The most common criticism leveled against the successful charter schools, including the Massachusetts network of "no excuses" schools, KIPP, and Achievement First schools, as well as a number of others, is that their impoverished, minority students at the start of their new school careers test out a bit higher than their peers remaining in the district schools, and even more significant they are said to have parents who are motivated to seek out the best possible school experience for their children. And that's not fair! These critics pretend that the success of these charters is not meaningful because it simply follows from having found (selected) better students and more motivated parents to begin with. Who couldn't do as well, they imply, given this above average student body?
This is the criticism that Richard Rothstein levels against the KIPP Schools in the book, The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement. Rothstein, a lecturer at Columbia University and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, writes extensively about education and his writings most often, while admitting the existence of failed inner city schools, do not so much fault the schools themselves as the societal problems (poverty, inadequate health care, abusive family situations etc.) that the kids bring with them into the schools. The fault, dear Reader, lies not so much in the schools and students as in the communities where the kids live and where these "essential services" are sorely lacking. Now when the KIPP School takes these kids without essential services and brings their reading, writing, and math skills up to grade level or above, and the district school serving the very same population fails to do so, who is to blame and who is to be praised? Well we have already learned from reading Rothstein that the schools are not to be blamed when they fail, and when they succeed, as in the case of KIPP, are not to be praised because these kids were not, in spite of appearances, enough like the kids they left behind in order to justify the comparison. Their overall test scores were higher and their parents were, what, better parents? You don't praise the schools whose kids have better parents.
So, what are we to make of all this? There are those, many of those at the Economic Policy Institute, who cry foul whenever people succeed without having begun the race from a level playing field. First make everybody the same, equal, and only then take the next step. In the instance of charter and district schools first make sure that the student bodies are exactly the same and only then arrive at any conclusions regarding the outcomes.
Well this will never happen. To change the outcomes the students, as well as the teachers, parents and the schools themselves, must also change. So it's true as Rothstein et al. say. At the very beginning the charter school students are different. But the charter school requirements, what the charter school is, make them different. And if you want different outcomes this always has to be the case. You cannot take the students and the parents as they are, and leave them as they are and expect to make important changes in their lives. Inner city schools have been doing just this for generations and they have failed to raise the achievement levels of their students. Tell the students they have to work harder, and tell the parents they have to care about their children's education, and do that from the very beginning. That's what the KIPP Schools do, and that's why their students are different. For that Richard Rothstein ought not to have blamed, but to have praised the founders and leaders of these schools.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Monday, August 28, 2006
Required curriculum for all students?
National boards and commissions have always recommended a required curriculum for all students, the sort of thing that is common in most every other Western democracy and Japan, probably China too. In this country most local school authorities and the people themselves, to the extent they have involved themselves in these matters, have always resisted one K-12 school curriculum for the entire nation. Why? Why is it somehow important that what is to be learned in school be decided by the local school authorities, the school Board, the school superintendent, and in some instances the parents and teachers, and not by the nation? Is it freedom's last gasp before a steady, undiminishing onslaught of big government? In this case the battle lines are not the usual ones between Left and Right. The political Center is generally sympathetic to national norms but their voice of reason is usually not heard because the opposing voices coming from Left and Right are so much louder.
I think that the sharp disagreement over a national curriculum, and national standards as well, exists in our country, and not, say, in England, France, and Germany, because from the very beginning we have placed a much heavier burden on our schools than have these countries. The school in France is most of all meant to make children literate and to that end a single national curriculum could be and was readily adopted. Schools in this country, however, have always been meant, and probably more so today even than in the past, to do much more than simply teach literacy. We would have our schools make knowledgeable and well informed, but also good and caring adults of our children, and there is little agreement how all that, and probably more still, is best done. Indeed, there is much mistrust of the central authority when it comes to how our children may best learn the difference between right and wrong. And there is no less distrust of, no less disagreement with the national authority in regard to what subject matters ought to make up the curriculum. In this country schools have meant all sorts of things to all sorts of people, and to accept a national curriculum might mean for the local community the loss of the particularities of their school, that specialness, whatever those things were that make the school theirs, and theirs alone. A National curriculum along with national standards would bring with their intrusion into the local community a national set of norms and values, thereby even further diminishing the importance of the local community in the lives of its children. Even further because popular and national culture has already done so much in that regard.
I think that the sharp disagreement over a national curriculum, and national standards as well, exists in our country, and not, say, in England, France, and Germany, because from the very beginning we have placed a much heavier burden on our schools than have these countries. The school in France is most of all meant to make children literate and to that end a single national curriculum could be and was readily adopted. Schools in this country, however, have always been meant, and probably more so today even than in the past, to do much more than simply teach literacy. We would have our schools make knowledgeable and well informed, but also good and caring adults of our children, and there is little agreement how all that, and probably more still, is best done. Indeed, there is much mistrust of the central authority when it comes to how our children may best learn the difference between right and wrong. And there is no less distrust of, no less disagreement with the national authority in regard to what subject matters ought to make up the curriculum. In this country schools have meant all sorts of things to all sorts of people, and to accept a national curriculum might mean for the local community the loss of the particularities of their school, that specialness, whatever those things were that make the school theirs, and theirs alone. A National curriculum along with national standards would bring with their intrusion into the local community a national set of norms and values, thereby even further diminishing the importance of the local community in the lives of its children. Even further because popular and national culture has already done so much in that regard.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Public/Private
I want to say a few words about the private/public opposition because that's what people in public education are always talking about, in particular they are always seeking out studies that prove that public schools are better than private schools, or at least can hold their own in the comparison. People in private education don't seem to much care about this sort of thing, don't have this public/private opposition very much on their minds. Perhaps they are too busy with their students.
How many times have we seen just during the past year, in the few newspapers still published and still read, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, this or that study that shows public schools doing better than private schools? And along with that judgement commentary making sure that everyone is aware and knows the significance of the findings. This private/public school thing, that draws so much of our attention in this country, baffles me. Aren't these categories, private schools and public schools, so vast that any comparison between them is either of so general a nature as to be meaningless, or of such a particular nature that general conclusions are not warranted? Aren't the proper categories successful schools, not so successful schools, failing schools and everything in between, and might we not with profit look at how schools succeed, how schools fail, whether or not they be public or private.
Private schools want to be good schools, and they want their kids to succeed because otherwise their paying parent customers would put them out of business. Public schools want to be seen as somehow inherently better, more American, or as American as apple pie. They want to be seen as embodying the American dream, creating equal opportunity for all comers, and they enlist the politicians, rather than the parents on their side because their jobs are assured by government, not by the parents of their children.
I would say that I have known good public and good private schools. But the good public schools are nearly all either exam schools, magnet schools, or schools in affluent suburban communities. In this country's large cities with large minority and poor populations the politicians and everyone else with the means to do so will send their kids to private schools. For even the public figures recognize that the public district schools in our inner cities are failing. And so far no one seems to know what to do about it. And public/private comparisons are of little or no help.
How many times have we seen just during the past year, in the few newspapers still published and still read, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, this or that study that shows public schools doing better than private schools? And along with that judgement commentary making sure that everyone is aware and knows the significance of the findings. This private/public school thing, that draws so much of our attention in this country, baffles me. Aren't these categories, private schools and public schools, so vast that any comparison between them is either of so general a nature as to be meaningless, or of such a particular nature that general conclusions are not warranted? Aren't the proper categories successful schools, not so successful schools, failing schools and everything in between, and might we not with profit look at how schools succeed, how schools fail, whether or not they be public or private.
Private schools want to be good schools, and they want their kids to succeed because otherwise their paying parent customers would put them out of business. Public schools want to be seen as somehow inherently better, more American, or as American as apple pie. They want to be seen as embodying the American dream, creating equal opportunity for all comers, and they enlist the politicians, rather than the parents on their side because their jobs are assured by government, not by the parents of their children.
