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Education Policy Statement
Children need a well- organized public school system designed to educate everyone regardless of race, national origin, language, gender, or disability. A good public education system ensures the well-being of our society.
To accomplish this we must consider all of the following:
Great Schools Have Resources: Finance Equity Matters
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Abbott V. Burke sought to provide equity in school funding by directly addressing the impact of poverty on students’ academic success. This approach required supplemental education services aimed at removing learning barriers created by environments of concentrated poverty. This landmark state policy was created to ensure children in urban schools in New Jersey received a “thorough and efficient” education, as required by the New Jersey State Constitution. This policy mandated two essential elements of educational equity:
· Foundational education funding for Abbott districts equal to the highest spending districts in the state.
· Supplemental educational resources to support social workers, community and parent engagement, early childhood education, smaller class sizes, and teacher aides.
The equitable funding and comprehensive services necessary to meet the complex needs of children and to create strong public schools mandated by Abbott V. Burke continues be a priority.
Redefine What We Mean by Accountability
For two decades accountability and high stakes testing have driven discussion about education. Underlying these approaches is the assumption that harsh consequences will lead to systemic changes that make teachers work harder and produce higher outcomes for students. However, the evidence suggests that such measures do not actually lead to improvement in achievement, but instead shrink the curriculum provided to our students and encourage teachers to narrowly focus on “teaching to the test.” The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and Race to the Top programs play significant roles in the expansion of test-based accountability measures and impose severe consequences if schools do not improve rapidly. If schools fail to meet their goals, they are subject to a host of sanctions ranging from loss of funding to closure. While these strategies are designed to get teachers and students to work harder, they completely disregard the impact of poverty on the resources and opportunities available to teachers and students alike in many schools as a root cause of underperformance.
Using test scores as the sole measure to evaluate teacher effectiveness or student performance has not proven a reliable means of improving educational opportunities or student achievement. Moreover, test-based incentives do not address why teachers may not be optimally effective or why students are underperforming. We need a more robust system that allows districts and schools to examine and respond to the specific causes of underperformance they encounter and provides the resources required to address these needs. We should expand the range of content covered by tests and consider other student outcomes beyond a standardized test scores. We should also be inclusive of performance assessments where students have the opportunity to demonstrate analytical thinking, conceptual knowledge, deep understanding, and problem-solving. This type of accountability system will help us reach the outcomes we desire for all of our children’s academic and economic success and will hold us accountable at every level for ensuring that schools and students have the resources necessary to meet the highest educational standards. We must be accountable at every level of the system to ensure the success of all of our children.
Racial Justice Matters in All Schools
Equitable public education is a civil right. Desegregation did not guarantee equity. There continues to be disinvestment in the public school system leading to a loss or absence of resources, training opportunities, and social capital. Equitable academic experiences still elude many of our children particularly Black, Brown, and poor students. Today most African Americans, Latinos and poor children attend segregated schools where the majority of other students are poor, Latino, or Black. In these schools technology and other key education resources lag far behind that of their wealthy and white peers. Instead of addressing these ominous and systemic obstacles to growth, there is a growing movement to ignore them and to, in fact, put fewer resources there, which further depletes an already disproportionately low level of opportunities to learn for children in these schools. The reality that students of color overwhelmingly attend over-crowded and under-resourced schools where teacher turnover is high, and there are less opportunities for rigorous and enriching coursework must be confronted by policies that increase access to opportunities to learn for all students.
Invest in Our Educators, Students, and Community Members
We must invest in teacher development and training. Reducing funding, increasing the number of charter schools and/or vouchers programs, or eliminating tenure are not strategies that will yield sustainable positive outcomes for our children or communities. Success will come when we believe and invest in our community, families, teachers and children, and build strong and differentiated district-wide and school-based professional development programs. We should consider incentivizing the kind of professionalism we would like to see in our teachers. We should encourage academic freedom, and support that freedom with professional development, such that our educators can engage our children in deep and meaningful learning. At the same time that “reformers” cry for better, brighter, and younger teachers they demoralize them, challenge their certifications, attack their tenure, and create quasi-scientific evaluation systems. A more sustainable system would avoid all arbitrary and capricious practices that focus singularly on testing and outcomes and instead invest in students and teacher development.
Involve Community Members in How We Design, Govern, and Assess our Schools
Strong schools are a part of strong communities. Schools should be the center of our communities as well. These kinds of schools offer learning opportunities to community members and provide parents with the resources that they need to be engaged stakeholders and decision-makers in children’s academic success. School districts should be structured to provide a network of resources and partnerships that draw on community organizations to support schools for effective and sustainable parent and community engagement. School districts should be governed by locally elected representatives and all decisions (i.e. school finance, curriculum and instruction, school reform, or personnel) should be based on the democratic processes in place to protect and ensure the best interests of citizens.
Learn More Before Forging Ahead
Decisions to close schools, eliminate tenure, co-locate, and proliferate charter school, are based in false assumptions about our communities’ needs and our students competency. I question the validity and reliability of these data that implies that our students cannot learn and our teachers cannot teach. We need new assumptions, new methodologies, and new rubrics before forging ahead. The stakes are too high to fail our children, families and ourselves. We need a moratorium on these policies in order to allow time for a thorough investigation of the impacts on students, schools, and whole communities.
