Will today’s babies grow up with free democratic public schools, or will they attend schools stratified by wealth, with parents paying most of the cost, schools that allow for few differences, cyber schools without real teachers but online instruction, which collect unlimited data on children used for commercial and career tracking purposes? Will they be divisive schools?
I think most people from both parties want quality public schools with professional teachers and various classes that prepare children well for what interests them about learning, schools that are welcoming to everyone and teach what’s necessary and developmentally appropriate for individual children.
Yet some Americans need to remember that public schools are collectively for all children. We care for every child so that they will grow into caring and productive adults. That teen next door, who plays their music too loud for your taste, may one day be the adult that finds a cure for a disease or will show up on the holidays to fix your leaking plumbing.
Is School Choice Popular?
For years former governor Jeb Bush and many Republicans have enthusiastically promoted school choice. Bush recently penned a Wall Street Journal opinion piece School Choice Is Sweeping the Nation From Florida to Utah. He calls school choice freedom, but is it?
If parents get a voucher, it usually will only cover the partial cost of the school if their child gets accepted. This is especially true for the poor, whose children will wind up attending substandard charter schools or sitting at home staring at a computer screen.
Democrats also support school privatization with nonprofit and for-profit (what’s the difference?) charter schools. They’re okay with corporate partnerships, which can easily be seen as a threat to public school ownership, where companies tell educators and parents how to run their schools for their interests and earn profits through social impact bonds.
The 2022 Kappan Gallup Poll: Public Schools are Liked, But Teaching is in Trouble
Also, question Bush’s opinion because, according to the 2022 Kappan Gallup Poll, despite all the supposed anger surrounding COVID-19 and school closings, controversial books, CRT, gender identities, etc., Americans like their local public schools!
According to the results:
Americans’ ratings of their community’s public schools reached a new high dating back 48 years in this year’s PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools,
Polls have shown this for years. Parents might believe other public schools aren’t good, due to what they hear, but they’re satisfied with their child’s local public school!
This is good news; it hardly seems like the end of public education or that Americans want school choice! Many Republican and Democratic parents share the hope of creating quality public schools for America!
But all is not well. The Poll also indicates that the public recognizes difficulties facing teachers.
. . .fewer than ever expressed interest in having their child work as a public school teacher.
This is serious since teachers are the backbone of a school. It doesn’t matter who’s on the outside looking in, all those far-removed politicians and policy wonks from both parties running nonprofits to tell teachers how they should teach, or faux teacher prep programs that supply unprepared individuals to classrooms. If public schools continue to lose great teachers, they will eventually close or be converted to cyber schools.
Are public schools perfect? No. Much has been done to them for years in the name of privatization. Most of us have been calling for the following doable changes for years that will also improve teaching as a profession. Feel free to add to the list.
- Make schools safer by lowering class sizes so teachers and staff can get to know students.
- Improve literacy instruction and make it age appropriate.
- Highlight cultures from around the world, so children learn to respect others.
- Insist there’s less testing and more individualized planning for every student to identify their strengths and improve weaknesses.
- Take pride in diversity, teaching students to cherish the differences that make us unique.
- Consider developmentally age-appropriate expectations at all grade levels.
- Provide every child access to the arts.
- Technology is important, but it should not replace teachers.
- Protect students from harmful data collection.
- Provide students with great vocational programs Career Technical Education in high school.
- Every school should include excellent school libraries with fully qualified school librarians.
- Career education in high school to help students understand the many jobs that exist and how to realize their interests.
- Ensure every child is respected and cherished for their differences.
- Provide all children with access to classes about life skills.
- Every child should have access to individualized and small group attention.
- Put an end to harmful practices like third grade retention and loss of unstructured recess.
- Increase teacher pay commiserate to the degrees, experience, certification and preparedness of the teacher.
- Create schools that bring families together through pride of sports, drama, music, art and more.
- Strengthen PTAs so parents and teachers work together.
- Make Teach for America Teacher Aides for America.
- Elected school boards should be responsive to the needs of parents and educators in their district.
- Improve crummy school buildings, an embarrassment to the country.
- Increase counselors and school psychologists, and help teachers identify students with mental health difficulties.
- Provide IEPs and classes to serve those students with severe behavioral disabilities so they are not in the general class.
- Improve Colleges of Education with quality teaching preparation and not with an emphasis on online or scripted programs.
- Require teacher certification in the area in which a teacher will teach, so teachers will be professionals.
- Return autonomy and resources to principals.
Most Americans want better public schools not a scattered approach of schools for the wealthy and schools for the poor, or to have their children facing computers all day. Let’s honor our students by providing them free quality democratic public schools that reject no one.
This needs to be a promise to our youngest children, that public schools will continue to be supported by Americans to work collectively with everyone.
The real democratic public schools in America belong to us, and it’s when we care for and cherish such schools that Americans and living becomes more robust and united. Sending children to a hodge-podge of different schools lacking accountability creates tremendous concerns for the future, for students and America.
Reference
Bush, J. (2023, Feb. 3) School Choice Is Sweeping the Nation From Florida to Utah, The Wall Street Journal, Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/school-choice-is-sweeping-the-nation-from-florida-to-utah-jeb-bush-education-learning-students-children-parents-11675435984.
These are all great suggestions and ideas. However, until they increase teacher pay, America will continue to lose teachers. I have successfully talked both of my children out of a teaching career. Although I love my job and have taught for 29 years (I’ll teach another 12), I would not encourage anyone to go into the field at this time.
Teaching is the one profession I believe that you get punished when you switch districts or move. For example, we moved from the East Coast to the Midwest and I was bumped backward down the pay scale /salary schedule 16 years. I am now back on a step that I was on in 2007. That is ridiculous and shows that experience does not matter.
Absolutely! I think I included that, but I’ll go back and check in case I didn’t. I think what you describe is intentional. Merit pay schemes have also been troubling.
I would like to add one thing to your excellent list. Return autonomy and resources to principals. The one observation that troubled me through my last years as a principal was that principals and teachers were consistently left out of improvement discussions while district mandates were enforced with and iron fist. All improvement in the public schools requires meaningful preparation and support for those in the school house while responding to their needs. It is more than better pay for teachers. Providing resources requested by school house practitioners is critical.
Excellent point, Paul. I’ll add. Thank you!
Did you know that “Provide IEPs and classes to serve those students with severe behavioral disabilities so they are not in the general class.” is completely illegal, discriminatory, ableist and extremely offensive? I mean it is great list and then I got to thus and was gobsmacked! What the heck? How about get the other structures in place before discriminating against the most vulnerable.
What other structures? Could you elaborate? Do you see children with emotional and behavioral disabilities getting special assistance in the general classes with prepared teachers working with general teachers? I’d say that isn’t happening in many places, even though it was originally encouraged for inclusion and IDEA.
I have also repeatedly promoted lowering class sizes. But as a special educator, some children might benefit from stepping away from the general classroom, especially when those classes are overcrowded.
Is it better for students to disrupt classes and to flounder and not get the assistance they need? It doesn’t seem to be working all that well. Teachers also used to get special preparation, including state certification, to work with students with behavioral and emotional disabilities (I know, I was one) to help them get back on track and mainstreamed into general classes with additional support.
The IDEA reauthorizations changed the support provided to children in special classes. Now, behavior is a real problem in classes and schools. Students are not getting the support they need and it is not always the teachers fault. Tell me your solutions. I’m all ears.
The solution isn’t discrimination or decrying “is it better for students to disrupt classes” How about the fact that a classroom is disrupting so many student’s ability to access the curriculum? The answers are certified behavior specialists, FBAs, 1:1/TSS supports and the BIGGIE– stop shaming and demeaning children that have been dealt issues that make their lives more difficult. If you really want to get rid of the behavior problems that disrupt classrooms, get rid of the arrogant bullies in classrooms that behave like angels in the classroom and then trigger and wreak havoc behind teachers back. They are often the kids whose parents are front and center describing how “those kids” are the problem with no clue how their child instigated classroom angst. The other simple solution is to ask “why, when, how” the behavior happens. Really show compassion and empathy for all learners instead of having templates for what is considered good or bad. The bottom line is teachers have to show up at IEP meetings to fight with parents for in class support instead of going along with the purge and alienation because it makes the job easier if we just change every challenging student’s setting by excluding them.
