Peter
Schrag has a piece on the California Progress Report on School Reform: Why it’s
so hard? http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/school-reform-why-it’s-so-hard I have read
Schrag for over 30 years. I once
used an early book by him in a class I taught to future teachers. I usually agree with him- but this time
I disagree. Here is my
response. It is from the summary
of Chapter 13 Democratic School Reform: How do we get from Here to There ? of
my book, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. ( 2010).
Note; what is the educational task of the California legislature and the governor? Answer- to adequately fund our schools. They have failed repeatedly in the last decade. So, how are they experts on school reform?
Duane Campbell
This is time for a change for our society and in our schools. This generation must renew our democratic society. As described in my book Choosing
Democracy, we face marked crises
in government, politics, families, communities and in the schools. Public
schools have a particular responsibility to reverse these crises and to renew
our democratic society. The first
mission of pubic schooling is to equip all students for the responsibilities
and privileges of citizenship – and
many of the schools in low income areas are presently not fulfilling this mission. If we do not
solve the problems of low performing schools our democracy suffers. For our democracy
to survive we need to create
schools that value all of our children and encourages each of their educational achievement.
All children need a good education to
participate in our democracy and prepare for life in the rapidly changing economy. Making schooling
valuable and useful is vital to prosperity for all. Lack of education is a ticket to economic
hardship. The more years of school
that a student completes, the more money they are likely to earn as adults and the better their chance to get and keep a good
job. Unemployment is highest among school dropouts as is incarceration for
crimes. When we fail to educate
all of our children, the high costs of this failure come back to hurt us in
unemployment, drugs, crime, incarceration, violence and social conflict.
We
need to invest in urban schools, provide equal educational opportunities in
these schools, and recruit a well prepared teaching force that begins to reflect the student
populations in these schools. We must insist on equal opportunity to learn,
without compromise. When we do these things, we will begin
to protect the freedom to learn for our children and our grandchildren, and to
build a more just and democratic
society.
Teacher
advocates consider schools as sites for the struggle for or against more democracy in our society.
The
struggle for education improvement and education equality will be a long
one. Schools serving urban and impoverished populations need fundamental change. These schools do not open the doors to economic opportunity. They usually do not promote equality. Instead, they recycle inequality. The high school drop out rates alone demonstrate that urban schools prepare less than 50 percent of their students for entrance into the economy and society. A democratic agenda for school reform includes insisting on fair taxation and adequate funding for all children. Political leaders in most states have not yet decided to address the real issues of school reform. We cannot build a safe, just, and prosperous society while we leave so many young people behind.
The problem is to provide the resources, including well prepared teachers with adequate support, needed to make the current schools successful. The California legislature has
failed a this consistently for the last several years. We face a choice between providing high-quality
schools only for the middle and upper classes, and underfunded, understaffed
schools for the poor. Or, we can
also choose to work together to improve schools that are presently failing.
Why then in schools do
we allow politicians, lobbyists, and other “experts” who are not teachers and
have not worked in classrooms for over ten years, and who have not taught
children, to make the basic decisions about schooling. As a starting
point, clearly those establishing our policies do not understand testing and
its limits. (See Bracey, 2009).
A major problem with
our campaigns for a democratic approach to schooling is that most of the media
has been sold a mindset or framework of accountability.
Corporate sponsored networks and “ think tanks” such as the Thomas B.
Fordham Institute, the Bradley Foundation, the Olin Foundation and
their access to the media is not likely to change. The domination
of the accountability frame within the media and political circles must
be opposed. The appointment of Arne Duncan was symptomatic of the
problems. He represents the kind of corporate/media approach
to reform. Certainly in the current battle with Arne Duncan over the
"Race to the Top Funds," he has ceased the high ground with a
claim of accountability – it’s a false claim- but it works. Education and
explaining will be a constant struggle.
There are many advocacy
strategies. However, the most important is to share and magnify
teacher voices. Politicians make bad decisions – such as the current
budget cuts, or an over reliance on testing- because they are not listening to
teachers voices. Instead they are listening to paid consultants, and “experts”
from the corporate establishment.
Newspaper writers and other
media writers make the same mistake. They call their favorite “source”
which just happens to be a corporate promoter like Arne Duncan, Michele Rhee,
or one of the “experts” at elite universities. Note:
few professors in the elite universities work with teachers.
They are several steps removed from the classroom. You can read more
about this on the blog Choosing Democracy
http://www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com. The most basic strategy is to insist on teacher
participation in the development of policies. We need to get the
politicians and the corporate shills out of the classroom. – they have failed
our children.
See more at the
Democracy and Education Institute – Sacramento.
For another viewpoint
see the conference today by the Center for America Progress- Progress in the States.
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