Truly Public Schools Must Form Engaged Citizens and Then Engage Those Citizens in Shaping School Policy
This blog will take a week long Thanksgiving break. Look for a new post on November 29. Good wishes for Thanksgiving!
In its October 2018 issue, Phi Delta Kappan magazine features a pair of articles that, from two entirely different perspectives, trace declining civic engagement around public education to the philosophy at the heart of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.
In Preparation for Capable Citizenship: The Schools’ Primary Responsibility, Michael Rebell worries that schools driven by a pinched, test-and-punish agenda—schools designed to force all students to demonstrate basic proficiency in language arts and math—have narrowed the curriculum and dangerously reduced what has been understood historically a primary purpose of public schools: the formation of engaged citizens. Rebell is the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is an attorney and one of the founders of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. He was executive director when the Campaign for Fiscal Equity successfully sued the state for more adequate and equitably distributed school funding.
Rebell argues that high-stakes, test-based school accountability—the system which rates and ranks schools and school districts on standardized tests of language arts and math and punishes the lowest scoring schools and teachers—has squeezed out much that is important: “Over the past half century, the scope of American democracy has expanded to include a more diverse population and a greater understanding of the need to respect and embrace the needs and aspirations of all our citizens, yet the schools’ civic focus has eroded, leaving our democratic institutions substantially at risk. Interestingly, a series of recent cases regarding the adequacy of funding for public schools has led state courts to examine the meaning of state constitutional clauses—most of which were written in the 18th and 19th centuries…. The courts have consistently emphasized the continuing importance of educating students to be effective citizens. For example, the New York Court of Appeals held that the purpose of public education today is to provide students the skills they need to ‘function productively as civic participants capable of voting and serving on a jury’ (Campaign for Fiscal Equity,Inc. v. New York State, 2003).”
Rebell defines the skills he believes are needed for citizenship: “(1) basic civic knowledge of government, history, law and democracy; (2) verbal and critical reasoning skills; (3) social and participatory experiences, and (4) responsible character traits and acceptance of democratic Continue reading: Truly Public Schools Must Form Engaged Citizens and Then Engage Those Citizens in Shaping School Policy | janresseger
