Take to the Streets

Before becoming a school teacher, I was not a fan of the public school K-12 system. I did not enjoy this system as a child, and my disillusionment only worsened as I grew older, culminating with my leaving the 10th grade and attending junior college full time instead. I adored junior college, loved my classes, tried my hardest, got good grades, and completed an Associates degree by 18. As far as I could tell, high school was just some terrible lie that adults told adolescents in order to make them suffer unnecessarily. I felt I missed nothing by opting out of high school, and the classes I would have been forced to take throughout my high school career, appeared to be unnecessary to my success in college.

With the curious passion of youth, I became convinced that most of what I had learned in school, prior to junior college, had been meaningless, and in fact, I felt as though what I had learned had been specifically designed to harm my innate, creative intelligence. In my early twenties, I would argue with my school teacher friend about the importance of sending your kids to public school. I refused to send my own children, and believed that he was sacrificing his to the greater good by sending them to a public school simply because he felt it was his duty to do so. Many public school enthusiasts believe that people who homeschool, or send their children to private or charter schools, are partially responsible for the slow death of our public schools. Not only because often these children would be a benefit, intellectually, to the schools, but because each child represents a dollar amount that will now be funneled away from the local public school system. Falling enrollment means tougher times for the schools.

Now that I teach in the system, however, I understand where my friend was coming from. Imagine if all of the people who send their children to private and charter schools -- spending upwards of thirty-thousand dollars per year, or at the very least taking money out of the system -- were to send their child to public school instead, and donate that same sum of money to the public school? Imagine if every family donated some amount of money -- whatever they could afford -- to fill back in the yawning gaps in funding? Imagine if all of that money were used directly to fund the schools -- improving the campus, providing supplies, adding sections, and building up the currently emaciated and/or nonexistent enrichment programs.

In Cupertino, CA, one group of parents is pushing for exactly this. Finally, the cuts to our public schools have grown severe enough that the parents are starting to take action. These parents are attempting to raise 3 million dollars, in order to retain 115 of their teachers who will otherwise be laid off. By their calculations, if every one of the 10,000 families in the Cupertino School District were to donate $375, they could save their schools for at least one year -- thereby buying time for the district to figure out a plan B.

According to Sam Dillon in The New York Times, Diane Ravitch -- education scholar and major intellectual muscle behind No Child Left Behind, and our transition into a standards based, test driven educational system -- has changed her mind. She now sees that these policies were misguided and that we would have been better off following the examples of other nations where students study an array of subjects and disciplines and the curriculum is not, I imagine, driven by the questions on a multiple choice test.

How unfortunate that she seems to have come to this conclusion just as the last bit of meat has been shaved from the bone. It seems we have come to a precipice in education, and that we have been driven to this point by a combination of lack of funding and poor policy making decisions. Until President Obama starts sending his own children to a public school, perhaps it would be prudent not follow so blindly the next set of directives that are already beginning to trickle down the system of command.