The Bush Administration has launched its latest attack on public schools, placing the blame for low graduation rates entirely on the schools, when it is clearly a societal problem.
The latest charges were made by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings as she campaigned for a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, something which is unlikely to happen during an election year.
While the push for having a uniform graduation standard is something that is long overdue, any effort to combat low graduation rates strictly through schools is doomed for failure. Mrs. Spellings makes no mention of parents who do not care about their children's education (and unfortunately, there are many of those), children whose home lives include physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse, communities in which poverty is a fact of life. Unless everyone teams together to combat this problem, low graduation rates will continue to be a serious problem in this country.
6 comments:
"Poverty is a fact of life" especially in Low Wages Missouri. Remember Bass Pro Shops and Walmart are the Home of "Low Wages" Always!
Wow Randy. It seems nothing can really be blamed on the schools. I guess if they have so little impact on kids' lives, we don't really need public schools at all.
Was the last comment left by someone who has children? Do you discipline them or do they walk all over you? Do you take an interest in their education or do you expect the teachers to be the only one to care for the 35 - 200 students who pass through the classroom door? Do you support your local PTA and PAT, or are you one who complains about having to pay taxes to the schools despite the fact aht you have no children who attend? Or maybe you send them to a private school? Or better yet, homeschool?
So, if it's a "societal problem" and not a problem caused by poor schools, you'll have to admit that throwing more money at the public schools won't solve it. In fact, since the schools are not part of the problem, they don't need more money at all. At least, if you want to be consistent and intellectually honest, you'll have to admit that.
Money has to be a part of the solution, but it is not the be-all and end-all that some have made it out to be. Some of the suggestions that have been made- lower class sizes, higher pay for teachers, especially those who work in poor communities, and greater access to technology, will help, but when it comes to keeping children in school, we need to be thinking about funding for alternative schools to deal with the kind of children who have shown they are unable to function in a regular classroom. These alternative schools would not only give these children maybe their only chance to succeed, but they would improve the quality of education for other students by removing the kind of disruptive influence that prevents children from being able to get the most out of their educational experience.
That being said, any initiative to keep children in schools cannot succeed by concentrating entirely on public schools. We have to look at the conditions in our communities that cause children to drop out. We have to find a way to address the problem of broken homes, crime, drug usage, alcoholism, mental, physical, and sexual abuse. These problems are never going to get better if we continue to push the belief that schools are responsible for all of the ills facing society. Public schools are not blameless by any means, but until we start addressing these problems and stop promoting the fiction that allowing parents to use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools is going to create some kind of miracle cure for education and society, we are simply going to continue to spin our wheels.
It's not whether you win or lose, but where you place the blame.
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