How much money do we need to "fix" public education?
Motivated to move into politics after a local teenager died of a gunshot wound in his arms, Newark Mayor Cory Booker has faced numerous challenges leading one of our nation's poorest and most violent cities. The state recently took over the Newark schools after years of mismanagement and corruption and now dumps billions into the failing system, averaging $17,000 per student.
Yet the money has done little good, since the state has pursued few educational innovations and hasn’t taken on entrenched educational interests (above all, the teachers’ union), which still control much of the system. Student performance has continued to plummet. “High school achievement rates have virtually flipped, from almost 70 percent of graduating Newark kids passing the state’s high school proficiency exam when the state took over, to only about 30 percent passing it now,” says Richard Cammarieri, a member of the Newark schools advisory board. E3 executive director Dan Gaby bluntly describes the system as “in crisis,” estimating that it spends an astonishing $1.3 million for every qualified student it manages to graduate from high school. City Journal, (emphasis mine)Wow. That's government efficiency for you. Spend billions of dollars without making a single, structural change which might hope to effect the system. The problems in these communities run so much deeper than what is going on in the classroom, and yet we do nothing but treat the symptoms.
Where is the church? Neither homeschooling nor leaving children in this system will fix its problems. Why do we have no answer? Nor even a working proposition?
Hat Tip: Rethink, a new favorite blog of mine (How many favorites can I have?)
8 comments:
It's heartbreaking how pathetic our schools truly are right now. So many simple changes could begin to make a difference and yes, community, including the churches, needs to step up and lend its hands.
Problem is, the system won't allow much help. I hope though that community would step up and do what the system will at least allow it.
In my community, the United Methodist Church, with a grant from United Way, had a Monday night home work club open to any student--that included a free dinner.
My kids loved it when they were little--the homework assitance that wasn't from mom and friendship more than the dinner that was offered. For the disadvantaged families it really was a Godsend; and for the many immigrant families it was support for the students that the parents could not offer due to language barriers.
I do think a lot of the responsibility lies with the church and other community organizations. This is how I see it:
1) Parents have failed to teach their children so the responsibility gets shifted to the local school district.
2 The school district fails so it falls on the state.
3) The states are failing, so is it little wonder the central government is stepping in?
And that brings controls on all of us, whether we are teaching our children or not. It is all well and good for us to say that education is not the responsibility of the state, but it means little if no one takes on that responsibility. I don't know if you have heard of the Carver Academy in San Antonio, but it was started by a former Spurs player. His vision was to found a school with rigorous academic standards for low income students. He has put millions into this school and raised a fair sum of money so that no one has to be turned away due to financial constraints.
Why is a basketball player doing this, and not the church? We have Christian schools, and while many of them do offer scholarships, they were hardly founded with that sort of vision nor do they accept that many low-income kids.
This problem about education is suppose to be making a big concern, but it's clear that people in charge are not responsible enough to repair this kind of damage.
I love the story of the basketball player! I hadn't heard about it.
I actually contacted them when I had decided to leave the public schools and almost applied...but then our application to a group home in NE was accepted, and here we are!
I wrote about them awhile back if you are interested.
Here is the link.
You ask, where is the church? Good question. I see a lot of the same problems within the church. Like parents dropping their kids off in my Sunday School class, expecting that this is their Christian education, they're done with their duty. Some even drop their kids off in Sunday School and then leave, returning after church is done. Don't get me wrong, I'm very, very happy to have those kids there, and for many this is a safe haven. But that's just a poor way to approach education of any kind and it produces shallow results. In one church meeting, I suggested having some kind of parenting class to teach parents how to begin integrated Christian education in the home. Some were open to this, but many just wanted to come up with snappier Sunday School programs. I'm loathe to have to "teach" parents how to train up their own kids, but it's so bad out there, even within the church (obviously not all churches), that I don't know what else to suggest.
I think you were here while I was over at your place, Jennifer! How fun. I couldn't agree more. If we cannot fix the problems in our churches, our church has no witness. We have no testimony.
MacArthur doesn't need to talk about how God has left America (???) when the church has left God.
I'm not so hopeless as all that, but for a very long time I have wanted to work with families. As a public school teacher, I worked in the parental involvement office and spent a great deal of time trying to teach my parents (well, the kids' parents) that they were their child's first teachers. That what they did at home WAS important. That they could break the cycle of poverty. It was like pulling teeth to even get a meeting, even when I started home visits.
I enjoyed working with foster families. It was closer to what I wanted to do, but I saw the biological families often shafted in the system. They had to jump through a number of hoops to get their kids back, but there was so little, it seemed, assisting them. Helping them when they needed it. Preventing the family from dissolving in the first place.
And as much as I don't think it is the state's responsibility to teach parenting, what can the state do? Who else is doing it? I'm not saying that the Christian church isn't doing these things, but at the moment it seems we are more interested in populating pews and living our best life now.
It's a sad reality that some people in charged of the money take advantage of their job by making false expenses to cover their evil schemes. They will surely won't get away with it and pay for everything they took.
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