Political Affairs Magazine - The Otherworldly Attack on Public Education

Political Affairs Magazine - The Otherworldly Attack on Public Education

The Otherworldly Attack on Public Education

By Carl Bloice

Original source: Black Commemtator

The crisis in U.S. public education is beginning to read like something out of the theater of the absurd.

Now they are getting rid of summer school.

The Associated Press reported Sunday: "Across the country, districts are cutting summer school because it's just too expensive to keep. The cuts started when the recession began and have worsened, affecting more children and more essential programs that help struggling students." A survey found that over one third of the school districts in the country are looking at cutting out summer school starting this fall. And who are the students who will be hit hardest by this move? "Experts say studies show summer break tends to widen the achievement gap between poor students and their more affluent peers whose parents can more easily afford things like educational vacations, camps and sports teams," said AP.

"Most people generally think summer is a great time for kids to be kids, a time for something different, a time for all kinds of exploration and enrichment," Ron Fairchild, chief executive officer of the National Summer Learning Association, told the news agency. "Our mythology about summer learning really runs counter to the reality of what this really is like for kids in low-income communities and for their families when this faucet of public support shuts off."

The same day this news was broadcast, the New York Times magazine ran a lengthy front page article about the ongoing efforts to confront the teachers unions and pictured classroom instructors as the impediment to improving the quality of education. At the same time, ironically, the cartoonist Jeff Danziger drew a classroom where two heavies are dragging a teacher out the door while proclaiming: "Good news, we figured out what was costing so much about public education." In the background, someone is hooking up a video monitor.

It remains a mystery to me that an administration that can spend millions of dollars to bribe states into facilitating its quite controversial school "reform" programs can't come up with the resources to stave off the pending mass layoffs of teachers. It can't be that the White House has adopted the reactionaries' tactic of starving public education until it falls to privatization. Education Secretary Arne Duncan appears to be genuinely alarmed at the economic crisis in public education.

"The cuts come even as President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call for longer school days and shorter summer breaks," observed AP. "But in many states, districts cutting summer school outnumber those using stimulus money to expand their offerings." "At a time when we need to work harder to close achievement gaps and prepare every child for college and career, cutting summer school is the wrong way to go," Duncan told reporters.