Posted on 01/24/2019 11:05:29 AM PST by Kaslin
I’m a proud advocate for school choice and have been for over a decade now. Many people think “school choice” means anti-public school or anti-teacher unions. Certainly everyone has their own opinions on those things, but the school choice movement isn’t about being “anti-public education” - it’s about being pro-opportunity. It is the belief that parents know best what their children need in education and that they should have access to a variety of options outside their geographically mandated public school. Believing in school choice means believing that no child’s zip code should determine their opportunities.
But let me back up - and forgive me if you’ve heard my story before. I believe that the more people I can reach with this explanation, the more support our children will receive.
As a young mother in my early 30s I was given the opportunity to become the director of an outreach program for inner city youth. We had a wonderful center that offered free tutoring, mentoring and internet access to students of our community - a community that was nearly 90% African-American and where the average income was a little over $15K a year. At the time I was a dedicated Democratic voter, like most black people in America. I would have considered myself quite liberal and on education I was always in support of our unions and public schools. I didn’t know much about school choice except that it was some half-baked scheme to suck more money out of public education - money our students desperately needed.
My position gave me the opportunity to see inside many of our city’s schools. A lot of our kids were being raised by grandparents and I often acted as an advocate for those grandparents as they were trying to navigate the school system, parent-teacher meetings and disciplinary procedures. What I saw in our schools was devastating. Dilapidated buildings, burned out teachers, security issues, violence, inadequate materials and an administrative system that had succumbed to over-regulation and corruption. It was frightening, and no one seemed to know what to do about it. In a city where the average income was so low, moving to a better district was not an option for most families.
Then the charter school movement came to our state, and while I was initially skeptical I was overwhelmed by the number of parents and grandparents I was seeing who were desperate to get their child into one. They didn’t want to hear excuses about needing more money. They were constantly being told to wait, don’t leave public school, don’t damage their income structure by pulling their kids out. Just be patient. But who wants their child to be the guinea pig while the so-called professionals figure out how to fix problems that never seem to get fixed, no matter how much money was thrown at the them? Not these people.
One of the new charter schools rented our facility to hold their student lottery. This particular school had openings for 450 students. There were over 1,000 applicants.
The night of the lottery came and parents and grandparents showed up eagerly. The drawing took about an hour. That hour changed everything for me.
There were parents who were so excited their students were picked for the new school they fell to their knees to thank God in front of everyone. Many were celebrating, jumping up and down. Most were praising Jesus. The passionate reaction told me so much more than I knew about just how bad things had become in our schools.
But what moved me the most…what broke me, really…was an elderly woman who came to find me after most of the people had filed out. I recognized her as the grandmother of one my program kids. She’d been crying. She touched my arm and weakly said, “Ms. Kira, is there any way you can talk to someone and get my boy on the list? This was our last chance. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have to get him out of our school but this was our last chance. Please. Isn’t there anything you can do? I’ll do anything”.
I’ve told this story 100 times and 100 times I’ve choked up recounting it. I’ll never forget how helpless she looked, and how helpless I felt. I couldn’t seem to make her understand that I was just the janitor, basically. I had nothing to do with the charter school, I was just lending them space for a night. She wouldn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear it.
In that moment I suddenly had a sense of how unjust it was that this woman’s only option for her struggling grandchild was to cross her fingers and hope he won a lottery so he could go to a better school. If the government told me I was only allowed to shop at one grocery store in my neighborhood no matter what taxes I paid or what needs I had I would be livid. So would we all. Why then did we think it was acceptable for the government to impose such geographical limitations on our children? Why on earth should this woman not be allowed to put her child in a different, safer school with better opportunities in a different area?
It was an injustice I could no longer ignore. Since that day, I have advocated passionately for access to quality education regardless of geography. I have found that this issue affects poorer minority communities - particularly the black community- disproportionately. I believe this is an issue of civil rights, that no one should be held back from a good education just because of who they are. We can argue all we want about money and how much a school needs to properly educate, but in the meantime our students are falling behind.
I cannot agree to letting a nameless, faceless bureaucracy decide what and where is the best education for my child or any child in my community. There is no good reason why tax dollars can’t follow the child. Every argument I hear against it is made in defense of the teachers or the buildings or the bureaucracy. Few involve the children.
So, in honor of National School Choice Week I invite you to learn more about school choice - what it is and what it isn’t, who it prioritizes and who it doesn’t. It isn’t about ending public schools. I now live in a place with amazing public schools filled with dedicated, talented teachers; but we don’t all get so lucky in this country.
Justice is within our grasp. It simply demands the right to choose.
She makes an excellent point. The tax dollars should follow the child.
I assume this means she supports vouchers.
In addition, there is sadness that this question even arises in what is loosely referred to as "education" in America, inasmuch as the Founders' primary purpose for education was to enlighten a citizenry for living in a free society.
See the following excerpted essay (source link in footnote):
Possessing a clear understanding of the failure of previous civilizations to achieve and sustain freedom for individuals, our forefathers discovered some timeless truths about human nature, the struggle for individual liberty, the human tendency toward abuse of power, and the means for curbing that tendency through Constitutional self-government. Jefferson's Bill For The More General Diffusion Of Knowledge For Virginia declared: "...experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government), those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate...the minds of the people...to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth. History, by apprizing them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future...it will qualify them judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.."Education was not perceived by the Founders to be a mere process for teaching basic skills. It was much, much more. Education included the very process by which the people of America would understand and be able to preserve their liberty and secure their Creator-endowed rights. Understanding the nature and origin of their rights and the means of preserving them, the people would be capable of self government, for they would recognize any threats to liberty and "nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud." (Adams)
Lol
Ping.
A family with two parents who are interested in knowledge and education will produce children who are interested in knowledge and education, by and large. Most of them will be white, because most such families are white.
Just the facts.
I'd love everyone to have school choice, but we've got to stop 1) destroying the black family, 2) pretending everyone has the same intelligence regardless of race, 3) pretending everyone is going to go to collge and get an office job, and 4) pretending that vocational schools and trade jobs have no value.
This ping list is for the other articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
FWIW, surprisingly here in Canada of all choices, in my province, British Columbia, about 50% of the tax dollars follow the students into what we call independent schools. So our children go to a Christian “private” school. We still have to pay tuition but the school gets funding as long as the curriculum is taught, but the school is free to teach it their way. The province next door, Alberta also has this, but their system is under attack from the anti-Christian bigoted government who will not provide funding to Christian schools because of statements of faith.
So this might be a challenge you will see south of the border. In BC we are lead by an NDP government very close to the teacher unions so we are just waiting for that shoe to drop on our funding.
school choice allows you to be indoctrinated in a different zip code...and allow hucksters like Bill Gates to decide the curriculum instead. It’s a sham...
She mentions she was a democrat,is she still? I’m 69 years old before zip codes there were neighborhood schools,we stood for the Pledge of Allegiance,respected the teachers,learned American History.Today the Pledge is considered a choice,boys can use the girls bathroom and vice versa,American History is filled with Racist white Slave owners,while the black slave owners are not mentioned,Homosexuality is to be taught in school African studies are to be taught as well,these are not policies championed by Republicans but by those people who were both cheering for winning the lottery and those that lost,but I know who they have blamed for the past 50 or longer years.
A reminder it was the First black President that refused blacks in the D.C. area to have charter schools.
I bet all the people in the inner city still blame republicans,I know my daughter has been teaching 100% minority students in an inner city school for 16 years
Yes. Greed blinds most from seeing the truth about what became of "school choice." I supported it for a long time - and I was an inner city public school teacher who did not stand to profit from it. Unfortunately, it's just gotten worse.
Homeschool or private school. Do NOT touch government funds. It's the only way.
The people in this article do not take responsibility for their own fate. One government institution utterly failed them but they think one wearing a new hat will save them. They were crippled mentally by public schools. I think many would have been better off never going to school at all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.