Certainly, teachers have an array of solutions to help with behavior, and you provide good ones. But focusing on student behavior, a more one-to-one or group support can be helpful to some children, give them the more individual attention they need to return to the class better equipped to face larger group challenges. IDEA made parents believe that more individualized attention was bad, that any special class failed. The reality I believe is that it cost more. Don’t get me wrong. There is a wide range of behavioral issues facing children and teachers, and many of them can be dealt with in general classes. But it isn’t purging or alienation to give children more individualized assistance to help them deal with or cope with emotional or behavioral problems. I once knew of a situation where two children with autism had access one teacher! Many children thrive with such attention that would be impossible for a general ed. teacher with 30 kids to provide.
And my child’s behavior was considered “challenging” because he stimmed and cried and flapped his arms. Because we fought, he remained in gen ed and is all the better for it now 7 years later. If we went along with the dogma “better for him segregated”, he would be 4 grade levels behind like so many others his agewho were purged from gen ed school. The bottom line is it is an illusion that segregated classrooms have more support, are properly small, have trained staff or follow IEPs properly. They don’t. They get fake compliance and are stuffed with 3 different grade levels with wildly different needs and abilities. Support rooms are catchalls and sending kids there is often worse. State maximums are manipulated by having double the amount of kids that shift in and out due to itinerant level. The reality is, piling tons of kids with high incidence disabilities into support classrooms disrupt disabled students that truly need full time support more than in gen ed. For those kids that are feared disrupted by disabled kids in gen ed? Maybe it is time to teach them how to co-exit with disabled people so we don’t have so much bigotry in the world
These are great points and I agree that any segregated class today is probably not great. I’m saying what they should be like, and for a while in the 80s and 90s, while not perfect, they were, I believe, better. I fear that children with disabilities are not given the attention they do deserve and I don’t believe teachers are given the best preparation either.
And children do need to learn how to work together and accept and cherish differences.
Every child is unique and deserves to be given the well-thought out plan as to what will be helpful. I’m glad your child is doing well with the support he received in the general class.
Thank you for your comments, Marissa. This is a tough issue and parents and educators should be working together to demand what’s best for students.
This expert advice would really help steer better outcomes for ALL public school students. Discrimination was ended with Brown v BOE and IDEA Law. Let’s be sure to understand that behavior is communication and not use subjective description to give excuses to purge children from their civil rights just because there is a lack of talent in gen ed classrooms. https://youtu.be/zuoPZkFcLVs
So, no contrary comments? You just delete them? #24 is illegal and ableist. Please don’t spread that
Please be patient. I rarely don’t permit comments to be published, only if they’re inflammatory to someone or purely for selling something.
I appreciate contrary comments and the challenge to debate, and your comment does that. I see your point, but I disagree with how students with behavioral and emotional disabilities are treated in school.
Illegal and ableist? Well, here is a post I wrote a while back because student behavior is a serious issue in schools today.
https://nancyebailey.com/2021/06/16/the-heartbreak-surrounding-student-behavior-and-teacher-attrition-in-americas-schools/
Pay special attention to this. How is this allowed?
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/teachers-sounding-the-alarm-over-room-clear-method-70384709684
Demonstrating the most extreme behavior as destroying rooms and threatening with a gun have multiple modes, beyond procedural safeguards, to remote students from a classroom temporarily or permanently. Disrupting other students is a subjective range and when this is the advocacy-> removal… it is used as the launching pad for removal of any different behavior. Not only have I lived this manipulation, I’ve seen it over and over across the multiple districts where I work as an advocate. Rich or poor or urban or suburban, segregation is a go to for any difficult student. The support rooms are packed and packed with students that could easily and should be in gen ed. and this is leaving the most vulnerable disabled students in chaotic classrooms. The idea of “Extreme Behaviors” is very subjection. In the wrong hands, it is used to purge capable students from their community.
I would argue that the classes shouldn’t be “packed and packed” with students without well-prepared teachers. Mostly, a lot would be solved by lowering class sizes, especially if a teacher is to receive students with neurotypical behavior. However, a model program, in my mind, would be to provide students with more individualized assistance when they need it.
