What are you doing Tuesday night?

If you're like me, you'll be checking out the new, one-hour TED Talk special on education, featuring Harlem Children's Zone founder Geoffrey Canada, Bill Gates and some of the country's leading education experts and thinkers. The promo video says students will also get up on stage and share their thoughts.

Initially, it was darkly funny and absurd: "What's up with all the 'gaps'?," we asked ourselves. Discipline gap. Gender gap. Achievement gap. And now the United Nations Children's Fund is reporting that the US is at the almost-bottom of their index for relative child poverty rates: a child poverty gap.

The report excludes kids from places such as sub-Saharan Africa, so take note of the "relative" aspects of this data. But, still, too many American children are "living in a home that makes 36 percent less than the relative poverty line."

Transcript

STATE OF OPPORTUNITY: RACE documentary

JENNIFER GUERRA: It’s time to have the talk. I know, it’s not gonna be easy. Might get a little uncomfortable – maybe make you squirm a little. But it’s time. I’m Jennifer Guerra with Michigan Radio’s State of Opportunity project. For the next hour, we’re going to talk about RACE.

Now I know some of you listening right now are thinking Race? Really? It’s 2013. Aren’t we past this by now?

Good. I was hoping you’d ask that.

<<RING TONE>>

KATIE BRIDGEFORTH: Hello?

Want to learn more about the topics featured in Jennifer Guerra's hour-long documentary on race? The State of Opportunity theme thought about what cultural, social, and research out there helps us understand the impact of race beyond our own personal experience. Check out some of these films, books, blog, and songs to help think through what race means for our kids and education today.

Colorlines - award-winning investigative reporting and news analysis--and that drives our focus on finding solutions as well as naming problems.

It’s time to have The Talk.

I know, it’s not going to be easy. Might get a little uncomfortable, maybe make you squirm a little.

But it’s time; it's time to have a frank conversation about race. Now I know some of you listening right now are thinking "Race? Really? It’s 2013. Aren’t we past this by now?"

Good. I was hoping you’d ask that.

I'd like you to meet two young girls, both freshmen at a high school in Grand Haven, MI. Their names are Katie Bridgeforth, age 15, and Dystany Dunn, 14. Both girls are mixed, half white and half black, and they describe their skin as caramel colored.

The two girls ride the bus together to school every day, and that’s where the trouble started:

This wasn’t some isolated incident. The girls tell me about the boy who wore a KKK mask in the cafeteria, another one who wore it during homecoming weekend. Then there was the time a boy came up to Katie when she was taking a test, and he made a joke about slavery and ‘has she picked any cotton lately?’

When I told people I was working on this special, one hour show about race, a lot of the reactions were along the lines of “race…hmm….interesting.” Like, man, I’m glad I don’t have your job. That’s cause the topic of race is fraught; people hear it and they run for their hills.

One place where parents and teachers are talking about race in the classroom is Birmingham, MI. Birmingham is pretty much as white a city as they come, with a median household income around $100,000. Espresso bars and high end restaurants and shops line the streets downtown, and there’s a four star hotel where out of town celebrities stay whenever they visit metro Detroit.

From the looks of it, Birmingham has it all. But dig a little deeper, and Birmingham has a problem.

Gap #1: Achievement

Jason Clinkscale is the principal at Berkshire Middle School in Birmingham. He says when it comes to student performance on standardized tests, "the achievement gap is alive and well" in his district.

We're not talking about some 5 or 10 point difference here. The achievement gap in the Birmingham district translates to a nearly 30 point difference in proficiency in math at the middle school level between white and black students. By the time those students reach 11th grade, the math gap is more than 50 points wide.

Clinkscale is an African American with two daughters of his own. He uses words like "sobering" and "frustrating" to describe the achievement gap. And the gap isn’t just on paper. You can see it play out from classroom to classroom: minorities are over-represented in lower level classes and underrepresented in honors and advanced classes.

Michigan has a lot to be proud of - top universities, the Great Lakes, a (now) thriving car industry. Having some of the most racially segregated schools in the country? Not so much. 

When it comes to racial segregation in schools, Michigan tops the charts.

True, Michigan doesn’t have any actual segregated schools on the books, those went out a long time ago. But de facto segregation is very real. And it’s hard to argue that we’re moving toward a post-racial society in Michigan when black kids mostly go to school with other black kids, Latinos with Latinos, whites with whites.

Gary Orfield directs the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. He says one thing people need to understand is it's almost never just segregation by race or ethnicity. "It's almost always what we call 'double segregation.' So high concentrated black or Latino schools tend to have concentrated poverty as well, so there’s a double level of segregation."

And for a lot of Latino students, Orfield says it’s triple segregation: segregation by race, poverty and language.

  A few weeks ago, we reported on research showing that children become aware of race at a very young age, and they seem particularly prone to developing stereotypes. The message from that research is simple enough: If parents don’t want their kids to develop racial biases, they need to talk to their kids about race. 

To quickly review: the reason parents need to talk to kids about race is that if they don’t talk to them about race, kids will come up with their own ideas. Those ideas will usually be wrong, sometimes be harmful and occasionally, they’ll be ridiculous.

Cherée Thomas has a story about that.

"Many years ago, my son was in a classroom and a kid licked his hand because he thought he was chocolate," Thomas says.