I would say that I have known good public and good private schools. But the good public schools are nearly all either exam schools, magnet schools, or schools in affluent suburban communities. In this country's large cities with large minority and poor populations the politicians and everyone else with the means to do so will send their kids to private schools. For even the public figures recognize that the public district schools in our inner cities are failing. And so far no one seems to know what to do about it. And public/private comparisons are of little or no help.
Thomas Jefferson's "informed citizenry."
Throughout his lifetime Thomas Jefferson had much to say about education. His own education was constantly on his mind. And perhaps because of this we still respectfully listen to what he had to say. Here are a few excerpts from his writings on education:
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." Notes on Virginia 1782
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816.
"If the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, education is to be the chief instrument in effecting it." --Thomas Jefferson to M. A. Jullien,
1818.
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." to William Jarvis, 1820
From these comments and others like them, written over a period of at least 40 years it is clear that Jeffferson saw the continued health and survival of his country in a well-informed people, in a well educated citizenry. Be that as it may Jefferson's writings are not without evidence that he infact believed much more in a meritocracy ("It becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons, whom nature has endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance." --Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779.) than in a generally well informed citizenry. The makers of our country, including Jefferson himself, were anything but the well-informed citizenry of which he speaks. They were rather an elite, for the most part consisting of wealthy land and slave owners from the Eastern seaboard of our country.
In Jefferson's time we didn't yet have a system of public education so he was free to say anything he wanted regarding what might be such a system's merits. And in fact when the beast is not yet born it can be all things to all people that await its coming. An educational system as described by Jefferson that created an informed citizenry, thus preventing kings, queens, the nobility and the priesthood from returning to power, could very well be thought of as the source of this country's strength. And many even today think, or rather speak of our public educational system in this way, whether they believe it or not. I tend to think that no one can really believe that, that our public educational system has created a well informed and responsible citizenry. And yet we still have our democracy, no worse today than in Jefferson's time, probaby still in the hands of an elite, not now, no more than in Jefferson's time, in the hands of the people. Perhaps the very best one can say of our schools is that so far they seem to be replenishing, along with significant help from a constant flow of highly educated immigrants, our governing elite. Jefferson was wrong in what said about an informed citizenry, or at least that our country would depend on having such, and happily so, because if our country's survival had really depended on an informed citizenry it would never have survived as long as it has.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." Notes on Virginia 1782
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816.
"If the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, education is to be the chief instrument in effecting it." --Thomas Jefferson to M. A. Jullien,
1818.
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." to William Jarvis, 1820
From these comments and others like them, written over a period of at least 40 years it is clear that Jeffferson saw the continued health and survival of his country in a well-informed people, in a well educated citizenry. Be that as it may Jefferson's writings are not without evidence that he infact believed much more in a meritocracy ("It becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons, whom nature has endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance." --Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779.) than in a generally well informed citizenry. The makers of our country, including Jefferson himself, were anything but the well-informed citizenry of which he speaks. They were rather an elite, for the most part consisting of wealthy land and slave owners from the Eastern seaboard of our country.
In Jefferson's time we didn't yet have a system of public education so he was free to say anything he wanted regarding what might be such a system's merits. And in fact when the beast is not yet born it can be all things to all people that await its coming. An educational system as described by Jefferson that created an informed citizenry, thus preventing kings, queens, the nobility and the priesthood from returning to power, could very well be thought of as the source of this country's strength. And many even today think, or rather speak of our public educational system in this way, whether they believe it or not. I tend to think that no one can really believe that, that our public educational system has created a well informed and responsible citizenry. And yet we still have our democracy, no worse today than in Jefferson's time, probaby still in the hands of an elite, not now, no more than in Jefferson's time, in the hands of the people. Perhaps the very best one can say of our schools is that so far they seem to be replenishing, along with significant help from a constant flow of highly educated immigrants, our governing elite. Jefferson was wrong in what said about an informed citizenry, or at least that our country would depend on having such, and happily so, because if our country's survival had really depended on an informed citizenry it would never have survived as long as it has.
Schools as instruments of change?
