Blues music has become a bit more a part of my life since coming to Atlanta, and a recurring theme in blues or blues rock is a long, burdensome struggle with emotions and a journey to escape them. A more grave version of the Southern blues could be found in the Southern Gothic literary subgenre and the works of Faulkner.
Now, my experience as a newcomer to the South does not scratch the surface of the complex social and political conflicts of this part of the country, but I still connect surviving the challenges of being a first year teacher (or rather, any teacher or student) in a lower-income, non-white Southern community with the ethos of the Blues. The legacy of segregation, discrimination and oppression runs as straight as the railroad tracks through the center of Forest Park, Georgia.
I begin with this anecdote because I am increasingly convicted of the gravity of the work of public educators, and the deep respect I have for those who work in it. The simmering debates over education begin to boil over when important events like school board elections approach — and this is exactly what is happening in Atlanta right now. The linked Atlanta Progressive News article on the school board smacks of shallow politics:
“In recent years, they’ve aligned themselves with the corporate reformer movement. That means vouchers, charter schools, parent trigger, anti-union,” he said. “You see the Teach for America alum leading out in this movement to corporatize education. What that means, take education out of the public space. They [charter schools] are no longer democratically controlled,” he said.
I am consistently an opponent of vague and controversial terms like “corporatization” of public education. I already blogged about Teach For America’s “Civil War” and maintain the organization has much more diversity than claimed by critics. Conversely, public education and public school teachers have far more assets than the most ardent members of Teach For America’s 501(c)(4) affiliate Leadership for Educational Equity would claim.
Asserting that Teach For America should bear more in common with the public education “old guard” and that the “old guard” should have more respect for teachers coming through alternative certification programs has serious validation from an excellent review of the organization’s practices in the Washington Post. Everyone should read the article to get an accurate picture of TFA’s current model, which is neither particularly radical nor offensive.
Public education carries far too much weight as an issue to be defined by opportunistic politics, big corporate donor interests and overprotective unions. Unsurprisingly, I want to explore the answer in the middle between these institutions. Call me in this case what Margaret Heffernan in her compelling TED Talk a “traditionalist whistleblower:” I point out shortcomings in education systems only because I want the public education system to survive in American communities.
I have had a few of these observations personally in the “first week blues,” the journey to see education for the serious, long-term and collaborative issue it is:
(1) Public school systems need processes and resources more than they need better priorities: I can’t argue at all with the Clayton County Schools strategic vision for 2012-2017. However, to go back to Clayton Christensen’s model of resources, processes and priorities as determinants of organizational capability, while the district has excellent priorities, it often struggles with delivering the resources and processes which will increase its impact on students.
One way in which I have seen this in action in school is the loss of organizational memory. The Harvard Business Review article argues for an explicit strategy, a few key areas of focus and a technology-based process to pass on information over time. I have gotten the impression (which could very well be false so far) that the schools spend a lot of time trying to re-teach and re-learn strategies or tools which could have been effectively taught and retained with better processes at the district level. (Implementation of Common Core standards is one such example.)
(2) Public school systems have a greater margin for error yet more potential for impact because of their scale: What frustrates me at times about charter schools is not what they do do but what they do not do. They take the “escape hatch” route from public education to offer education services on a different scope and scale which allows more freedom — something I am not convinced is possible at the level of an entire district. In other words, school districts and charters may seek to accomplish the same goals but the districts because of their size and complexity are seen as “worse” in accomplishing it.
However, there are advantages to larger public school systems for children. A strong support network in terms of non-teacher professionals pooled between schools, school security and healthy partnerships with other institutions such as the juvenile justice system are more possible. While school nutrition is an area which could stand a lot of improvement, the high-level policy capabilities of districts to be eligible for federal funding, Title I assistance and best practices produces efforts such as the Community Eligibility Option providing all 52,000 students in Clayton County with free lunch this year.
(3) Traditional public education offers equal opportunity for children’s development: The biggest truth in education I have come across already is that the long, strenuous work on behalf of children happens in all schools regardless of their political status. I have tremendous respect for the teachers and administrators with whom I already work. Stereotypes of public school teachers are rooted in misunderstanding and not reality. These teachers love their children, work for them and face their struggles with the same if not greater expertise and resiliency than the “shock troop” image of Teach For America and similar programs.
I maintain that Teach For America’s curriculum could be even more effective if it were not applied just to TFA teachers but to all educators regardless of where or how they are trained. We need to talk about racial identity development, about inequity and about setting ambitious goals regardless of our background entering the education profession. This can happen in and outside of unions, in professional associations and in partnerships across these boundaries.
Maybe I am too hopeful or fired up after a week in school to see the political divisions as intractable. Yet I believe there is more common ground and common sense policy solutions which go unnoticed in the face of high-stakes, big-money politics. I am sure stances on these divisive issues are important to charting out the future of public education, but so are stances on the core issue we all care about: outcomes for children. As a well-known Frost poem goes:
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence
