So, now is not the time to be posting this AT ALL, given how tired I am. But after reading some party platforms on various websites today, I was struck with an idea for revolutionizing and improving the public school systems.
I. Reduction of federal involvement. As some group or another points out, states can bettter make decisions on many issues regarding their constituent towns, counties, etc. This includes matters of education. Federal oversight would be important for a couple things, however:
a. Making sure that no state Board of Education endorsed programs counter to federal statutes (e.g, no white supremacy classes or mingling of church and state).
b. Determining that the information taught in science and social studies courses are accurate (we lost in Vietnam, the Earth is not flat, etc), and that some sense of common identity with the rest of the country is included (not just regional literature, history, etc).
c. Laws would also need to be in place to prevent descrimination against students and teachers, and to provide for special education services for those who need them.
II. Decentralization of public school districts.
1. Obviously, one-room school houses will no longer do. But the older, smaller-district schools had many advantages:
a. nearby locations meant decreased transportation costs for families and schools (who didn't
need so many buses).
b. smaller schools were easier to find locations for, and cheaper to maintain.
c. smaller schools meant smaller class sizes, which were beneficial to everyone. Also, fewer
teachers would mean fewer costs as well.
2. Newer advantages, perhaps less realized in former days:
a. Parents would have more direct control over what their children were taught. It could be
more of a community-based model, and with the next school not so far away, transfers would
be easier if you were the one unhappy parent and wanted something different
b. More opportunities for unique curricula and innovation, and a willingness to adapt to the
students' needs and interests.
3. The big drawback--that poorer communities would have poorer schools--could be remedied
either through the simplified transfer system or through decisions made at a state level for
leveling the playing field there. The citizens have more of a voice at state level, and if such
ideas as No Child Left Behind had been introduced there, it probably would have failed.
Wouldn't this make sense? Why aren't we doing it?
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2 comments:
Obviously, one-room school houses will no longer do.
I'll ask my SIL about that -- she used to teach in one in rural Montana. In some places, there just might not be much of an option -- i.e., if you have two fifth-graders, a handful of k-3rd graders, and some high-school-aged kids in a very, very small town, you probably can't hire a teacher (because of both availability and affordability) for each grade.
I agree with a lot of what you posted, but I would add that in addition to decreased federal involvement, it should maybe be even more localized. More localized than city school boards, I mean. I say that partly because at the moment, in most places anyway, they seem to wield an incredible amount of power (I think they allocate the monies).
Why isn't this happening, indeed. Part of the reason is that it's hard to change things that have become such huge, immobile systems. For example, public school teachers are used to getting paid more every year, and tend to get pissed when people suggest maybe these raises shouldn't be automatic, that maybe they should be based on available funding, or -- gasp! -- merit (which is incredibly difficult to measure, yes, but that's usually not their beef with the idea).
As it is, the national teacher's union would be more than happy to see charter schools (which fit your model more than anything else we've currently got in this country) go down the tubes. Some talk about how they "rob" money from public schools (which I'll personally never understand, since they help relieve the burden of students and usually get less funding per student), some talk about how school choice is essentially elitist, because it takes more effort to look around and place your kid on a waiting list or find an empty spot in a charter school than it does to send your kids to the nearest public school (this is a discussion that Silver and my SIL and I often have, and between us, it goes nowhere).
Determining that the information taught in classes is accurate is a good idea, but some things are more slippery than "we lost in Vietnam" and "the earth is not flat" -- like how I realized in retrospect that I grew up with an undercurrent of liberal Democratic thinking behind all of my social studies curriculum. Megan McArdle phrased it well in a recent post (on another subject) -- something to the effect of "Libertarians like to eat. Why wouldn't they support farm subsidized to make corn-fed animal flesh cheaper?" That idea and others were never brought up in class; the liberal Democratic answer was just the "natural," "common sense" one.
I think it's interesting that you point out that kids should be taught not just regional literature because -- while I agree -- I don't think kids usually read much regional literature in school. I mean, I read some Walt Whitman in junior high (Brooklynite), but I mostly remember doing "The Classics" (for good and ill).
That might be a matter of growing up in NYC, though -- like, Silver's talked about studying Colorado history in school, but we never did NY history -- so it could be something that's different in different places. Maybe because NYC is already such a benchmark for finance/fashion/organized crime, and kids might not grow up knowing, for example, their own area's cultural background that way. I.e., I could always watch "My Cousin Vinny," but there might not be a parallel for kids growing up in east Tennessee.
A couple responses: first, I was sort of thinking about charter schools in the back of my mind when I was thinking about this. I guess it boils down to the old "if you can't beat em, join em" rule--if public schools feel they're being competed against, then maybe they need to look at the reasons charter schools seem to be successful, and adapt a little.
I think the underlying idea I had about size/district allocation was based on ideas of where I grew up. so, the tiny little village with six houses might share a school with some neighboring towns, to make it more practical, but in urban areas, rather than, say, a school board overlooking sixty public schools in five boroughs or whatever, the model would continue on downward--the city offices wouldf report to the state, and essentially make sure that state requirments were being met (which would essentially be like the federal laws, only slightly more detailed, as they had greater responsibility), while the greater power would remain within the neighborhood schools themselves (and if necessary, clumps of neighborhood schools formed into districts). So, yeah, the city boards would be replaced by people who pretty much worked like inspectors, making sure things were going according to regulations, and otherwise shuttin' the hell up...
Thwe trouble with teachers' unions, and most other unions these days, is they've lost sight of their purpose. Unions were intended as sort of anti-establishment, pro-working person, focusing on direct problems and making darn sure they weren't handed a plate of shit and told to eat it. Somewhere along the way (and I think John Kenneth Galbraith's analysis is rather apt), they decided what really mattered was how big their paycheck was; unions traded their real social and economic power for a seat at the table of the establishment, and as such have grown rigid and almost prehistoric...not long before I left VT there were many angry letters in the papers regarding the fact that Burlington officials told the teachers there to grow up--they were demanding an automatic pay increase over the next four years, sometihng like 6% every year. In this economy. Sigh...
Isn't government subsidies of any sort the opposite of true libertarianism? It's interesting, because I was, in many cases, also taught that way, but as I've grown up many of the things that at the time I assumed were liberal biases seem to hold water even now...the problem, I think, is that it's impossible to teach much of anything without taking some kind of slant on it.
I think that with the stuff on regionasl history/literature, etc, I was mostly thinking of the possibility that decentralization might in some instances lead to inward-turning curriculum, and a tendency to ignore that which isn't of local concern. This could be a real problem if not watched carefully...
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