Schools are in crisis, just like much of everything else nowadays, I suppose. Particularly in Georgia, my home state, where huge budget cuts come amid testing scandals and where half of South Metro Atlanta counties can look forward to having NO public schools open in their districts, and where, in spite of all these ills, administrators still expect these gutted, underfunded schools to churn out A+ standartized test-takers. Whatever measure one applies, academics here come up short; the response, however, "let's get some 'experts' to tell us what is wrong," will accomplish nothing more than further exacerbating the difficulties that plague these educational matters. The only way to deal with the crisis that has any promise of surcease is to involve more of the participants--parents, students, and teachers--instead of turning to supposedly independent 'experts,' who turn out, almost always, to be some sort of corporate representative, of a financial, political, or bureaucratic nature.
I work for a community non profit that takes as its premise that only participatory methods can solve political problems. I am not in any fashion pretending to speak for my organization, but as someone who has been learning about participatory methods 'from the ground up,' I can say a few things about what I see and read regarding education today through that lens. First of all, those who would address this issue have done little or nothing to involve the communities who live and breathe the dire problems of Georgia's schools, i.e., teachers, students, and their families. Second, the framing of the issues has nothing to do with addressing the underlying disparities, inequities, and inadequacies of public education here. Third, without the formative involvement and input of the affected stakeholders, every 'finding' or 'reform' of the 'experts' will lead to nothing except further deterioration and crisis.
The lack of core constituent involvement is more than obvious, as any one who has paid attention to the nation-wide protests that have flowered in early March demonstrate. In a recent example, in Wisconsin, not only did the 150-strong demostration turn violent, but a woman affiliated with the University actively allowed protesters to enter the University's administrative building so that protesters would deliver their petition to the school chancellor. In another corner of the U.S., Andy Coen, president of the student body at Southern Polytechnic Institute, was helping draft a student-based budget proposal at a large protest organized by the state Capitol Building this past March 15th. Katie Barlow, the president of University of Georgia's Student Government Organization, recently penned an Opinion piece in the AJC in which she herself suggested a budget proposal which would be more in tune with fitting students' and education needs. Some of her ideas include:
* a modest tuition increase to offset the administration's proposal to cut faculty
* Saving $13.7 million by reducing six-figure salaries by 10%
* Suspending $750,000 in state funding for the renovation of the university president's mansion.
* Separating the UGA Athletic Association and coach's salaries from state funds. As she states,
"the athletic asociation is one of the most profitable athletic franchises in the country, and under a budget crisis, it can survive decreased state support. Additionally, students would like a detailed account of how the $3.3 million in student-paid mandatory athletic fees subsidise this private corporation."
Sound like reasonable ideas? These, and other more relevant, pertinent ideas hold keys to alleviating the problems with public education, since they come from the trenches of where public education occurs, in the classrooms and communities where learning occurs. Until their input is taken into account, the only outlet these voices will have will be media outlets and protests, all which will become more strident as the problems increase.
These voices all point toward the true nature of the public school crisis. Ms. Barlow alluded to some of these: class size, teacher to student ratio, mismanagement of funds from the perspective of optimizing educational opportunities. Here in Georgia, the budget cuts crisis has acquired cataclysmical proportions. Georgia has proposed cutting $600 million from the state colleges' and university's budget, meaning faculty layoffs, program eliminations, and $1000 more per student in activity fees. The situation for K - 12 public school is worse. Every county in the Metro Atlanta area faces huge deficits and is facing cuts. All districts are considering furloughs, school closings, and even cutting social workers, school counselors and school police officers, which, as Bruce Moody, vice president of the PTSA at Creekside High School in Fairburn says "are really the backbone of our schools. When you add teachers to that, who will these children go to for help?" (AJC Metro 3/14)
DeKalb county faces an $88 million deficit, is proposing to cut 415 jobs, close anywhere from 4 to 12 schools, and cutting supplemental programs such as the Scientific Tools and Techniques program partnered with the Fernbank Museum, a program which a recent Emory professor labeled "a jewel of our educational enterprise." (AJC Opinion 3/12) This program, Mel Konner explains, which has given students the chance to explore science and technology through a hands-on approach, has motivated students to study and excel at science for the past 30 years.
Comparing students who had gone through the program with otherwise matched students who had not, the STT students were found on follow-up to be twice as likely to major in science in college, three times as likely to be involved in a career in schence and four times as likely to have won an award for science in college.
Dr. Konner goes on:
But the difference was much greater for African-American males. Average STT students had a science grade point average 7% higher than non STT youngsters, but for African-American males the difference was 19% [...] Thus one of our most at-risk groups in our student population seems to benefit most from this program, which some people mistakenly think of as a luxury directed at an elite group.
An interesting question might be to look at the price tag of this particular program, compare it to other proposals in the mix, and see how legislators and administrators could reframe things in such a way that belt tightening does not occur at the cost of what actually WORKS. Once again, this process is impossible without legislators and administrators' attempts to gain more community imput regarding their own education.
The issue of race, of course, especially here in Dixie, deserves its own essay. But just as a small sample, I wanted to state what some of the DeKalb County parents had to say at a contentious Citizens' Planning Task Force meeting recently, in which the school administration's objective to close schools met with resistance and dismay.
"No one on this [Citizen Task Force] had anything to do with the schools on there." Bruce McMillan states, voicing a general objection that they lacked input into which schools should be closed. "The pocket that has been targeted by the school system is an area that, I feel, is an area of least resistance. The affluent areas in the county, the ones with the highest tax base, none of those are being targeted."
Another objected to the fact that, of the 23 schools on the list, 19 are in his backyard. Another member alluded to DeKalb's murky racist past: "That means the kids will have to go out of the neighborhood to get a quality education, just like in the 1970's."
And in spite of stating that closing these schools will save DeKalb $2.34 million, other Task Force members state that the Administration has failed to provide the financial figures for each individual school.
Considering that almost reflexively the County would not only consider first cutting out the programs that most help these groups to learn, but also would simply slate to slash entire school districts without properly quantifying the costs both in community quality, education, and in ameliorating racial education disparities, is it any wonder that such gaping disparities exist in education?
* At the end of High School, white students are about six times as likely to be college-ready in biology than black students, and more than four times as likely to be prepared for college algebra
* Students from low-income families who graduate from high school scoring in the top testing quartile are no more likely to attend college than the lowest-scoring students from wealthy families.
* Black students are more than three times as likely to be expelled as white students
Whatever the reasons underlying the above statistics, they point to a large disparity in educational experience. Whether black students are being targeted through racist motivations, or whether the ways the school system have so failed them causes behavioral problems in these students, the solution is the same: reframe the public educational conversation so as to take into account why this demographic is so consistently underserved, and what, constructively, can turn the situation around.
I am the opposite of an expert, and much more could be said on the subject. But my husband is a teacher. He sees these things first hand. I am a so-called 'homeowner', whose taxes help to pay for Dekalb County's schools, in which a recent scandal has erupted quite different from the the likelihood of cheating on a flawed standardized test, involving fiscal irregularities, favoritism, and fraud, a subject on which I hope to elaborate at a later date. And, as I noted, I've been laboring of late in the trenches of community participation, where the ideas that I've encountered make a lot of sense. Thus, I'm bringing them to an assessment of what's happening in my own community. As in all of the other fiscal and policy problems that beset Georgia's approach to learning, and more generally as in each and every difficulty that our communities and our country and our planet face, a participatory approach to problem solving, an actively democratic approach, seems not only like a good idea, but also like the only thing that might lead to solution, resolution, and synthesis.