social capital, cultural capital, and alternative schools

These days I'm thinking a lot about access equity and alternative schools. There are clear, logistical barriers to getting low income, non-white students into progressive private, and even charter schools. Working class families possess the types of social capital that are not shown to be beneficial in schools (Horvat, et al. 2003). For instance, working class families are less likely to know teachers or professionals who could help them negotiate challenges related to their children's schooling (disabilities, choosing teachers, etc). Moreover, the cultural capital of working class and non-white Americans is not respected or drawn on in traditional schools (Lareau, 1987), making school-centered social capital even more critical for those who do not tend to have it. Both of these capital limitations pose direct barriers to traditional education as well as access to alternative education. For example, students whose parents are not connected with their teachers and with professionals will be less likely to have access to outside resources for buttressing their child's education, and they will also have less access to information about alternative school opportunities. Private schools are expensive, but even for charters and magnets, parents have to know about and apply to them/enter their lotteries.
This is a preamble to addressing the broad category of readings we have done in this class which could be loosely described as case studies of alternative learning environments. These examples have been largely characterized by, 1) luxury of time, 2) luxury of resources (star stickers are not luxurious, but allowing a student to use as many as she wants is), 3) low teacher-student ratio, and 4) teachers and administrators who share and are driven by a common mission. These characteristics are rare. Teacher attitudes and philosophies run the gamut, and disagreement between and among teachers and administrators can sabotage even the best teachers. Material resources and teacher student ratios are pernicious and common problems, but one could see basic solutions for them. Time, however, cannot be invented, and the tension about time and learning has been a frequent topic raised by this class.
Movement through school and from school into society is structured around a development timeline. Most people, including many educators, do not question the imposition of a developmental schedule for the lives of children. Frameworks, curricula, standards, and even the concept of a classroom, are all based on the idea that there is a certain fact that all children should be learning at exactly the same time. Disagreeing with this idea and seeking out opportunities for your child to learn at his or her own pace is a decision of privilege. The American education discourse revolves around discussions of the achievement gap, and in most cases, efforts to address this have sought to aggressively prep "at-risk" students for standardized tests. Working class parents and parents of color are understandably focused on helping their kids compete in white, middle class society. To this end, they largely channel their energies in support of their children's education in terms of traditional measures of achievement. Lisa Delpit poignantly and critically examines this phenomenon.
This line of thinking is to suggest that in addition to the clearer barriers of access faced by working class parents and parents of color, there are ideological barriers that have been created by the way we as a nation frame educational inequality. Progressive educators are perhaps creating another tiered educational system by emphasizing the need to close the achievement gap as defined by standardized tests while simultaneously devising private, charter, and independent schools that reject standards-based education for its inhumane treatment of children and inability to develop the cognitive and non-cognitive skills we want our kids to have.
Educators should be looking at how children attain sustained, critical learning, but it is our responsibility to make sure that these ways of "having wonderful ideas," if they are truly the "best way" to learn, are accessed by all children.