The Calvert Street Communist Party Newsletter reports today that Charter school ruling could cost city millions. Basically, the Maryland Court of Appeals, in a 7-2 ruling, held that "the money follows the child" in school funding case. While this may hurt the school system budget in the short run, it may ultimately help the school system in the long run.
There are several fundamental weaknesses in public education.
The first is the concept of universality, or that public education must be all things to all people, and accept students of any background and provide them an equal outcome. I don't buy this. I feel -- as did the first progenitors of public education in America, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin -- that the role of public education to establish a minimum standard of education in the country and to product great citizens. This did not mean public educators had to accept students who were horrible discipline problems, or fundamentally unfit to be educated. This did not include "mainstreaming" students into situations where they would struggle to keep up and succeed. (It also doesn't mean denying those students the opportunity for education, either.) This concept of universality means that we tend to build curriculums that appeal to the lowest common denominator, instead of pushing students (and their parents) to meet a higher standard. It also means we tend to allow a lower standard of behavior in public schools than we would tolerate in our living rooms. Finally, it means that accept a lower level of achievement.
The second is the fact that teaching over the last quarter century has gone from being a calling to a profession. We have removed from teaching compassion, caring, empathy and replaced it with certification, qualification, evaluation and gradation. Too many new teachers approach the mission as a job or task -- checking off a box in the central office curriculum -- and not as a passion mission to educate. I personally think that this grew out of the unintentional warehousing approach to education that was the result of the concept of universality. As teachers lost control of their classrooms (not because of anything they did necessarily, but because of the growth of educational bureacracy), they lost control of their relationship with their students. As parents have abdicated most (if not all) their responsibilities in the education of their children, the relationship between teacher and parent went from being cooperative to confrontational. Teachers were often left with no choice but to retreat into the protections of an educational bureacracy that includes unions. Education has become a factory as a result, and teaching is now just a job, and not a calling. As a result, too many people just looking for a job, and not following a calling, have become teachers.
The third is the fallacy of liberalism that has invaded education. That fallacy has existed since time immemorial: more money can solve any problem. Don't believe me? Then answer this question:
What the problems of the Great Depression?
- The Smoot-Hawley Tarrif
- The New Deal
- World War II
- Social Security
If you answered anything but #3, you have been inculcated in the Liberal Myth. (Just so you know, unemployment was higher in 1937 than in 1932. That was after five years of vast spending by the government. That unemployment rate did not fall precipitously until the summer of 1940, when the United States started ramping up war material production to support Britain's resistance to the Nazis.)
As a result, we have poured billions into public education over the last quarter century. And the result is lower test scores, dumber students, and young adults less-prepared for the real world. We have spent more on education since NCLB than we have the base Pentagon budget over the same period (exclusive of war funding), and we have less to show for it. Baltimore City is a perfect example of this. In a city where the funding per student hovers around $10k per student, less than 50% of black males who enter the 9th grade will graduate. Money does not solve all problems, and creates quite a few more.
Finally, there is no competition or choice in public education. With few exceptions (i.e., magnet schools), parents are offered no choice is which schools their children attend. This hits particularly hard against poor families, who do not have the ultimate option to "vote with their feet" and move to another school district. And lets face it, Baltimore has a lot of poor families. This lack of choice only exacerbates the confrontational aspect between parent and educator: the average educator is powerless to do anything about the condition of the school, and the parent is equally as powerless to effect change, either.
Charter Schools promised to start to change these dynamics. While they are still public schools, they eschew the concept of universality (most have to be applied to). They can choose their educators and staff carefully, picking from among the best. They typically run cheaper than a "standard" public school. And most of all, if a parent doesn't like the school's direction, they still have the choice to return to the main system. The problem was that the school headquarters was gaming the system-- providing "services" instead of "cash". That is what the court ruled against.
So how does this help the school system in the long run? By declaring that "the money follows the student", the court has set the school system on a path where it can embrace competition and school choice, making the parents partners once again by empowering them to set the course of the children's education. By giving the parents the choice where the school funding will, the parents will be able to determine the quality of schools. Good schools will attract students (and money). Bad schools will repel students (and close). Good schools will fight hard to maintain that standing. Bad schools will close. When bad schools close, teachers who are "just doing the job" will find another.
Giving parents the power to choose the course of their child's education will push them to re-engage in their key responsibility with their children: educating them. Getting parents to engage once again -- assertively, energetically, and powerfully -- will improve schools. Will it happen overnite? No. But it took a century to destroy the public education system that gave us Presidents, Generals, Scientists, Engineers, and Businessmen (and women) that changed the world, freed millions, went to the moon, and saved the world from communism.