Parent trigger and charters: As we offer more school choice, what happens to children left behind?
Shanna Miles is an educator and a parent working in the metro Atlanta area. An avid literacy advocate, she lobbies to ensure that every child has access to a free and public library in a community.
She wrote this piece for the Monday print AJC education op-ed page.
By Shanna Miles
In the 1840s, Irish Catholic parents lobbied for local control of schools so that their children wouldn’t be indoctrinated by a Protestant curriculum.
In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower had to call in the National Guard to lead nine African-American children past a picket line of angry white parents who were outraged that their school was to be integrated.
Fast-forward a half-century or so, and the war between government and parents still rages with the passage of Amendment 1 and the introduction of the “Parent Trigger” charter bill. Now winding its way through the Legislature, House Bill 123 would allow parents and teachers to force a local school board to consider their petition to change their traditional public school into a charter school.
On the surface, the question seems to be, who should have control of the schools — parents or the government? But on closer inspection, another much deeper question arises: Whose responsibility is it to educate a child — society’s or the parent’s?
Business needs an educated workforce to ensure efficiency and profit. Governments need working citizens to pay taxes. Parents need their children to be educated so that they can feed, clothe and shelter themselves. It seems that everyone is on the same page, but there is a problem.
Free will.
We forget that education is compulsory by law. Even children who are not willing to learn — because their basic needs are not being met, they don’t like the curriculum, or they just don’t want to sit still for hours on end — are forced to be in school. And these students are corralled into classrooms, placed next to eager children, and set before a teacher who is charged with being not only educator, but a warden.
What was once a classroom has now become a prison.
Schools, limited by federal and state funding, are becoming increasingly ill-equipped to serve students who need mental health services, stable housing or intense remediation — all of which are not, and some argue cannot be, provided by the schools. Is it any wonder that parents and teachers want out of this situation?
So a solution is proposed, a panacea for those weary of the policy debates and federal mandates and endless arguments on the school board and Senate floors: the charter school, the ultimate opt-out.
With it, parents and teachers can create “safe havens” where only those students whose parents are willing to volunteer, submit to additional testing and adhere to a longer school day, and who are able to provide their own transportation, uniforms, textbooks, lunch, whatever, are able to attend. In essence, a charter school is a place where all parents, if not students, think exactly alike.
But what of the school with the students who are left behind?
It becomes a sanitarium, and the educational landscape devolves into a state of plague, where the most vulnerable students are quarantined into even more poorly funded “sick houses” as those with options huddle behind the iron gates of entrance requirements and parent covenants.
Are we forgetting that the kids left behind will grow up? Then what?
Do we build larger prisons? Upgrade our neighborhood security gates to include an armed guard?
We all want education; the “public” part is what most of us don’t like. But we don’t live on an island, and we can’t sail away from difficult people and difficult issues. As adults, we don’t get to opt out.
As HB 123 works its way through the legislative process, all of us need to decide whether we’re going to lobby as responsible members of a collective society, or cower like citizens under siege.
–from Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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113 comments Add your comment
John
February 19th, 2013
2:40 pm
Sandy Springs Parent: Way to Call it like it is, you couldn’t be more right on!! And I’m Black!!
Home-tutoring parent
February 19th, 2013
3:31 pm
I thank the Lord for Maureen. Her columns attract really smart, thoughtful posters. Except for me.
Here is what I’m looking at: children need to be in schools. What?!
Children don’t necessarily need to be in schools. What?!
My most memorable experiences include taking two boys to 9000+ feet in the California Sierras, Colorado Rockies, and Nevada Great Basin National Park. Also trout fishing in Montana, going way north to British Columbia, and south to Baja. Of course, we skiied through the trees in deep “pow” and caught mahis and ahis.
The coolest thing is my kids like coming home. We’re not “alienated”. My kids love visiting their grandparents, who are totally weird people. I mean absolutely strange.
My oldest son is in the army, my middle is teaching hs physics in Asia, my youngest just failed his PhD-track exams, had a good time teaching summer school last summer.
My wife is fighting a malpractice suit, even though she’s the doctor you want to have taking care of your baby.
Thurston Howell IV
February 19th, 2013
3:34 pm
@John
” There are no teacher unions in Georgia, Georgia is a right to work state. There are “so called unions” that only give representation to teachers but no bargaining aspect.”
Yet…On payday this month,teachers from Trenton to Folkston will turn over part of their hard won earnings to NEA , a union by their own admission. So why would these seemingly rational people,who are just a paycheck ahead of a sheriffs sale, give their money to an organization that can do so little for them?
You people are being played.
Home-tutoring parent
February 19th, 2013
4:03 pm
Ms. Downey is publishing awesome blogs. You posters are thoughtful. Every one of you.
I’m going to throw a monkey-wrench into this. Do we really need public schools, or any schools?
We start with 5-6-7 year olds. They have to be taught by people other than their parents. Who came up with this idea, and why did they come up with this idea?
Home-tutoring parent
February 19th, 2013
4:21 pm
I have this DIL. She wants to do a circumnavigation. Her parents have a Beneteau 45. She’s negotiating with her parents to let her take their boat around the world, or fail.
homeschooler
February 19th, 2013
4:23 pm
Good thought Home-tutoring parent. I’ve often said we could save a ton of money by doing away with Public Kindergarten (which is funny because now we’re talking about mass education of 4 yr olds). Seriously though, brick and mortar schools from age 6-16 would be my proposal. Before that, moms, dads, day care centers or maybe community organized learning centers or churches could teach kids basic ABC’s. Most kids are ready to learn by age 6 and I’ve seen many, many home schooled children who have had no formal education before age six quickly pick up reading, writing and basic math. We had a very good educational system when everybody started school in 1st grade. I went to kindergarten but was only slightly more prepared for 1st grade than those who didn’t.
