Before today ends, we will hear a decision from the Senate that I'm taking a little more personally than maybe some people do. With an expected very close decision, the president's nomination for Secretary of Education will be confirmed, or not confirmed. See, I have nothing personal against this lady, as I'm sure she has very deep rooted beliefs about education, and I am positive she is knowledgeable about sections of the education sector. But...from everything I have seen, her view is a very narrow one, a very privileged one - both in her own education, her career, and the educational path she has chosen for her own children - and she'd be governing our public school sectors.
My youngest daughter is a student in the Spring Branch Independent School District, and my oldest just graduated from that same district and attends a local, public college. They both attended the private school where I teach for elementary school, but I purposely chose a public school for their high school, because I believe there are a different skill set that could be obtained there, beyond just academics, with a broader range of course offerings and a school that would challenge each of them to be more self-sufficient and to develop a voice for themselves. Both their private and public school backgrounds have helped them grow as students and as people, in very different ways.
Growing up, we moved a lot. My own education was a patchwork of different public and private schools, and I attended educational institutions that included rural public schools, a huge public high school, tiny parochial schools, private Baptist schools, independent schools with no religious affiliations, one charter school and one very interesting experimental school (and I'm not sure a diploma from there would have counted, but I was young and it was a good experience none-the-less). I've been in on-level classes, gifted programs, and spent two weeks in special education in a small town Alabama school - because the teacher couldn't understand me when I talked without the same accent as everyone else.
As an adult, I didn't actually set out to become a teacher, but found myself gradually pulled in that direction. It wasn't until I actually got into a classroom that I figured out where I had true passion and that it set me on fire to teach my students and provide opportunities for them. Even now, it doesn't matter what the subject is, if I have a firm grasp on the material, I will fall in love with teaching and my students. There is absolutely nothing quite like seeing someone light up when they take ownership of a new concept and have that "I get it" look on their face. I love teaching and have worked in education for twenty years. But...I'm not qualified to speak authoritatively for others on the subject, or make broad educational leadership decisions. I'm good at what I do in my own little sector. Just like Betsy DeVos is likely very good at her own little niche. There are others out there with a wider vision, those whose experience and educational background gives them a voice that could speak for a broad range of students of all backgrounds across our country.
Public education in our country has never been a cut and dried proposition. The first public schools were established in Massachusetts in the 17th century, by our Puritan friends who believed every child needed to be able to read, so they could live by the word of the bible. Those public schools weren't free, and students had to have a base of knowledge before stepping into those one room school houses. Fast forward a century or so, and it was widely recognized that there was a deeper need for public education. But it wasn't as simple as all of that - who would pay for it? Who was deserving of receiving that public education? Thomas Jefferson - and I'll take a big deep breath and sigh here - he was a brilliant man, but something of an intellectual snob. He believed in public education, but an education that was designed to further divide the workers and the elite. He proposed a public system with two tracks - one for the laborers, and one for the wealthy leaders. It would further cement your fate in life, by being set upon one track or the other.
Colonial society dictated that well-off young men attend schools. Young ladies were educated at home by their mothers, with the idea of Patriotic Motherhood - it was the duty of all women to be able to teach their sons, so that they might better themselves.
In an interesting twist, Pennsylvania even called for free public education for the poor, while those families with the means were required to pay for education.
With the survey of the Northwest Territories, townships were formed, and space set aside for a public school each town. Massachusetts continued to lead the way in education, providing the first public high school and making public school education available for free to all who qualified to attend. The first school boards were established there. Pennsylvania and New York took their cues from Massachusetts and education as flourishing in the north-eastern states.
But in the south, education was spotty and those from poorer backgrounds, girls, and African-Americans - free or slave - did not attend school at all. Girls were educated at home, by their mothers, and economic status often dictated how much education a young woman would have available. Beyond basic reading and arithmetic, most were virtually uneducated.
It was post civil war, when the country was torn apart in every conceivable way - socially, economically, geographically and architecturally wounded, and trying to rebuild that the idea of separate but equal was first brought into our common vocabulary. It was a protection built into our fourteenth amendment. Separate but equal sounds like it should be just fine on the surface. You attend your school, we'll attend ours, and it'll all be fine. We each have a school.