You’re right that there’s a range of behaviors. I would argue about your idea that the teachers and staff are only subjective. General ed. teachers used to document specific behavioral responses of the student, like they threw a chair, or, shouted obscenities, etc. We’d look at whether the behaviors were extreme and/or repetitive. And parents would provide valuable feedback as well. In the past, many parents were glad that their children were getting extra assistance.
Lower class sizes are a goal for for all. Using it as an excuse to discriminate, segregate and use predeterminatiin as a work-around way to get them is wrong. Why should the disabled child get removed? Individualized support should be brought to the student as push-in. This also helps the entire classroom. Co-teaching is the best model and yet, never see it promoted much. The fact is, classrooms ARE packed now and support rooms DON’T have the proper staff, either. So your advocacy is to make things seemingly better for one group of students, punish and purge another.
Yes, we disagree about resource and self-contained classrooms. Many parents used to value the more individualized and small group assistance in those classrooms, and teachers worked hard to mainstream students into general classes and provide continuing support for them there. In many places, this setup worked well, although there are likely always exceptions.
You have to remember, that many politicians want nothing more than not to have to pay more to assist children with differences.
Co-teaching is a good idea on paper, but it was a promise by those who pushed IDEA changes, and they never followed through with it. What does that tell you?
Also, I don’t appreciate the accusation that I write about “purging” a certain group of students. I taught those students and care deeply that they get the best education possible. That’s uncalled for just because you think general ed. is right for all students and individualized help is somehow unhelpful. Please look at the links I sent.
One other thing. Many parents think nothing of removing their students from an inclusion class and placing their students in a “special” school. Then they write glowing about that school even though it is no different than a self-contained classroom.
I guess my bottom line is individualized support doesn’t mean other setting. I see this “either/or” proposal consistently. It is used to both fit students in existing rostered classrooms that may not be, usually not, necessary or appropriate for a wide range of OHI or SLD students. It is also a way to intimidate parents so that they don’t push too hard or their kids will have to go elsewhere. Thanks for your exchange and time. I can see we overwhelmingly agree. I just think we need to talk about supports in gen ed classrooms because we aren’t getting smaller classrooms anytime soon. OHI and SLD are growing exponentially. This is causing horrible behavior, anxiety and worse. The only way right now to quickly get staff added to classroom is with an IEP. We could fight and hope the right thing is done or teacher contracts negotiate smaller classrooms, but it doesn’t happen. Our kids don’t get a do-over. They need what they need now.
My apologies and appreciate your time. I will read these.
Please don’t apologize. I understand completely! These are serious issues, especially when trying to get the best education for our children. They deserve the best, and public school teachers should be able to provide the best!
Reviewing your post, it’s possible to identify the following logical fallacies with corresponding examples from your text:
False Dichotomy: Presenting only two options or possibilities when there may be more options or a middle ground.
Example: “Most Americans want better public schools not a scattered approach of schools for the wealthy and schools for the poor, or to have their children facing computers all day.”
This statement implies that the only alternatives to public schools are either schools for the wealthy or schools for the poor, excluding other possibilities or middle ground solutions.
Straw Man: Misrepresenting or exaggerating an opponent’s argument in order to make it easier to refute.
Example: “Sending children to a hodge-podge of different schools lacking accountability creates tremendous concerns for the future, for students and America.”
This statement oversimplifies the argument in favor of school choice by portraying it as disorganized and lacking accountability, making it easier to argue against.
Appeal to Emotion: Manipulating an emotional response in place of a valid or compelling argument.
Example: “The real democratic public schools in America belong to us, and it’s when we care for and cherish such schools that Americans and living becomes more robust and united.”
This statement appeals to the reader’s emotions and sense of unity without providing a compelling argument for why public schools are the best option.
Ad Hominem: Attacking the person making the argument rather than addressing the argument itself.
Example: “It doesn’t matter who’s on the outside looking in, all those far-removed politicians and policy wonks from both parties running nonprofits to tell teachers how they should teach, or faux teacher prep programs that supply unprepared individuals to classrooms.”
This statement dismisses the arguments of politicians and policy experts by focusing on their perceived distance from the educational system rather than addressing their actual arguments.
