Why We Need Democratic Socialism to Fix Our Educational System
Rural schoolroom, Wisconsin, September 1939. (Photo: Archive/John Vachon)
Latoya and Jalesa, both 26, grew up on the west side of Chicago, attending Calhoun Public School during the day and stepping across the street to Marillac Social Center for after-school programs. They lived in a tough neighborhood. Latoya said the summer gunshots came as often as the sound of ice-cream truck bells in the suburbs. But everyone knew each other on those two blocks; kids walked together, to and from school and in the evenings. Parents—most of whom had gone to Calhoun—also knew each other, often through volunteer work at the social center.
In 2013 Calhoun was one of 50 schools closed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It was shut down despite a committee recommendation that it remain open. Jalesa and Latoya, who still work at the center as they pursue other career interests, said the children are scattered now. Most of them take buses to a variety of public and charter schools outside the once-intimate neighborhood. Some have to walk a few blocks, some have to cross busy streets. None of them gather together before and after school, as they used to do on the grounds of Calhoun.
K-12 Education is Getting Worse
A shocking new OECD report says that among developed countries the U.S. has the highest percentage of youths ages 16-19 with low numeric skills, and the 3rd-highest percentage with low literacy skills.
SAT scores in 2015 were the lowest since the test was revised in 2005. Math scores for fourth-graders and eighth-graders dropped for the first time since the tests were first administered in 1990.
Market "Reform" Isn't Working
The unsatisfactory results, according to the Washington Post, "reflect a troubling shortcoming of education-reform efforts."
Technology-based instruction is apparently doing more harm than good. An analysis of "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA) scores led to the conclusion that "While PISA results suggest that limited use of computers at school may be better than not using computers at all, using them more intensively than the current OECD average tends to be associated with significantly poorer student performance." The American Statistical Association cautioned against the use of standardized student test scores for teacher evaluations. Online instruction, not surprisingly, is likely the worst form of schooling, as suggested by Stanford's CREDO researchers: "Innovative new research suggests that students of online charter schools had significantly weaker academic performance in math and reading, compared with their counterparts in conventional schools."
The Three Big Sins of Charter Schools
Charter schools generally perform no better than public schools, as summarized by the nonpartisan Spencer Foundation and Public Agenda: "There is very little evidence that charter and traditional public schools differ meaningfully in their average impact on students' standardized test performance." Yet in at least three ways charters undermine and debase the educational system that they profess to serve:
1. Committing Fraud: In 2015 they wasted an estimated $1.4 billion of taxpayer money through "financial fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement."
2. Lacking Transparency: The Center for Media and Democracy calls them a "black hole" into which the federal government has dumped an outrageous $3.7 billion over two decades with little accountability to the public.
3. Discarding Students: Prominent New York charter network Success Academy has frequently been accused of "counseling out" students who are low-performing or disruptive or otherwise difficult to teach. Even worse are charters that shut down, stranding hundreds of students, while their business operators can just move on to their next project. Nearly 2,500 charter schools closed their doors from 2001 to 2013, leaving over a quarter of a million kids temporarily without a school.
Public Education Works If It's Supported
The National Bureau of Economic Research found that a 10 percent increase in per-pupil spending leads to higher earnings and less poverty for children from poor families. TheWhy We Need Democratic Socialism to Fix Our Educational System | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community: