of the U.S. have college educations, but I wondered about numbers and what they might tell me (inform me). This is nothing official...it's only my perusing of the National Center for Educational Statistics (and other locations) to plug in numbers. I needed visuals to help me think (and I admit...this is rather geeky). So much to think about with these truths.

I used pie-graphs because I wanted to see what the would show me. First, as I already surmised, the majority of college-going individuals are White. The cost of higher education may be a tremendous deterrence, but it might be speculated that another deterrence is with the knowledge offered in such locations. It seems to me that the pie chart representing who attends higher education doesn't quite match up with the demographics ho attend K-12 public schools (hence, pie chart #2). 

That demographic looks more like the one below (where, as predicted, the shift in U.S. populations is already becoming clear (which I contrast with the "race" that colleges have traditionally served - with a tremendous mark-up to attract wealthier, less diverse families). Yes, class often has gone hand in hand with race and that isn't typically what we view.

When I was in college from 1990-1994, 1st generation kid from a working class family, college tuition at a public state school, Binghamton University, was affordable...doable...practical. That is not the case for students today, as taking out a mortgage payment exists with loans to pay for a college education.

On campuses, we have numerous conversations about inclusivity, diversity, and equity, and when I toured colleges with Chitunga, every school advertised their mission for social justice and prided themselves on their values to uphold equity. I found this ironic, as the public schools I've always worked with have always been more inclusive, diverse, and equitable than college campuses (I'd argue, they are 20 to 25 years ahead of the academy, itself). 

Kristen Turner of Drew University asked if I might find what the percentages within each racial category of kids who attend college, and I found it. This was truly fascinating to me. Only small percentages of each racial category (and I argue for the human race, but see how race is at the epicenter of U.S. politics, so use these categories to show what is known). It turns out less that 30%, mostly less than 20%, of every racial class does the college thing. It's small, but fairly distributed...somewhat evenly.

Now, I also did a pie chart for my University, and it was easy to see that it looks like Pac Man...a majority of White students with only a small mouthful of diversity. Part of me also wanted to do demographics of CWP's programs over the last 7 years, because I'm sure it would show the pie in reverse, as my aim has always been super diversity, national reality, global sensibility, and honest representation. 

So now I'm wondering how it is that higher education, which lacks representation of U.S. demographics, are the first to argue for, to promote, and to create the language norms used for diversity, inclusivity, and equity, when they pale in comparison to the nation's K-12 public schools. Perhaps we should be listening to educators in our K-12 schools who have more expertise on what it means to build curriculum for diverse, inclusive, and equitable classrooms, rather than jump into the linguistic ping-pong game in  esoteric settings commonly found in academic institutions. 

I'm not a quantitative researcher, but love visual representation (probably because I've taught content literacy courses and non-fiction literacy for so many years). 

And I know K-12 schools are not money-making locations (the public ones anyway). Yet, post-secondary make profit while hustling to become more and more exclusive. Seems to me this bubble should have popped a very long time ago. Also seems to me they may be the least democratic spaces we have.

The system, broken as it is, needs major repair.

I believe in knowledge and the importance of diverse perspectives. I simply question the validity of such perspectives in higher education when there's not true representation of all people. 

This is what's been on my mind.