I hope you find the following resources useful when engaging in public discussions and debates about critical issues, such as the future of education. They provide comprehensive lists and explanations of logical fallacies that are important to avoid when presenting arguments:
Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL):
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/logic_in_argumentative_writing/fallacies.html
Logical Fallacies by The School of Thought:
https://www.logicalfallacies.org/
Please consider utilizing these resources to strengthen your arguments and ensure a productive dialogue.
You cover a lot here. I’m sorry if you thought I attacked you or others. Not sure what you’re referring to. I try to cite what I write and I also listen to the other side.
What are your middle ground solutions?
Most private and parochial schools do not show accountability like public schools. They don’t have to subject students to high-stakes standardized tests. They also can reject students with disabilities.
Yes. Public schools belong to the American people and we have representation through school boards that we usually elect.
My whole blog is about how great democratic public schools could be if they were supported and funded fairly, and how they’re being taken over and turned into cyber schools. I have 2 books that I’ve written and one co-authored with ed. historian Diane Ravitch.
Do you know how many nonprofits drive school policy today? And many of them are run by those who are either from Teach for America or no education/teaching background. Research Common Core State Standards. Or look at the National Reading Panel which included not one early ed. teacher.
I’ve been called a blogger who actually responds and tries to hear out those who disagree. And by the way, I have both Democrats and Republicans who follow my work, and whose voices I find critical for the future of education.
I also love to learn new ideas, but it doesn’t take much insight to recognize your tone as not living up to what you preach.
And, to be intellectually honest, it doesn’t take much insight to recognize your attacks are incongruous with your assertions that you hear out those who disagree.
I am sorry if that seems unkind, but the ad hominem attacks are all right there.
They’re textbook, and you can have ChatGPT take a look. It’s there along with straw man arguments and appeals to emotion and people always sense them, even if they can’t name always name them
So what does this have to do with democracy? Everything. The quality of speech matters. Socrates referred to this when he spoke of a “city in speech.”
I just checked Twitter and, well, you’re arguing with teachers on Twitter, who are telling you directly that they use picture books, and yet you’re not taking them at their word even though they’re reporting that they are SoR aligned and they are reporting their practices to you firsthand…. while even the link you used to illustrate your point containss scores and scores of picture books.
How do you think that makes people feel? Do you think this gives them confidence in the prospects of a dialogue?
And more of the same in your comment above. For example, you won’t accept the work of the National Literacy Panel because it’s not composed to your liking?
Okay, then we must also discard Units of Study because it’s owned by Heinemann, which is controlled by Veritas Capital, a private equity firm with a chequered history and deep ties to the defense and intelligence industries.
Do you see how this works? I can not dismiss an idea just because I don’t like the business connections of the company that published it. That’s called an ad hominem attack.
I can’t nitpick the composition of a government-appointed panel and then simply wave away its findings because it’s not composed to my specifications. Same concept: ad hominem attack.
Logical fallacies are guard rails on discourse to ensure we engage with ideas, rather than attacking each other. They’re essential to keeping discourse intellectually honest. They can help us overcome the instinct to blame and shame that every human shares, rather than addressing arguments directly.
Voting matters. Public funding matters. But without that “city in speech,” without dialogue, there is no community, no real democracy, and no intellectual life.
To the degree an institution is defended by insisting on enforcing arbitrary taboos and purity tests (of the sort that ended Socrates life) it becomes less democratic, less public, and eventually, in the case of public schools, not even a school at all.
I am sorry if my earlier note seemed cold and unkind, but I feel that if people do not advocate for quality dialogue – if they don’t point out well known fallacies that detract from that dialogue – then we all suffer.
“…even though they’re reporting that they are SoR aligned and they are reporting their practices to you firsthand.”
I responded positively on Twitter to teachers who say they use picture books, but many I debated with made claims like you made above.
Decodables are used for instruction and are aligned to phonics. They’re not the same as picture books written with stories that aren’t aligned but simply fun and interesting to read.
And quite a few did not seem to understand the value of letting a child do free reading.
I’m happy you’ll be asking your child’s teacher if they allow for free reading and value picture books.
Have a good day.
I have called for a new National Reading Panel inclusive of parents and teachers. I suggest you read the concerns by Joanne Yatvin who was on the panel.