{"id":107739,"date":"2014-02-12T17:59:30","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T17:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=107739"},"modified":"2014-02-12T17:59:30","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T17:59:30","slug":"false-compromises-wont-resolve-education-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/business-news\/false-compromises-wont-resolve-education-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Why False Compromises Won\u2019t Resolve The Education Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Bryant\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Legend has, political disputes are supposed to be resolvable only when parties \u201cmeet in the middle\u201d and shake hands on points of agreement that are possible.<\/p>\n

But in the much-contested issue of \u201ceducation reform,\u201d only one of the disputing parties in the debate tends to be implored to seek compromise.<\/p>\n

The latest example of this came from conservative commentator Juan Williams. Writing for\u00a0The Hill<\/a>, Williams claimed differing opinions of how to improve the nation\u2019s schools are \u201cstuck in partisan paralysis.\u201d He beseeched \u201ctwo of the nation\u2019s most politically powerful black men,\u201d President Obama and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to make a \u201cdeal\u201d on \u201chotly debated education reforms\u201d and embrace the cause of charter schools.<\/p>\n

Such a \u201cgrand bargain,\u201d Williams assured, would \u201cdeliver on the promise of equal opportunity and solve this generation\u2019s top civil rights problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, in the same week, liberal columnist\u00a0Jonathan Chait<\/a>\u00a0wrote for\u00a0New York Magazine<\/i>that the fate of the nation\u2019s schools was caught up in a \u201cweird ideological divide\u201d between people who promote charter schools as a solution for the nation\u2019s education problems and those who have doubts about that.<\/p>\n

Chait blamed that \u201cdivide\u201d on education historian Diane Ravitch who, according to Chait, \u201cportrays charter schools as a corporate plot.\u201d What\u2019s necessary, Chait maintained, is the \u201cRavitch and union view of the world\u201d to give up \u201ca nostalgic embrace of the old-fashioned organization of public school\u201d and accept \u201cattempts to apply empirical metrics\u201d that apparently characterize charter schools.<\/p>\n

First, set aside how each of these popular columnists jumps to sweeping conclusions without citing any evidence.<\/p>\n

(Williams claimed schools are \u201cfailing to do their part\u201d to address under achievement of black and Latino students. Yet, results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that these students have made\u00a0great strides<\/a>\u00a0in improving performance. Chait claimed neighborhood schools in Washington DC and New York City \u201care open to children who live close by and restricted to everybody else\u201d \u2014\u00a0which<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0not true<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and \u201ccharter schools are more aggressive about creating accountability standards\u201d \u2014 when actually, charter proponents often do all they can to help charters\u00a0evade accountability measures<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most troubling about both of these columns \u2014 and the loads of others that repeat these themes \u2014 is that neither author seems to be aware that maybe what \u201ctraditional public schools\u201d face is not so much a gentleman\u2019s dispute as it is an existential threat.<\/p>\n

Signs abound that public schools increasingly find themselves pressed to the ropes by opposing forces fed by an extremist ideology bent on privatizing the system.<\/p>\n

What doesn\u2019t help at all is the seemingly compliant leadership currently in power in many places and the throngs of Very Serious People on the sidelines who scold public school supporters for not making nice with their determined and uncompromising opponents.<\/p>\n

A Battle Plan Long In Making<\/b><\/p>\n

For quite some time, there has been a well-orchestrated, well funded, and extremely influential movement to literally get rid of public schools.<\/p>\n

Writing for\u00a0Rethinking Schools<\/a>, Barbara Miner warned, over a decade ago, \u201cEliminating public education may seem unAmerican. But a growing number of movement conservatives have signed a proclamation from the Alliance for the Separation of School and State that favors \u2018ending government involvement in education.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Miner quoted powerful conservatives such as Grover Norquist who \u201cview [school] vouchers as a key ingredient in their effort to \u2018downsize\u2019 government services.\u201d In an interview in a libertarian website, Norquist compared taxpayer funds for public institutions like schools to \u201ca big cake\u201d that needed to be \u201cthrown in the trash so that the cockroaches don\u2019t have something to come for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flash forward to just last month, we now see school vouchers being\u00a0promoted on Capitol Hill<\/a>by a Senator often viewed as being a mainstream education advocate.<\/p>\n