How much have the schools changed our way of life? I won't even ask how well have the schools created an informed citizenry, that which Thomas Jefferson thought should be their primary mission. What has ever happened that would make us say, why this has come about because of the schools? I can't think of anything, except perhaps the achievement gap and dropping out. Schools are just there. We're all familiar with them, but unlike parks, police, and fire engines there is no general agreement as to just what good they accomplish by being there. Rather than life changing instruments, schools are our means of occupying our chldren once it has been pointed out and agreed upon that child labor is no longer to be tolerated.
Need I even say that the real big changes in our lives are brought about, not by schools, but by new technologies? For example, the movement off the farm. "By 1940, as highly mechanized, highly capitalized farming took over, the dusty dirt roads, farm wagons and Model-T Fords passing by, threshers in overalls pitching bundles, small family farms with cows, pigs and chickens, all the speed and power of a rural way of life set by the three-mile-an-hour gait of the horse, all this was just a nostalgic memory. And since 1940 the number of Americans who farm has dropped from about 30 percent to less than three percent of the working population. This is probably the most fundamental change in modern American history, and its cultural consequences have still to be calculated." (See, Science and the Villager: The Last Sleeper Wakes, Foreign Affairs, Fall, 1982)
Need I even say that the real big changes in our lives are brought about, not by schools, but by new technologies? For example, the movement off the farm. "By 1940, as highly mechanized, highly capitalized farming took over, the dusty dirt roads, farm wagons and Model-T Fords passing by, threshers in overalls pitching bundles, small family farms with cows, pigs and chickens, all the speed and power of a rural way of life set by the three-mile-an-hour gait of the horse, all this was just a nostalgic memory. And since 1940 the number of Americans who farm has dropped from about 30 percent to less than three percent of the working population. This is probably the most fundamental change in modern American history, and its cultural consequences have still to be calculated." (See, Science and the Villager: The Last Sleeper Wakes, Foreign Affairs, Fall, 1982)
Saturday, August 19, 2006
What Causes Poverty
What is the cause of poverty? The other day I was visiting a Boston based organization that was struggling to raise the achievement levels of poor inner city minority kids and was asked that question. The issue of poverty, and in particular the version that is prevalent in all of our large cities, was all too familiar to me. In fact poverty has always been the immovable object seeming to block all our efforts to make such things as safe neighborhoods, good schools, and home ownership realities for the inhabitants of our inner cities. But I had never in all my contact with the beast answered the question of its origins. Now I will.
The cause of poverty, I told my questioner, is two-fold. The first cause is when the free exchange of goods (and ideas, because there’s also intellectual poverty) is interrupted and brought to a halt by such things as excessive rules and regulations, tariffs, walls and other physical barriers, and violence of all kinds, including intimidation, outright theft, and most of all war. Haven’t we always known that new wealth, which alone can reduce and finally eliminate poverty, stems from the free exchange of goods and ideas?
The second cause is greed. Yes, that’s right, pure and simple greed.
The Gross Domestic Product of the poorest 48 nations is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. For even when goods flow, as into Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union, as now out of China in shipping containers bound for the West, as into the home of Cinderella in the baskets of her step sisters on market day, just a few enjoy the benefits of these movements of goods. Today in Russia, as in the Soviet Union earlier, the many continue to do without, Cinderella remains in rags still waiting for her Prince to come, and in China tens, perhaps hundreds of new billionaires share the country unequally with hundreds of millions of the still poor.
Just recently I read that Palestinian goods were beginning to flow into Israel: “KARNI CARGO CROSSING, Israel, June 5, -- Palettes of fresh produce, seafood, and office furniture rolled into Israel from the Gaza Strip last week, marking the first substantial flow of goods from the economically battered Palestinian territory since February.” This policy turn about was the work of Amir Peretz, the leader of Israel’s Labor Party as well as Israel’s Minister of Defense. Peretz believes that terrorism is best fought by relieving the stress on the Palestinian people. It is his conviction, as that of many of those on the political Left, that the exchange of goods between Palestine (Gaza) and Israel will alleviate to some degree, depending on the amount of exchange, the wrenching poverty of the Palestinian territories. But until the terrorists stop being terrorists the free flow of goods between the two zones will not happen and poverty will continue to dominate the lives of the Palestinians.
Examples of obstruction to the free exchange of goods are everywhere. For examples of greed we have only to live. Most of our wars on poverty would undo the effects of greed by some form of redistribution of wealth. For governments haven’t yet understood that the war on poverty ought to begin in the market place, and not proceed from the pocket books the wealthy. Both Christianity and Communism had as one of their goals the elimination of greed, or at least the reduction of the disparities between the rich and the poor. But they also made the pocket books of the wealthy their principal target, and did little or nothing to promote the free exchange of goods and ideas. Whereas Communism is a clear failure in making the world a better place, the jury on Christianity is still out.
The United States is today the wealthiest nation on Earth. Yet poverty is also clearly with us. In 2004 the official poverty rate was 12.7%, or 37 million people. To reduce the number of people in the ranks of the poor the Democrats would increase the tax burden on the wealthy. The Republicans would deregulate the market place and thereby increase the size of the nation’s wealth. Both efforts seem necessary because even the relatively untrammeled exchange of goods and ideas in this country has not yet much slowed the growing disparities between the rich and the poor.
The cause of poverty, I told my questioner, is two-fold. The first cause is when the free exchange of goods (and ideas, because there’s also intellectual poverty) is interrupted and brought to a halt by such things as excessive rules and regulations, tariffs, walls and other physical barriers, and violence of all kinds, including intimidation, outright theft, and most of all war. Haven’t we always known that new wealth, which alone can reduce and finally eliminate poverty, stems from the free exchange of goods and ideas?
The second cause is greed. Yes, that’s right, pure and simple greed.
The Gross Domestic Product of the poorest 48 nations is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. For even when goods flow, as into Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union, as now out of China in shipping containers bound for the West, as into the home of Cinderella in the baskets of her step sisters on market day, just a few enjoy the benefits of these movements of goods. Today in Russia, as in the Soviet Union earlier, the many continue to do without, Cinderella remains in rags still waiting for her Prince to come, and in China tens, perhaps hundreds of new billionaires share the country unequally with hundreds of millions of the still poor.
Just recently I read that Palestinian goods were beginning to flow into Israel: “KARNI CARGO CROSSING, Israel, June 5, -- Palettes of fresh produce, seafood, and office furniture rolled into Israel from the Gaza Strip last week, marking the first substantial flow of goods from the economically battered Palestinian territory since February.” This policy turn about was the work of Amir Peretz, the leader of Israel’s Labor Party as well as Israel’s Minister of Defense. Peretz believes that terrorism is best fought by relieving the stress on the Palestinian people. It is his conviction, as that of many of those on the political Left, that the exchange of goods between Palestine (Gaza) and Israel will alleviate to some degree, depending on the amount of exchange, the wrenching poverty of the Palestinian territories. But until the terrorists stop being terrorists the free flow of goods between the two zones will not happen and poverty will continue to dominate the lives of the Palestinians.
Examples of obstruction to the free exchange of goods are everywhere. For examples of greed we have only to live. Most of our wars on poverty would undo the effects of greed by some form of redistribution of wealth. For governments haven’t yet understood that the war on poverty ought to begin in the market place, and not proceed from the pocket books the wealthy. Both Christianity and Communism had as one of their goals the elimination of greed, or at least the reduction of the disparities between the rich and the poor. But they also made the pocket books of the wealthy their principal target, and did little or nothing to promote the free exchange of goods and ideas. Whereas Communism is a clear failure in making the world a better place, the jury on Christianity is still out.
The United States is today the wealthiest nation on Earth. Yet poverty is also clearly with us. In 2004 the official poverty rate was 12.7%, or 37 million people. To reduce the number of people in the ranks of the poor the Democrats would increase the tax burden on the wealthy. The Republicans would deregulate the market place and thereby increase the size of the nation’s wealth. Both efforts seem necessary because even the relatively untrammeled exchange of goods and ideas in this country has not yet much slowed the growing disparities between the rich and the poor.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
School Matters
There are some things that one hesitates to even mention, simply because so much has already been said about them and to so little avail. Iraq is one. Globalization is another, and a third the public schools. I’ve never fought in Iraq so I’m not going to put myself in among those who have, and in the way of globalization I’ve done little more than consume the products of China, it being either that or no new shoes. But the schools, well there I don’t fear to tread, having been either a teacher or an administrator most of my life, and I’m now well into my seventh decade.
