I received an email with a copy of this blog by a parent in Iowa who happens also to be a law professor.
He is justifiably incensed that the people, the policymakers and the legislators who love choice have taken away all his choices as a parent.
He wants his kids to go to a school where there is no high-stakes testing, but he doesn’t have that choice.
He wants his kids to go to a school where teachers are allowed to use their professional judgment, but he doesn’t have that choice and neither do the teachers.
He wants his kids to go to a school where his children have time for physical activity and play, but he doesn’t have that choice.
He wants a school that has not been pressed into a standardized mold tied to standardized tests, but he doesn’t have that choice.
He has a proposal for real choice. Read the blog to see what it is.
As I read his ideas, I realized that if he lived in New York City or New Orleans and perhaps other cities, there is one other choice that he would not have: the choice to send his children to a neighborhood school. Our elites have decided that choice should not be available in their new marketplace of choice.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Choice to have a wonderful neighborhood school is both a worthy goal and a potentially troubling one. Local control does not have a perfect record.
While a school community might decide to offer plenty of physical activity and play, there is equal chance that the local school will expect everyone to pray the same prayer before the game. There might be a dynamic discussion of the universe and the role of humans in the world of biodiversity. Unfortunately, with local control, there might also be a community norm expecting children to know their dominion over the beasts of the field. There might be a school full of different colors of skin and a variety of garments. There also might be a school full only of “people like us.”
Local control might hire a staff of dedicated, eager, engaged educators. But a principal might, instead, hire his cousins and their friends instead of somebody from the next town or county. Unions and teacher due process are not, necessarily, significant components of local control.
I hate thinking these thoughts.
I really love the ideal of community-controlled schools. The ideal also includes my desire to see strong teachers whose hands are not tied by cronyism or expectations they will examine only narrow beliefs.
What will balance the need for neighborhood/community schools against the honest acceptance of a world not constrained by the mountains (real or metaphoric) which surround the community?
What prevents a set of train tracks from dividing a town/city/community into ethic enclaves?
State and federal laws have frequently been designed to prevent schools from perpetuating belief isolationism or segregationist localism. Those laws are not universally loved any more than I love the laws which impose statewide or nationwide standardized testing..
Can we find a balance?
Can we avoid just throwing up our hands and letting commercial/corporate gurus take over?
Let us struggle (acknowledging it won’t be quick or easy) to support *public* schools, with all the traditions and buy-in from the community; public schools which have broad financial support from all citizens (with or without children in school); public schools with teachers who love the tradition and community-building sequential interaction with one generation after another; public schools which celebrate the accomplishments of the individual students, their many “teams” (including drama/arts and band/chorus, not just football, etc.); public schools which benefit from the return of their adult successes.
Let us simultaneously embrace a broad view which doesn’t pit “our good community” against “them and their undesirable community.”
LikeLike
There is nothing inconsistent with wanting much more local control and still supporting the constitutional separation of church and state and prohibition on race discrimination by public schools.
I agree that decentralization will not be perfect, but that has never been the standard for making policy, and is certainly not a standard that our current, very federally-driven system meets.
It’s true that if we allow local control, some communities will make choices that I wouldn’t agree with. I call that pluralism. And if, instead, we make everything a winner-take-all national battle, how can we be sure that the “better” choices will win? (More thoughts here.)
So much of the support for centralization seems to come down to, “I like centralization because that way we can impose good policies on people against their will.” I think that rationale runs through much of today’s discussion of education “reform,” and I don’t trust it at all.
LikeLike
Awesome food for thought! Well written! Thank you!
LikeLike
See, the ironic thing is that I work at the kind of school he’s describing — and it’s a charter school (the non-profit kind with a community- and parent-run board, not the corporate kind). Because the school is a charter, it has more leeway. The charter has a play-based curriculum where the kids move around a lot. There’s no homework K-2. Students’ interests decide the science curriculum, although we make sure that they end up eventually hitting all of the state standards. Teachers are treated as professionals. And while students have to take the state standardized tests — it is a public school, after all — they do not drive the curriculum. The assumption is that if kids are engaged and learning, they’ll do okay on the tests. (It’s a new school, so we’ll see if that is true.) Wasn’t the original point of charter schools to provide genuine educational alternatives?
But the problem with choice is that you can’t really have a public policy that embraces some kinds of charter school philosophies and not others (although it would be a good step in the right direction to nix the corporate ones). To take the blogger’s idea of “local schools,” it sounds great at first. But what if one local community decides that they want schools what only teach what’s in the Bible, or that the Loch Ness monster is real, or (like Texas Republicans) they are against teaching any critical thinking skills? Or what is an under-privileged community is convinced by a smooth-talking reformer that what they really need is a skill-and-drill curriculum? How can we say yes to my school and no to their school?