With the rise of the Tea Party faction in the Republican Party, we\u2019ve witnessed the growing influence of those who advocate ending public school. In 2011, a faction of the Tea Party that operates in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania openly declared its intention to get rid of public schools. In a recent article in\u00a0TruthOut<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/a>Teri Adams, the head of the Independence Hall Tea Party and a leading advocate of passage of school voucher bills, stated flat-out, \u201cWe think public schools should go away,\u201d and, \u201cOur ultimate goal is to shut down public schools and have private schools only.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the most recent presidential election, there was a legitimate candidate,\u00a0Rick Santorum<\/a>, in the Republican party what advocated ending public education.<\/p>\n

The role charter schools play in this debate is that they inhabit an extremely slippery space where, although they receive public funds,\u00a0they more often act like private institutions<\/a>\u00a0that take away desperately needed funding from traditional public schools.<\/p>\n

In that respect, the cause of charter school expansion is increasingly viewed as in league with mounting efforts to abandon traditional public education.<\/p>\n

For a close up view of that assault, look what\u2019s happening in the state of North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Anatomy Of An Attack On Public Schools<\/b><\/p>\n

When Tea Party factions rose to a level of super majority in both chambers of the North Carolina state legislature, it brought into power an ideology with a declared animosity to public schools.<\/p>\n

A key component of that agenda was to lift the cap on charter schools and reduce the restrictions on their governance, so that many charters now resemble\u00a0private schools that receive public money<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The result has been a steady, multiyear eroding of the state\u2019s public education system. Nearly a year ago,\u00a0Chris Fitzsimon of NC Policy Watch<\/a>\u00a0wrote, \u201cNorth Carolina is now virtually last in the county in how much we invest in educating our kids and how much we pay the teachers who we demand work harder and harder to improve student achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teacher pay \u201cis simply a scandal,\u201d he declared. \u201cA starting teacher must work 15 years before earning a $40,000 salary.\u201d And the state\u2019 per-pupil expenditure for public education has now \u201cfallen to 48th in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some\u00a0more recent numbers<\/a>\u00a0Fitzsimon offered: Last year\u2019s state budget cut $286.4 million in funding for classroom teachers by increasing student to teacher ratios. This was accompanied by a 20 percent reduction in the number of teacher assistants. The state now provides $15 in state funding per student for textbooks although state funding per student for textbooks was $68 in 2007-2008.<\/p>\n

The state now sends $653 less per student on K-12 education than it budgeted in 2007-2008. And for Pre-K, the number of available slots has fallen from 34,876 to 27,500.<\/p>\n

With average teacher compensation now ranking 46th nationally, \u201cNorth Carolina\u2019s teacher pipeline is leaking at both ends,\u201d reported the\u00a0Raleigh News and Observer<\/a>. \u201cPublic school teachers are leaving in bigger numbers, while fewer people are pursuing education degrees at the state\u2019s universities.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recent\u00a0letter to the editor<\/a>\u00a0by a classroom teacher explained, \u201cRight now there is no reason why I should want to be a teacher, considering the sad state of public education in North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Legislation has been put in place to eliminate teacher tenure and instead give the top 25 percent of teachers in each district an extra $500 a year for four years. The North Carolina legislature is completely demoralizing public education with this ridiculous notion; good teachers cannot be quantified solely by test scores.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recent announcement by state Governor Pat McCrory to propose a new teacher salary plan was\u00a0derided<\/a>\u00a0by watchdogs at NC Policy Watch as \u201cshallow,\u201d confining raises to \u201cstarting teachers and those who have spent only a few years in the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a recent editorial for the\u00a0Raleigh News and Observer<\/a>, education policy experts Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd noted that teacher salaries are so bad, \u201cteachers in our state routinely take second jobs. Some even qualify for Medicaid and food assistance \u2026 Perhaps most humiliating, teachers must now compete against one another for yearly $500 pay raises, undermining the collaborative climate that marks successful schools.<\/p>\n

Topping it off, a small\u00a0tax-credit subsidy passed in 2011<\/a>, for parents of special-needs kids to transfer their children from public to private schools has now morphed into a\u00a0multi-million dollar give-away of tax payer money<\/a>\u00a0to vouchers that can be used for parents to send their children to private schools, even those that are religiously based.<\/p>\n

As Fiske and Ladd concluded, \u201cIf one were to devise a strategy for destroying public education in North Carolina, it might look like\u201d what the state is actually doing \u2014 \u201cstarving schools of funds, undermining teachers and badmouthing their profession,\u201d and \u201cputting public funds in the hands of unaccountable private interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