But I’ll speak only about the schools in our inner cities, because these are the schools that are failing the kids, or the kids in these schools are failing to learn, which is the same thing. This has been going on for a long time, and it seems to be getting worse as the inner city populations become ever more isolated from mainstream America. For a long time now, how long, when did our failing inner city schools begin? I don’t know (a future research project) but I have never ceased to be amazed that the politicians, the school administrators, and the teachers’ unions, all doing quite well in these otherwise failing inner city school environments, go on doing and saying pretty much the same unhelpful things, year after year, and all the time their schools go on failing the kids. Why is this so? Why aren’t they shouting for change and reform from the rooftops?
Is the failure because these kids are poor, that they come from single parent families, that they frequently are victims of physical abuse at home, that they have little or no contact with positive and caring adult role models? Is it because they lack proper health care? Is it because the schools are more segregated than ever before, in Boston more segregated now than before busing began in the seventies? Is it because these poor and disadvantaged kids have little of a positive nature to give to or take from one another?
And busing is still going on! How can that be? No one seems to know how to stop it. The kids are bused throughout the inner city where there are only poor kids like themselves. Why is this so? Is there a bus drivers’ union that is responsible? Just as there is a superintendents’ union responsible for the schools being closed in the afternoons and evenings. But the busing stops at the city limits (although I believe there is an exception to this in St. Louis, and there is the Metco program in Boston). There is a wall, a red line, not to be crossed, between the city and the suburbs, those suburbs where the suburban kids, from whom the city kids in a real integrated environment might learn, live with others just like themselves in their own segregated environments.
Is the failure the result of the classwork being conducted in English when many of the students are themselves only learning English and speak another language at home? Is it because so little is expected of them in class? Is it because the bar has been set too low and they have lost respect for what they are expected to learn? Is it because the teachers no longer care? Well it’s because of all of this and more.
Unbelievable isn’t it, that we go on as if nothing could be done, and therefore do nothing. Actually that’s not quite true. There are exceptions that prove the rule. There are a few school people, the leaders of a few pilot, charter, and nativity prep schools that have sprung up during the past 10 or 15 years or so and that don’t fail these kids. These schools are there quite clearly in response to the failure of so many kids in our inner cities to learn. The charter, pilot and nativity kids are no less attending segregated schools with poor kids like themselves, but in these schools much is expected of them, and that seems to make all the difference. But then, and would you believe this, these few schools that are serving these kids well, instead of being celebrated and looked to as models of change, are scorned by the same politicians, school administrators and teachers’ unions that are continuing to run the failing schools. Are they somehow like the Emperor in Andersen’s story the Emperor’s New Clothes, refusing to see what more and more everyone else sees, their own nakedness, the clear absence of even the appearance of a successful public school system?
Every ten years or so the situation in the schools becomes so obviously in need of reform that the Federal government steps in. The NoChildLeftBehind law of 2002 is the latest instance of this. In part the Feds got it right. The kids did need to be held accountable, the kids needed to learn to read and to write and to figure, and this law requires that they now pass statewide standardized tests in math and language arts in order to graduate from high school. But the law does nothing about all those things that are wrong and probably at fault for much of the failure. The law does nothing about segregation. The law does nothing about unruly classrooms. The law does nothing about teachers who have given up. Worse, the law probably contributes to more kids dropping out of school, from fear of failure. For those kids who stay in school, the ones who always do what they’re told, the new law, because of al the test preparation that it requires of them, allows them no time for such no less important activities as art and music, discussions in social studies class, the preparation of science fair experiments and demonstrations, all these and other intangibles which are so important to every child’s healthy growth and development. For these kids who stay in school doing well in school has been reduced to doing well on a test.
