Re: [Phys-l] Glass's "The Fate of Public Education in America"; an Alternate View

[Marty Weiss <martweiss@comcast.net>]

What you say would be fine, except that society has chosen to educate ALL kids, not just those with interested and involved parents.  Not all parents are as involved as those who would *love to have free choice.*  Now, if you want an apartheid system, then give vouchers to those who take the time and effort to apply for them and leave the rest to languish in completely under funded schools with all the discipline problems and the inability to expel those who do not want to be there or grow up with disinterested or non-existent parents.    All of your studies are strictly academic studies with little reality in the real world of the inner city.    Keep in mind that no matter what they say, students in charter schools and private schools can and are sent back to their home school districts if they violate the rules of the charters or private schools.   They claim not to have to do so, and the few numbers who leave are due to the fact that those who choose to enter the *lottery* are those who have parents literate and interested enough to enforce the rules in their households. 
When a public school is run properly you wouldn't need any other choices...  too few are run in such a way and too few have an environment led by caring individuals who haven't been completely demoralized by the present state of affairs among the teacher bashers.   Teacher layoffs are rampant.  Too many administrators are chosen by who is a pal of some muckity-muck in city hall and not by who can best serve the kids and parents.  

Trust me, teachers would like nothing more than to have parents who take time and effort to come out to PTA meetings and conferences and to have administrators brave enough and powerful enough to expel those who constantly disrupt the education of everyone else.  It will never happen as long as the system is aimed at universal education and politics reigns.    I taught in the inner city for 31 years and attended meetings galore where we would get 15 parents who showed up out of 70. (and that was in physics... an elective and for juniors and seniors who had survived from 9th grade on.) Some teachers of general science biology had much less success than that.    Almost without exception these were the parents whose kids were doing pretty well or those whose kids who could do better with a little push.  The ones we needed to see were never there.  I used to phone the parents who didn't show up and again, almost without exception, I would get a poor response or hear a parent who had a houseful of babies running around in the background and the mother was yelling while talking to me,  "Shut up,  I am talking to Derrick's teacher!"  Or, more likely, I would get a mother who didn't even know there was a meeting.  Or, in some cases I would get the kid himself who said he was babysitting the other kids in the household while the mom was working  (at 7 pm doing the night shift at a factory or warehouse.)  In over half the cases there was no father or the father was working two or three jobs to make ends meet.    Most of my students worked at night jobs themselves in the mall.   I had kids who were kicked out of their houses and lived at an *Aunt's* or kids who lived on the streets.  I had one girl whose druggie boy friend had been shot the night before... you think physics was on her mind that day or for weeks afterwards?    A colleague had a student of chemistry who was kicked out of the house and lived for two weeks in the car!  (in late fall with temps falling nightly.)  

Try offering them vouchers and see how long that lasts.  

Many days we would be teaching a class when the principal would come on the p.a. and announce a lockdown because the gang of girls who had left the nearby middle school were marching down the street to fight with our ninth grade girls.   My window overlooked the street and that announcement was an invitation to have everyone rush to the window to watch the rumble.   The five or six security guards and a few city cops were chasing around trying to quell the fifty or so kids fighting and running around.   Yeah, we got a lot of teaching done those days!  NOT!

  
So, quote all the studies you want.  All the studies are meaningless in the present system and the changes you cite will only make matters worse by eliminating the kids who are interested in education leaving behind the masses who are not interested in being there.   So, who will teach them?   Many of us were career teachers whose voices were never heard in all these studies!   Most of us were good and great teachers who worked our butts off daily and could have applied to the suburban schools but didn't because we actually gave a damn about the kids who wanted to learn... be it physics, English, or math. 
Poor teachers and those who didn't give a damn didn't last in such a place.  The environment made that choice for them!   

