The
lens with which one looks through says a lot about their general approach to
education reform. The dichotomy illuminates one’s belief in the nature of the
relationship between the individual and the community. The positions are intractable
and so political power and political victory rather than a philosophical
triumph are the presumptive goals.
.
This
is School Choice Week, bringing the issue to the forefront of the presidential
campaign. Mitt Romney’s visit to a Philadelphia charter school, along with
President Obama’s vocal support for public education, shows that their view on
these issues could have electoral ramifications.
The
problem for people like me is that I support both positions and believe that
they are not mutually exclusive. The reason is that advocates of school choice
and vouchers believe that parents should have the right to choose which school
their children attend, while opponents passionately defend the right of ALL
students- not individual ones-to a quality education. They unfortunately see
school choice and vouchers a threat, though they are no more a threat than
charter schools have proven (not) to be.
It
is hard not to feel empathy for parents that are fully engaged in their
children’s education, frustrated by the obvious inequities they see every day.
Why can’t their children have the same opportunities, the same exposure to
exemplary teachers, the same advantage of attending a school with a vigorous
culture of learning. The reasons for this inequity are complex, some requiring
years of urban planning to rectify. Some are more immediate and addressable.
There are practical impediments to
the school choice/voucher plan, the most obvious being the availability of
“seats” in quality schools. Where seats do exist, mostly in parochial schools,
First Amendment issues invariably get raised. The value of the voucher has also
been a hindrance; the tuition gap is still immense and difficult to fund
without some dedicated funding. Personally, I feel that parents should receive
the same “per pupil” amount of money
that charter schools receive for each enrollee.
Opponents
of this plan are rightly concerned that a consequence of school choice will be
a siphoning off of the best students at these urban schools, not necessarily
the smartest but those who are the most involved, most perspicacious, and most likely to advocate for themselves. All I
can say in response is that these urban schools must do a better job embracing
new ideas and must do a better job creating a culture of learning at their
school. Right now there is nothing going on at these schools to persuade these “choice
parents” to take what they perceive is the risk of keeping their children in
the urban public school.
So
in my view the advocates and opponents of school choice/vouchers both have
legitimate arguments to support their positions, that the positions are not
mutually exclusive, and that room for compromise is possible. The one place
where I think the choice people are flirting with delusion is the notion that “competition”
is the best tonic for fixing what ails the public schools. I really don’t think
the people that believe this have ever taken this argument past the stage of
concept. In a sense competition already exists, albeit the playing field is not
level since those seeking alternatives to the neighborhood school must come up
with money for an alternative school. Even if every family wanting to send
their child to an existing private or parochial school was able to do so, the
number of “seats” to be filled with these new students would hardly make a dent
in the dropout rates at the public schools. How would competition work? Are we
to essentially eliminate public schools and basically turn all of these schools
into charter schools? What happens to kids that attend a failing school, where
do they turn? Are parents going to be equipped with all the relevant
information so that they can make choices as a fully informed consumer? And
what of the teachers’ union, would they have members suddenly competing against
each other within a school or between schools?
For
the record, those that wrote the original charter school legislation in New
Jersey did NOT advocate competition among their rationales for charter schools.
Rather, they believed that collaboration and cooperation between public and charter
schools, sharing innovative ideas for instruction, would be an important way to
improve teacher performance and student learning outcomes.
Individual
students have a basic right to a quality education, and their parents should
have as much freedom as possible to advocate for their children. At the same
time, it is incumbent on our political and educational leaders to design public
policy for the benefit of all students, and that can only be done by making a commitment
to the neighborhood school. Schools do not exist in isolation; education reform
and urban reform are inextricably linked.
I’ve
written elsewhere that if the dropout rate were instead an infection rate, New
Jersey’s cities would have declared a health crisis, if they were crime rates
we would have called in the National Guard. The problem we are facing has its
roots in neighborhoods that are completely dysfunctional, with families led by
a parent or parents who either won’t or can’t make the effort it takes to help
their children succeed. If I was a parent who cared, in a community of parents
that don’t, I’d want to get my kid out of that school too. Unlike wealthier
parents, they don’t have the luxury of moving, they don’t in essence have “choice.”
Unless we improve these urban communities, and unless we as a society do a
better job at parenting, in fact confronting poor parenting where it is in
evidence, improvement in the inner city schools will continue to elude us,
giving more and more credence to families that want to opt out. I share their
pain, and I sympathize with their plight. In a nation that cherishes the notion
of individualism, their position must be respected.
No comments:
Post a Comment