17 and 18 yr olds could have the following options. Get a GED and go to work, enter an technical program to prepare for a trade or take on-line classes to get a high school diploma and hopefully go on to college.
When you home school you realize how ridiculous it is that our educational system works the way it does. Academically and developmentally there is no reason for kids to be in school before age 6 and in todays world of technology there is no reason for 17 and 18 yr olds to be housed in a building for 8 hrs a day.
Take away the component of “parents have to work and kids need to be supervised” and we could save a ton of money.
Home-tutoring parent
February 19th, 2013
4:38 pm
This girl took my son to Brooklyn. He hooked up with a boat builder.
Then tThey moved to the Med, bought a “fixer upper” small sailboat, and fixed it up.
I love teaching. I hate what it is becoming...
February 19th, 2013
5:30 pm
Homeschooler and Home-tutoring parent,
Both of you had the option of staying home and educating your children. Be grateful for that, but don’t assume that everyone has the financial ability, educational background or patience to do so.
I am beginning to see a push by some individuals in the political area who wish to use “homeschooling” as yet another tactic to remove options from women and force them back into the home and out of the workforce. I dislike seeing the homeschooling movement used as a political football by anyone – and that goes for those who villify homeschoolers as well. If a woman chooses to be a stay at home mom, and has the ability to do so, more power to her. My own mom was a stay at home mom, and I will forever be grateful she was there for me in my early years. However, not all women want to make that choice, and they should not be pressured into feeling it is their duty to do so.
FlaTony
February 19th, 2013
5:53 pm
This move is a cop-out by our state leaders to address the true problems. They are literally walking away from the children of our state and their learning needs. They are refusing to provide adequate resources for schools to do their jobs, and they continue to move legislation that is detrimenttal to ourr public schools. The vast majority of our schools are doing a good job. Yet, we are all penalized by the politicians.
GrD
February 19th, 2013
10:07 pm
These “parent trigger” parents think they know about education. I wish they would put all this passion into PARENTING! Always talking about their gifted child/ren, who do not want to do the classwork. Most parents are in denial, thinking the child is a “genius”! They all think their children are geniuses, but come to school exhausted, distracted, and are there for the teacher to “entertain” them because they are “bored.” These parents cannot and will not accept the fact that their child is not a genius, and take all their waking hour trying to discredit the teacher, school, and school system.
AlreadySheared
February 20th, 2013
9:40 am
So, following through on the author’s plague/sanatorium model, she seems to think it’s better to keep the healthy in close quarters with the sick. Why? Who does this?
An old, out-of-use idiom is ‘one bad apple spoils the barrel’. Ms. Miles is much more concerned about reducing the average numbers of bad apples in a classroom than she is with the disruptions that the good apples have to suffer through.
John
February 20th, 2013
10:26 am
Thurston Howel IV
No teacher in Geogia HAS to pay dues to a union, it is voluntary and by most accounts no one does, those people you know in Trenton et al are fools for doing it. AGAIN Georgia is a right to work state and no one has to belong to a union. These “teacher” unions are false and do nothing but give you a lawyer for inital action but no representaiton after one meeting. The people you know are foolish for CHOOSING to belong to one. They should save their money for a real lawyer if one is needed.
Ole Guy
February 20th, 2013
2:24 pm
I know nobody want’s to hear nor read this and will, once again, scoff indignation at the very thought…SHUDDER…ZOUNDS Batman…
“What will we do for the children who find themselves…”left behind”?” is the big question which keeps folks up at night a-frettin’ an a-sweatin’. YOU KICK EM IN THE SIX, THAT’S WHAT YOU DO. We keep emiting dogma and pontification over the need for academic rigor, then we turn around and say…”Oh, the poor children who (through absolutely no fault of their own) are left behind”…GET A FREQUIN LIFE!
As I have so-often pointed out, EVERYONE…the schools, the parents; teachers, the Easter Bunny, Santa; even the good humor man selling ice cream bars…all need to stop pissing around with these kids. These are the very same kids who, as adults, will demand “special-case handling” throughout their miserable lives (recall an earlier blog where the college kid brings his disatisfaction, over a grade, to the court’s attention. As I poingnantly brought out in that blog, these kids…regardless of their status as college grads, etc, will most-suredly grow up to be nothing but losers in life’s dirty little game of “take it on the chin, get up, and get back in”.
You can continue to spew concern over the bumpy roads over which these kids must traverse, or you can teach them to mimick that bunny commercial where the bunny “keeps on tickin’ and takes a lickin’. Like those gd college kids who protest what they feel are injustices in the grading process, they learn that their choices are limited to two: 1) roll over and capitulate to the “tough times” or 2) get up, wipe the “blood” off, and get on with it.
These kids who “find themselves left behind” will…with the help of teachers who dare to demand just a little more than the kid thinks he is capable of…ultimately prevail. By constantly fretting over their “discomforts”, all we do is set them up for ultimate failure.
Have a good day, Prof!