In high school, I always hated math.

I’m a word person, I always have been. I’m skeptical of statistics; maybe it’s my own fear of inadequacy, maybe I flash back to physics class, a place where magical numerical realms that I could never quite understand seemed to dictate the limits of my present time and space. Or maybe I just get sick of how scientific “objective” data constantly gets used to screw people.

New America Media - NAM - “the country's first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2,000 ethnic news organizations,” recently released "A Dream Deferred," a 2011 report on a statewide survey of California youth that was conducted in 2010. I attended a roundtable discussion of the poll, one that I hoped would disprove my pessimistic theorem regarding numbers and their destructive capacity.

Six hundred youth, between the ages of 16-22, were asked about their education, career goals and concerns. The study also was conducted four years ago. NAM’s was one of the first cell-phone-only surveys of young people.

There were some marked differences between the latest poll and those found in 2006. For example, the greatest sources of worry for California youth are now the economic crisis and unemployment, compared to worries about family and neighborhood in 2006. In 2010, 40 percent said that the recent budget cuts to education had affected their ability to reach their educational goals, and 63 percent were worried about finding a full-time job once they finish school.

Despite the bleak realities of the present, “A Dream Deferred” revealed a population of young people who were determined to manifest a better future for themselves:

• 82 percent believed that in 10 years, their life would be better than it is now
• 95 percent believed that if they worked hard, they could achieve their goals
• 71 percent aim to at least get a bachelor’s degree
• 68 percent believed they would own a home in their lifetime

When the pie charts for education appeared on the screen, I saw chains of digits whip around the room like venomous air-born snakes, and I started to feel that familiar sinking feeling.

• 70 percent were satisfied with the quality of their education
• 52 percent said that the curriculum addresses issues that confront their community and are ones they care deeply about
• 95 percent said that there was at least one teacher at their school who knew them well and cared about their success
• 60 percent feel that the size of their classes was just right or too small; 60 percent feel that the quality of textbooks was excellent to good
• 80 percent felt they had enough access to technology and computers
• 62 percent felt safe at school

By the end of the pollster’s Skype presentation, a tangible vortex of multicolored line graphs seemed to crowd the room - a diverse crowd of educators, journalists, community activists and youth agency representatives. I looked around. Did anyone else notice the surreal paradox of percentages that I was sure contradicted the current state of California education?

I felt a slight relief as Lateefah Simon of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights noticed the absence of data regarding sexual orientation and economic realities of interviewed participants. I felt my stomach clench when someone suggested that stark racial differences in the findings might help answer questions about economic background – as if the conflation of race and class could be assumed.

Some moments later, Dr. Patrick  Camangian -  a University of San Francisco professor who spent seven years teaching at Los Angeles' Crenshaw High and currently volunteers as a 10th grade English teacher at Mandela High in Oakland – spoke up.

“The way that I’m experiencing this reporting (with all due respect) is very visceral," he said. "My gut level response is that this poll is going to make a lot of people too comfortable, who don’t deserve to be comfortable. Young folks are dying, young folks are getting dismissed and pushed out of these institutions at the same percentage rage that young people are being reported as liking their education.

“It’s not representative of those young people who are suffering the most in California," he continued. "We have a responsibility to poll young people that are suffering the most. How do we develop a tool in a space like this to measure it? Another thing … the ideological underpinning of how these things are even set up, assumes that the education that we’re offering, that the education that we’re measuring, the education that we’re talking about is even worth achieving.

“A lot of young people are under attack by the very curriculum that they’re given. The curriculum undermines their humanity by virtue of replacing their identity with a cultural framework that is at odds with the history of people of color in the United States.”

I fought the urge to clap and finger-snap.

Suddenly, dialogue opened up about the racial demographics of the poll, which, we were told, reflected the demographics of young people in California, according to the U.S. census (45 percent of youth response was from white students).

A glorious alphabet of wise words started kicking statistical a--! Kinder, gentler numbers arrived on scene as it was pointed out these percentages did not reflect the reality of California public schools, which could be found by looking at data of students enrolled in public schools released by the California Department of Education.

Sandy Close, executive director of NAM, said that she shared the concerns being addressed and indicated that the organization would like to conduct micro-polling in areas where public education suffers most.

“The young people of California have not stopped believing, or trusting that there is a future,” she said.

I can’t help wondering … through the portal that begins in the dimension of lost percentages, back to a grim reality where test scores dictate what our youth can achieve … will the adults of California betray that trust? Or will we make the math work the way math should?

Every equation has a solution.

About

Tehea Robie is a novelist, Live Poet, and a lover of hybrid forms. She was a finalist for the 2005 Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and has been published in Five Fingers Review and Controlled Burn. She has been a featured poet at venues all around the Bay, such as Love Jones, Fluid, LIP all Grrrl MC Battle, Show Your Scars, 2009 Women’s Pavilion at San Francisco Pride, Evolution Networking, I Am A Man Fundraiser, and Shepeoples. She was raised by an exquisite, fierce, working-poor mother. She received her MFA in Writing and Consciousness.