But equal didn't mean equitable. Not all schools were created equal, and states were overseeing the governing of these separate facilities. So, while black students were guaranteed a school to attend, it was up to the state to maintain the facilities, hire the teachers, and maintain the standards. All black public colleges were established, but poorly funded in many states. Often those separate schools had no books, few desks, and sometimes not even heat.
At the turn of the twentieth century, local representatives on school boards in most cities were eliminated, in favor of city-wide elections. This means that, in most cases, the poorer districts lost representation on school boards, while federal funding was cut and those with interests in the more affluent families were making the educational decisions regarding budgeting and availability of resources.
In 1948, in the Brown vs. The Board of Education decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools was inherently unequal. But, on local levels, schools remained as segregated as ever, with geographical demographics and socio-economic lines firmly drawn and determining school placement. Schools with poorer families continued to draw less funding, particularly during the years when standardized testing achievement helped determine funding within a district. Don't believe that's true? Check it out. It still happens today. STAAR testing anyone? What did you think all those blue ribbon schools were about?
I attended a public school in rural Alabama in the late 1970's/early 1980's and it was there that I first met discrimination and the recognition that life wasn't fair. I spent two weeks in special education - my classmates were two deaf children, two black children, and two students who spoke only Spanish. We had no books, no windows in our closet of a classroom, and no materials of any kind. The teacher was furnished with a blackboard, tables (we didn't rate desks) and a dictionary. Period. My mother had me out of there pretty quickly, but those other students didn't have any advocates, and they stayed in special education, forever changing their educational trajectory because they were inconveniently different.
Over the last couple of decades, several states have allowed vouchers, to allow students to apply state funding to attend private schools, or religious based schools. Students are allowed to transfer to other schools within their districts. But, see, students who transfer schools are rarely provided with state funded transportation and those in poorer communities are often children of two working parents who cannot take the time to drive their children and pick them up, or pay for expensive after school care. And so those children attend their local schools. Schools where no one transfers, where their funding has gone into vouchers for students who DID manage to go somewhere else. So schools in poorer neighborhoods receive even less funding than before.
At the turn of this century, more than a quarter of our children attend private schools now. Everyone pays taxes to public schools, but not all schools receive equal funding. We are WIDENING the educational gap, folks. We are slowly chipping away at the middle class and recreating a society of worker bees and educated elite.
Now, the world doesn't go round without the worker bees - I get that. Do whatever job you have and do it well. But somewhere in there, somewhere in childhood, there ought to be a choice. Not everyone is cut out to go to college. I totally get that. But everyone ought to have the opportunity to decide that. The road we're headed down takes that choice away for many.
Betsy DeVos has a really good perspective on a narrow part of education, but her eye is not on the big picture - the one that is the view for the majority of us. She's never known, personally, or with even second hand experience, what it's like to jump through the hoops that are associated with federal grants or financial aid so you or your kids can attend college without being in debt for life. She's never had to put her kids on the corner to wait for a bus to take them to the public school. I bet she's never gotten a frantic text from her kids that they are on lockdown and her kid is hiding in the tunnel beneath the stage in the school theatre. Or that her kids' friend had their lunch thrown away because they were out of money on their lunch ticket. Or any of the other realities that the rest of us face every single day in the struggle to make sure our kids get the opportunities they deserve.
So, yeah, I'm a little heated up about this. Public school in our country is a mess. Federal laws give just enough legitimacy that states are able to make some pretty horrible decisions at times, and still point at the umbrella of the federal government. There need to be changes in public schools - no doubt what-so-ever. But she's not the person to make these changes. She will only reinforce the separate but equal that has still be slowly at work in our schools, long after it was decided that it was actually not constitutional.
So, yes, I'll be breaking my own rule about not checking the news during my work day - because it usually just distracts me and keeps me from being as good as I can be at my own job. Because this is important. I'm a teacher. But even if I weren't, I'd recognize that education is the answer to almost every social ill. Educate yourselves and vote. I'll be saying this a lot - feel free to ignore me on that, if you can. I'm kinda loud when it's something important. Educate yourself and raise your voice, in entirely not separate or equal ways.
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