Why we don’t talk about Lead in Schools
We don’t talk enough about how Lead contamination leads inequity in education.
Yet another study recently showed how devastating Lead is. Like so many things, it’s Black and Low Income students who are more likely to be harmed.
We know Lead is a problem. We continue to allow Lead to be a problem. This is what institutional racism looks like:
When educators talk about needing support outside of school, this is why. (Along with A/C, air filtration, feeding kids, etc.). Both academically and behaviorally, teaching in a school with high Lead exposure is harder.
Yet it’s hard to talk about these environmental factors in education.
To be a great teacher, you need to *know*, without a doubt, that every student can succeed. Thinking too much about things like Lead exposure as a teacher can lead to a fixed mindset. “My students have so many challenges, it’s only natural that they can’t do this”. To avoid this line of thinking, we avoid talking about environmental factors.
At the same time, to be a great policymaker, you know need to understand why some students need more support, and schools that serve these students need more resources. To build support for policy change, we talk about environmental factors.
As usual, it’s principals who get squeezed in the middle. They want to downplay environmental factors with their teachers to avoid a fixed mindset, without seeming like they don’t care, while also contributing to policy decisions made above them.
It’s exceedingly unlikely that any student’s individual performance is caused by lead exposure. At the city / state level, in areas with Lead contamination, it’s likely that some portion of the inequity we see is influenced to some degree by Lead exposure.
It’s hard to carry a conversation with that level of nuance in education.
Fortunately, Lead is a problem we can do something about. Lead abatement works. Like, really well!
There is $15B for lead abatement in the infrastructure bill. Good start. I’m excited to see how this is spent.
More is needed. Maybe because I work in education and not lead abatement, it seems much easier to throw money at environmental problems than to fight pedagogical wars in education. How much should we shift our advocacy from research-based curriculum to Lead abatement + HVAC improvement?
It also feels like there’s an untapped role for the private sector here. Surely there’s a market for not poisoning your children through the paint in your home / the water in your tap. What is happening with private efforts to mitigate the impact of lead?