My wife and I used to bring kids home on Saturdays to lift weights or learn photography or just to hang around in a safe environment.   The parents were happy to see their kids have one day a week when they didn't have to worry about gunshots or gangs!    I did that for many years but had to stop because I didn't feel safe any longer driving the 8 miles to the city.  I used to drive the academic challenge team home after a match at night, but had to stop that also when I was almost accosted by a gang wanting to sell me drugs on a corner at a red light.  I got the h... out of there!   So, the team went bye-bye, because the kids had no rides home and I didn't want to allow them to wait in front of the school (which was locked up tight) for a parent to come by a half hour later.  Compare this with the suburban school where, when my son had a play rehearsal, you could always rely on a dozen parents to give rides to the drama club kids.  Compare the bars on the windows and the locked doors at 8 pm in the city school with the suburban high school 8 miles away where the various clubs and teams were still there, the parking lots full,  and the lights were still on at midnight.     

Believe me, with all the teacher bashing going on now and gnashing of teeth by people who have never set foot in a true inner city school, teachers are demoralized and retiring or quitting in mass numbers.   Many of us who retired are still in touch with our colleagues, and today I learned that seven teachers in my old school are retiring this year.  That doesn't count the five or six more who will leave by July.   The turnover in the inner city district is beyond your wildest nightmares.   My friend, the science supervisor, called me two years ago and asked me to return.  He offered me a choice of five science openings... and that was in August when most suburban schools have filled their ranks from a vast pool of applicants.  Here he was in late summer with five slots to be filled and no applicants.    The average suburban school has maybe 10 applications for each opening while the inner city schools go wanting.    Over the years I have counseled many young people who were interested in teaching.  They couldn't find a job in any of the better districts but when I suggested they should apply to my old inner city district they smiled and declined.  That decision was even after I said I had some contacts and they would be assured of a job on my recommendation!  They would rather wait, unemployed, rather than work in the city.  

So, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at these academic studies and all the business people who don't know squat about teaching in the inner city telling us how to solve the problems and blaming the teachers for the poor showing on tests and high dropout rates.  

Marty


On Jun 14, 2010, at 8:11 PM, Ann Reagan wrote:

> A recent commercial posted on this listserve gave a link to Chapter 10 of Glass's book, available for review online. 
>
> The commercial asserted Glass showed that, " the central education policy debates at the start of the 21st century (vouchers, 
> charter schools, tax credits, high-stakes testing, bilingual education) are actually about two underlying issues: how can the costs of public education be cut, and how can the education of the White middle-class be "quasi-privatized" at public expense?" Excerpts from the book have Glass claiming that the self-serving, self-interested white retirees are fueling these debates to keep from spending their money on the education of children darker than they. Hogwash. Typical race-baiting politics-as-usual that has plagued the public education debate for far too long. 
>
> Glass makes many assertions about the racial inadequacies of any system save the public educational status quo, while ignoring all real quantifiable data; data like the Joint Center for Educational and Political Studies survey that found support for school vouchers 21% higher on average among African Americans than among white Americans, or Stanford University Professor Terry Moe's survey that showed the greatest support for vouchers in American public education is among the urban poor (79%). In those inner city areas where vouchers have been used (see reference notes on Milwaukee and Cleveland), the results have been astounding, with the greatest benefit to poor minority children who otherwise would not have access to any alternative to the system that has already failed them. Rather than seeing alternatives to the current status of education as motivated by race-hatred and self-interest, most thinking Americans realize that school choice and competition offer poor inner cit
> y minorities their greatest chance to escape the cycle of forced poverty. It is no wonder that former Baltimore City Mayor Kurt Schmoke (current Dean of Howard University School of Law, Baltimore's first elected African American mayor, and founder of the city's "Baltimore: the City that Reads adult literacy program) is a staunch supporter of all forms of educational choice.
>
> To summarize my review: Glass's book: Bahhhh!
>
> References:
> http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1998/spring_education_peterson.aspx
> http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_1_a1.html
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schmoke 
> http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cb_20.htm
>
> Dr. Ann M. Reagan
> Adjunct Faculty
> Department of Math/Physics/Engineering
> College of Southern Maryland, Leonardtown Campus
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