Education Controlled By Community
Some say it already is – not true.
Education is in a mess! Would that I could say I didn’t see it coming, but the title of this newsletter proclaims otherwise. From the view of a dedicated lifelong optimist, how we got here is important only in the ways it can help us get out. Experience clearly indicates reversing course doesn’t work; but true improvement can lie along a path previously blocked by the system before its destruction. This is the essence of the wisdom of ‘The Art of War’ quote: “In chaos lies opportunity!”; and the chaos is here!
The current educational system in place, which the MAGA extremists who have gained alarming power are absolutely intent on destroying, frankly needs to go anyway. The problem is these efforts are doomed to failure because public education is enormously popular. The reason this is problematical is the method MAGA has chosen, de-funding public education, turns out to be both highly effective and difficult to undo. The Department of Education, which followed its admirable purpose well initially, is an enormous bureaucracy whose fingers dip into every cell of the truly enormous production public education has become. The DoE controls ALL public education by holding the always potent reins of funding: A powerful tool whose Achilles heel MAGA has located.
The school system is the most basic unit of public education, each managed by a local county or town school board, elected locally. In the past control of schools was strongly based in this group, well planned because if a board member didn’t have the best interests of education in mind, they quickly got voted out, not to mention having to deal with their neighbors! This control lies in the fact that most funding did, and still does, come from local property taxes, justified by the truth that an educated populace will always benefit the community. The deeper truth is that education is the mark of a civilization, with the degree of civilization measured in the attention given to it. After WWII, education in the US was rightfully seen as the key to economic development and ways to support it blossomed, many involving our democratic proclivity for passing laws: A strategy copied successfully the world over since.
As a native Georgian I observed the interaction of the federal government and public education from inside the system, and many badly needed reforms were made. The reforms came with a price tag, which the feds paid or substantially subsidized: That money however came with strings attached. Perhaps the best way to analyze these strings is by example.
My fifteen years of public school teaching was in a classroom next to the special education section of the school – now the largest department of every public school by far. Constitutionally this is easy to understand: If the government is providing a benefit – like education – to its citizens, it is obligated to provide to ALL citizens, regardless of abilities. This is not cheap: The average class size (read number and cost of teachers) is in the single digits compared to about thirty elsewhere; special equipment needs are enormous – and expensive. Congress passes laws to ensure the Constitution is followed according to their definition, which includes providing transportation and addressing all accessibility issues. Money is appropriated and the local school board must act to bring the system into compliance with the law. New school busses are purchased; smaller (less efficient) with a lot of complex extra machinery with associated maintenance. Addressing mandated compliance requires more manpower – why special ed is the biggest department. Congress appropriates funds to buy the equipment, hire the personnel; but costs rise over time – appropriations don’t: The school board and local taxpayers are stuck with the increase in costs. Meanwhile all those extra people the laws require spend almost half their working hours filling out forms necessary to prove the system is, indeed, in compliance. Failure to comply carries the penalty of suspension of federal funds. Not only the federal funds for the particularity for which compliance is in question, but every damn dime of federal money!
That’s a pretty impressive whip, and a bureaucrat without skill at using whips isn’t worthy of the name. It also explains why the ability to manage paperwork is the genius that makes the special ed department chair at least the equal of any Fortune 500 CEO; after all who’s proving to the government that you’re by golly compliant! This example is also instructive when one considers the goal; giving the special needs kids an education – a life!
The effectiveness of this methodology was not missed by the bureaucrats in the DoE. In the 80’s as Ronald Reagan bemoaned the ‘failure’ of public education while working diligently to fulfill the prophecy, Congress did their part by passing increasingly obtrusive education legislation, funded by appropriations sure to be cut in the next budget crisis: The whip always at the ready to ensure the dictates of Congress will be followed. THAT’S control! The states hold a similar whip, but with the difference in threatened amount of financial loss, it’s a good bit smaller. Understand this truth when others, to fulfill their agenda, claim: “Schools are controlled by the local school boards – always have been!” The control of the boards is mostly in deciding what has to be cut in order to squeeze out of the budget enough to fund the federal and state mandated costs – or close the schools if they fail to comply since that’s the only cut possible if federal funds are lost.
The mess has been created, not exclusively but in the main, by the federal government: It has been stirred by extremism in hopes of destruction. Chaos is an apt description of the result, and it’s going to get worse.
The challenge is finding the opportunity within. That opportunity is local control of education! Let’s return education to its American roots where each system controls its schools. Obviously if a school is violating the Constitution there is redress in the courts, that is not a change, but the court should be the only arm of the government allowed to address issues of compliance, and then only to the Constitution – not the curriculum. In particular the federal government should be not only allowed – but required – to fund schools to ensure not only the Constitution, but basic fairness, exists in all schools: What the federal government should not be allowed to do is attach strings to that funding – which will force them out of the business of controlling education and writing curricula.
What this would accomplish is to open education to a little old-fashioned American ingenuity! Imagine if each system were free to pursue their own ideas about the best way to get kids to learn. Certainly some will find better ways than others, but rather than using the funding whip to beat the innovator into submission to the ‘standardized norm’; it will serve as both an example and a challenge to the other systems. I can tell you from experience that teachers are amazingly inventive and open to whatever works in the classroom. It is my opinion – supported by more than five decades of practical learning work among kids with other teachers – when those teachers are given the opportunity and freedom to experiment even a little, they will produce fantastic results. While you might not agree on fantastic, it’s past time to at least make an attempt at better!
Those who are trying to eliminate public education have based much of their position on the supposed ‘failure’ of public schools – a failure both prophesized and engendered by their efforts. Please understand this is not a criticism of one party – the mess public education finds itself in today has been a truly bipartisan production: Neither party knows diddly-squat about learning, relying on the opinions of ‘experts’ whose expertise includes zero practical experience regarding whether their prescription actually works: Precisely why politicians should have zero input on the curriculum or process of education – especially on measuring the results. The entire concept of standardized testing is based on teachers not wanting their students to be successful – therefore the tests are necessary to whip those slackers into line! This logic sounds ludicrous when we consider for even a second why anyone would take a job that requires a significant amount of training and cost, while paying a comparative pittance, and subjecting you to unjustified criticism and belittlement, in order to do something at which you don’t want to be successful! This description does not seem to represent a good career move. That is exactly what has produced the crisis in education: Teachers – and more importantly potential teachers – are abandoning the profession in droves.
There can be no more effective cure than empowering and encouraging teachers to find a way to do their work better. The beauty is that the communities, if given the power to choose and control the education system their child experiences will thus be encouraged to work with the teachers towards a common goal – which I can assure you is the desire of every educator!
The chaos is here, and I promise it’s going to get worse!
So is the opportunity! Will we choose to grasp it?