I haven’t finished. But my subject, the plight of our inner city schools, is not going away. It will probably be around a long time after we’ve left Iraq, and probably well after the opponents of globalism have ceased to matter.
But I’ll speak only about the schools in our inner cities, because these are the schools that are failing the kids, or the kids in these schools are failing to learn, which is the same thing. This has been going on for a long time, and it seems to be getting worse as the inner city populations become ever more isolated from mainstream America. For a long time now, how long, when did our failing inner city schools begin? I don’t know (a future research project) but I have never ceased to be amazed that the politicians, the school administrators, and the teachers’ unions, all doing quite well in these otherwise failing inner city school environments, go on doing and saying pretty much the same unhelpful things, year after year, and all the time their schools go on failing the kids. Why is this so? Why aren’t they shouting for change and reform from the rooftops?
Is the failure because these kids are poor, that they come from single parent families, that they frequently are victims of physical abuse at home, that they have little or no contact with positive and caring adult role models? Is it because they lack proper health care? Is it because the schools are more segregated than ever before, in Boston more segregated now than before busing began in the seventies? Is it because these poor and disadvantaged kids have little of a positive nature to give to or take from one another?
And busing is still going on! How can that be? No one seems to know how to stop it. The kids are bused throughout the inner city where there are only poor kids like themselves. Why is this so? Is there a bus drivers’ union that is responsible? Just as there is a superintendents’ union responsible for the schools being closed in the afternoons and evenings. But the busing stops at the city limits (although I believe there is an exception to this in St. Louis, and there is the Metco program in Boston). There is a wall, a red line, not to be crossed, between the city and the suburbs, those suburbs where the suburban kids, from whom the city kids in a real integrated environment might learn, live with others just like themselves in their own segregated environments.
Is the failure the result of the classwork being conducted in English when many of the students are themselves only learning English and speak another language at home? Is it because so little is expected of them in class? Is it because the bar has been set too low and they have lost respect for what they are expected to learn? Is it because the teachers no longer care? Well it’s because of all of this and more.
Unbelievable isn’t it, that we go on as if nothing could be done, and therefore do nothing. Actually that’s not quite true. There are exceptions that prove the rule. There are a few school people, the leaders of a few pilot, charter, and nativity prep schools that have sprung up during the past 10 or 15 years or so and that don’t fail these kids. These schools are there quite clearly in response to the failure of so many kids in our inner cities to learn. The charter, pilot and nativity kids are no less attending segregated schools with poor kids like themselves, but in these schools much is expected of them, and that seems to make all the difference. But then, and would you believe this, these few schools that are serving these kids well, instead of being celebrated and looked to as models of change, are scorned by the same politicians, school administrators and teachers’ unions that are continuing to run the failing schools. Are they somehow like the Emperor in Andersen’s story the Emperor’s New Clothes, refusing to see what more and more everyone else sees, their own nakedness, the clear absence of even the appearance of a successful public school system?
Every ten years or so the situation in the schools becomes so obviously in need of reform that the Federal government steps in. The NoChildLeftBehind law of 2002 is the latest instance of this. In part the Feds got it right. The kids did need to be held accountable, the kids needed to learn to read and to write and to figure, and this law requires that they now pass statewide standardized tests in math and language arts in order to graduate from high school. But the law does nothing about all those things that are wrong and probably at fault for much of the failure. The law does nothing about segregation. The law does nothing about unruly classrooms. The law does nothing about teachers who have given up. Worse, the law probably contributes to more kids dropping out of school, from fear of failure. For those kids who stay in school, the ones who always do what they’re told, the new law, because of al the test preparation that it requires of them, allows them no time for such no less important activities as art and music, discussions in social studies class, the preparation of science fair experiments and demonstrations, all these and other intangibles which are so important to every child’s healthy growth and development. For these kids who stay in school doing well in school has been reduced to doing well on a test.
I haven’t finished. But my subject, the plight of our inner city schools, is not going away. It will probably be around a long time after we’ve left Iraq, and probably well after the opponents of globalism have ceased to matter.
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