LikeLike
“The assumption is that if kids are engaged and learning, they’ll do okay on the tests. (It’s a new school, so we’ll see if that is true.)” While I agree with the assumption, the reality of standards and standardized testing, especially as implemented through NCLB, is that your school will “fail”. Maybe not “fail” in the teaching and learning process but by those supposed standards and standardized tests. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
LikeLike
I’m not such a local control absolutist that I would jettison the Constitutional prohibitions against race discrimination and the establishment of religion. We could still have a much more decentralized system than the one we have.
Implicit in your second paragraph is the assumption that the “higher” levels of government know better. But they are not “higher” because they know better; they just happen to have more power in our federal system. Why assume that more powerful = wiser? Specifically, why assume that the federal government is *less* likely fall prey to “smooth-talking reformers” who want to impose a “skill-and-drill” curriculum?
At least under a decentralized system, *some* places might pursue humane and meaningful education. Under a centralized system, there’s a good chance that we’ll *all* have drill-and-skill imposed on us.
LikeLike
Local control also allows for some pretty different and interesting curricula options. Our local high school, a rural school in California, has a vineyard, an orchard, pigs, and sheep. The program is very successful at this school. I daresay if I proposed this as a statewide standard and suggested that LAUSD implement it at all their high schools the suggestion would be laughed away as absurd. And yet, rarely does anyone wonder if choices that originate at urban schools fit for the rural ones.
It would be wonderful if every kid in every zip code had access to every type of school. I’m sure there are many urban kids who would be totally on board with the idea of sheep or having recess under the redwoods. There are kids in our community who would benefit from an all-gifted STEM magnet. Neither school can fit in every neighborhood. But we as parents also need to appreciate that we make school choices based on where we choose to work and to live whether we mean to or not.
Local control can be a source of ignorance and oppression. It can also be a source of freedom and creativity. Making all schools the same in the name of avoiding oppression is probably not going to turn out well… and it probably won’t serve the interests of the kids, either. Teaching a reading unit that’s all about playing in the snow is one thing in Michigan and something altogether different in Phoenix. Kids in California learn California history that kids in New England never even thought to ask about. Kids in small villages in Alaska take field trips by airplane where part of the adventure may be learning to order in a restaurant.
Education is about giving kids tools to unlock the world around them. It’s only right that they start by practicing on the problems and the history and the science and the geology of their own local community. Schools need the freedom to do that, and to gauge the needs and desires of their local students, parents, and communities.
LikeLike
All good points!
LikeLike
I know that “local control” used to be, and still sometimes is, code for segregation. But that’s not what this Iowa parent is talking about. He’s talking about community-governed schools where citizens get to choose how their schools work and have the option of giving their own education professionals (teachers) the freedom to construct a quality educational experience.
He contrasts that to the narrow testing mandates from the Federal government, which substitute performance on standardized tests for quality education, or the scripted and narrow curricula developed by national charter networks (for-profit or non-profit).
Community governance can be a double-edged sword. But there’s no question that a local community has a larger direct stake in the real quality of a public school education than any state or Federal policymaker, let alone any executive of a for-profit company.
LikeLike
The United States was founded, formed and grew to international prominence with virtually no government involvement in schooling. Before the advent of government-controlled schools, literacy was high (91-97% in the North, 81% in the South), private and community schools proliferated. For the first 150 years of America’s settlement and the first 50 to 75 years of the nation’s existence, government schooling as it is known today did not exist. Early America was arguably the freest civil society that has ever existed.
This freedom extended to education, which meant that parents were responsible for, and had complete control of, their children’s schooling. There were no accrediting agencies, no regulatory boards, and no teacher certification requirements. Parents could choose whatever kind of school or education they wanted for their children.
In Pennsylvania since 2000, enrollment has declined by 26,960 while schools have hired 32,937 more staff members. Most of these new employees pay dues to the PSEA labor union, which runs one of the largest political action committees in the state and heavily funds political campaigns.
Pennsylvania’s education spending increased from $4 billion in 1980 to over $25 billion in 2009 – a 133% increase in per-pupil spending, from $6,171 to $14,420 (in 2010 dollars).
If you choose to control your own child’s education (like the first Americans) and incorporate God into education you forfeit nearly $15,000 every year (Approx $180,000 per child over 12 years before compounding interest).
Can government schools teach why abortion is wrong? Is it any wander we have a population who does not understand?
Can it get worse?
In Ontario’s Roman Catholic schools are no longer allowed to teach that abortion is wrong. For the whole story see: http://patriactionary.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/ontarios-roman-catholic-schools-no-longer-allowed-to-teach-that-abortion-is-wrong/
Is true school Choice the answer? Why can’t parents take their $15,000 per year to the school they choose? Can education compete like it did in the beginning? Education benefits all of society particularly when morality is allowed to be part of it. The schools can accept all comers if they want government $ (otherwise they can do without government $). This may be the single most important issue underlying all of society’s problems. Only the rich can afford education that they choose. Is our society losing it’s roots?
LikeLike