These actions \u201clook a lot like a systematic effort to destroy a public education system that took more than a century to build and that, once destroyed, could take decades to restore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than compromising with forces determined to undo the state\u2019s system of public schools, tens of thousands of the state\u2019s citizens took to the streets in Raleigh recently in aMoral March<\/a>\u00a0to oppose these and other actions of the state legislature.<\/p>\n

Attacks Proliferate<\/b><\/p>\n

Existential threats to public education aren\u2019t limited to right wing rabble rousing in Southern states. Actions by what\u2019s commonly viewed as \u201cmainstream government\u201d have been especially hostile to public schools as well.<\/p>\n

Government funding for public schools has been\u00a0cut so dramatically<\/a>\u00a0that now most states are funding schools less than before the recession.<\/p>\n

What this looks like in one of the nation\u2019s largest school district, Los Angeles, came to the attention of many recently when a\u00a0Facebook campaign<\/a>\u00a0led by a local teacher provided a cavalcade of photographs showing the deplorable conditions of that city\u2019s public schools. \u201cThe images,\u201d reported the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a>, include missing ceiling tiles, broken sinks and water fountains, ant invasions, dead roaches and rat droppings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another understandable outcome from lack of funding is that schools become so dysfunctional they\u2019re abandoned by their constituents or declared worthy of being abandoned. Historic school closures that have taken place in\u00a0Chicago and Philadelphia<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 which prompted NBC\u2019s\u00a0Chris Hayes<\/a>\u00a0to question if this what \u201ca strategy to \u2026 kill public education\u201d \u2014 are signs of a growing belief that these public institutions are expendable.<\/p>\n

In October,\u00a0Reuters<\/a>\u00a0reported that the credit rating agency Moody\u2019s Investors Services warned that public schools \u201cface financial stress due to the movement of students to charters \u2026 Another major credit agency, Standard & Poor\u2019s Ratings Service warned the rise of charter schools could pose credit risks to districts, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

While schools have been enduring these hardships, they\u2019ve also been beset by a raft of new accountability mandates that continue to sap their funding and occupy more and more of teachers\u2019 time and energy. Just one of those mandates \u2014 to implement new Common Core State Standards \u2014 will cost schools an estimated\u00a0$10 billion<\/a>\u00a0up front and many hundreds of millions more over the next several years.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the student population schools serve grows more and more challenging. As last month\u2019s release of annual report by The Children\u2019s Defense Fund (CDF) called\u00a0The State of America\u2019s Children<\/a>\u00a0found, childhood poverty has reached record levels \u2014 one in five children in the country is poor. The number of homeless children has increased 73 percent since 2007. One in nine children lacks access to adequate food.<\/p>\n

Another report, this one from the\u00a0Southern Education Foundation<\/a>, found \u201ca majority of students in public schools throughout the American South and West are low-income for the first time in at least four decades,\u201d reported\u00a0The Washington Post<\/a>. The Post reporter quoted Michael A. Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University, who observed that \u201cthe rapid spike in poverty\u201d helped explain, \u201cwhy the United States is lagging in comparison with other countries in international tests.\u201d<\/p>\n

All these factors \u2014 the deliberate assault on public schools and the declining resources, despite growing challenges \u2014 never seem to be considered in arguments by a pundit class that continues to rebuke public school supporters for being strident and uncompromising.<\/p>\n

Not many of us have had actual experiences with having our very lives threatened \u2014 which is as it should be. But it\u2019s not hard to imagine that when that does happen, your first instinct is not to reach out and shake your assailant\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

Until critics of public education supporters recognize and understand that, their calls for compromise will ring hollow in the increasingly desperate hallways of our nation\u2019s endangered public schools.<\/p>\n

Jeff Bryant is an associate fellow at Campaign for America’s Future and editor of the recently launched\u00a0Education Opportunity Network<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/a><\/em>a project of the Institute for America\u2019s Future, in partnership with the\u00a0Opportunity to Learn Campaign<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Bryant\u00a0 RINF Alternative News Legend has, political disputes are supposed to be resolvable only when parties \u201cmeet in the middle\u201d and shake hands on points of agreement that are possible. But in the much-contested issue of \u201ceducation reform,\u201d only one of the disputing parties in the debate tends to be implored to seek compromise. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-107739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business-news","8":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}