Commentary: Don't fall for the 'school choice' scam
Every morning when I wake up, I open my computer and go directly to Seacoastonline.com, the obituaries section, to see if my name is listed there. If it isn’t, I start to think about what I will do that day in between doctors’ visits, occasional exercise and several meals and snacks.
Today the news seems to be focusing a lot on public education, which has always been a hot potato, given that about 60% of towns’ budgets goes to fund public education, and the results are increasingly disappointing. You would think spending $15,000-$20,000 annually per pupil would get you some level of competency in graduating seniors, and in some communities that is true, but overall we seem to be falling behind many other developed countries. A friend of mine teaches mathematics at the graduate level at a New York university, and he says by rights he should fail every student in his class.
Let’s take a look at public education back in the 1950s and '60s, the period when I attended public schools in Philadelphia. Public schools in Philadelphia and New York City had gotten so bad that well-intentioned leaders like Graham Finney and Richardson Dilworth decided it was time for radical change. Their answer was to decentralize running the schools and turn everything over to the parents. This was perhaps the worst decision ever in the history of public education in America. The architects’ view was: “If professionals can’t do a decent job running the schools, why not let the parents have a go at it.” After all, we already had more than 13,000 school boards running schools in smaller cities and towns across America, and these were comprised mostly of parents, not professional educators. Essentially they were taking the small-town model and extending it to large city schools.
In the 1950s, there was a stand-up comic named Sam Levinson who told a lot of folksy, humorous events from his childhood. He told of the time he brought a note home from school addressed to his father, which read: “Mr. Levinson, your son shows signs of astigmatism. His father slapped him, and said: “To a teacher, you show signs of astigmatism?” Back then the teacher’s word was law; you didn’t attack the teacher, the principal or the school board because your little genius was failing in math. Parents are not psychologically equipped to manage their children’s education. If they are good parents, they are too emotionally involved. If they are bad parents, they are more concerned with what they don’t want their children to learn.
Now we come to the opinion piece by Ingrid Jacques in the March 1 edition of Seacoastonline, claiming that school choice is a movement sweeping the country. She quotes such education experts as Nikki Haley and education research fellow Jason Bedrick at the right wing think tank Heritage Foundation. Bedrick says: “… parents are clamoring for policies that allow them to choose the learning environments that align with their values and work best for their children” WRONG! If parents get to decide what is taught to their children, what is NOT taught to their children, which books will be removed from school library shelves, which teachers will be disciplined or removed for violating community standards, and which “learning environments” will be suitable for your kids, then the education system in your community has failed.
Folks, don’t fall for this scam. These are the same people who got Roe v. Wade taken off the books, eliminated pension rights for lifetime employees, want to “privatize” Social Security, eliminate Medicare and Medicaid and restrict voting rights. And now they want to gut public education. Educating our kids is perhaps our greatest responsibility as citizens; it is too important to be left to political ideologues.
Oscar Boreth is a retired CPA and management consultant, and former owner of The Dog House on Kittery’s Memorial Circle. He lives in Kittery, Maine.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Commentary: Don't fall for the 'school choice' scam
