Here I am again – pleading the case for support of public education.
There is a continued assault on the institution of education from within and without and from sea to shining sea. The public school experiment over the last couple of generations has not been without consequence to the individual student, our communities and ultimately the nation.
If these were other than poor white and children of color, we would not be having this conversation; the problem would be solved.
Mostly what we hear about public education is decidedly negative, making it difficult to see the redeeming value of public schools. Headlines blast state takeovers, sex crimes, financial embezzlements.
In between the chaos, many teachers are teaching. Some are resisting the media and institutional assaults; others are even organizing against it, such as Washington state teachers rebelling against standardized tests.
The cheating scandal in the Atlanta School District has been likened to a criminal conspiracy. Former school superintendent Beverly Hall has been indicted on racketeering with bail set at $7.5 million. Thirty four others have been indicted for systematic cheating on standardized tests, and up to 200 others may have been involved.
No Wall Street execs have been indicted or sent to jail for illegal acts that took the country into an economic recession that rivaled the Great Depression. I’m certainly not justifying the Atlanta folks, just putting it in perspective.
This is not the first case of cheating on standardized tests and surely won’t be the last. The pressure from former President Bush’s No Child Left Behind and from President Obama’s Race to the Top is almost inescapable. But it is the children who always suffer, the same children who already face formidable obstacles when it comes to achieving academic success and making it in an unforgiving world.
Those who know little about how to build a viable institution and implement effective school reform are quick to take the negative and roll it into more punitive measures. We see this over and over again, as policies and laws are inflicted upon the system with no measurable positive impact.
Tennessee lawmakers have introduced a bill that would reduce welfare payments to parents whose children don’t fare well on standardized tests. This hardly addresses the problems either.
St. Louis schools were taken over by the state Board of Education in 2007, and a Special Administrative Board (SAB) of three was put in place over the democratically elected board.
Last year, the district met enough of the academic and performance standards needed to go from unaccredited to provisional accreditation. However, Missouri Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro says the decision was made as an incentive to keep the district moving forward in the right direction as it has a long ways to go.
The elected school board has struggled for cohesion and focus since the SAB came on the scene. The hope is that the three members just elected will add fresh insights and energy to the board. The board is answerable to voters; the SAB is answerable to those who appointed them (the governor, mayor and aldermanic president).
The majority of our kids still go to public school – nearly 50 million, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Only a fraction of students attend charter, private and parochial schools. That’s a lot of potential we’re allowing to be squandered.
What’s still missing is the “public” in public schools: the kind of public engagement that could press for meaningful changes in how schools operate. In spite of the scandals and sordid headlines, the institutions that we rely on to help socialize and educate children must be saved.
I rest my case.
