As we head into 2012, it is time to reaffirm our most-important task for helping our kids succeed in school in life: Overhauling a failed, amoral system of education that almost guarantees that a third of all children will end up illiterate, on the path to dropping out of school, and ill-equipped to achieve their potential.
Certainly, Dropout Nation readers, we have gone through all the statistics and will continue to do so again. But as former National PTA CEO Byron V. Garrett once noted, the data only confirms what we already know. For all the arguments of educational traditionalists that the problem lies with poverty, the successes of schools in this country (and even entire nations around the world) in educating children from poor and minority households proves that argument an absolute falsehood — and those who continue that argument should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. This reality also proves lie to the argument that poor and minority children– including poor whites — are incapable of handling rigorous college-preparatory education.
For me, transforming American public education is personal. Way personal. Next year, my four year-old nephew who will head into the nation’s elementary and secondary schools. I am not going to stand for any system that neglects him. In a few years, my one year-old niece will heading into American public education. I will not stand for any system that degrades her. I have second cousins who are now heading into middle school. I am outraged at what our public schools do to children like them. And in a few years, I will be a father. , I will not stand for any system that all but ensures that my son or daughter has at least a one-in-three chance of becoming mired in academic, economic or social despair.
But this isn’t just about my children — and it shouldn’t just be about your kin. Every child in our schools, especially those stuck in dropout factories and failure mills, should have every opportunity to succeed in school and in life. They may not share my skin tone or yours. They may not be black or white. They may not even live in my neighborhood or on your block. But these kids are my children — and they are yours too. And they look like you when you were young, the way they look like me when I was six.
As the legendary Barry White noted in a song he wrote four decades ago, the people of tomorrow who will preserve our nation’s economy and society are the children of today. We aren’t doing well by them. Not at all. American public education has never likely been all that well-functioning. But this didn’t matter in an age in which one can earn a decent living — and for a period between 1945 and 1980, sustain a middle-class life — with ones own hands. We live in an increasingly knowledge-based economy in which what one does with their mind is more important than what can be done with one’s fingers. It is shameful that black, Latino, poor Asian, poor white, and young men regardless of race are almost guaranteed shoddy teaching, abysmal curricula, subpar school leadership, and cultures of mediocrity and failure that will not nurture your genius. And even worse, in most parts of the nation, Zip Code Education policies have ensured that their families cannot get them out of Titanic schools that do little for them.
Both John Winthrop, and later, Ronald Reagan, would talk about our nation being a shining city on a hill upon which the eyes of the world shall rest. More importantly, they both noted that because of this status, we cannot deal falsely with either God or fail to meet our obligation at the hill’s summit. How can we live up to this exalted status if half of our children enter into adulthood uneducated? How can we be children of God when we deal falsely with him on a matter that deals with the most-vulnerable of His creations? And how can any of us be moral people, regardless of our creed or worldview, if this crisis of low educational achievement continues to exist? In fact, if this crisis continues, America will eventually land into the ashbin of the past.
Certainly we are making some strides in overhauling American public education. But those who defend keeping this shameful system as is will not stop opposing any effort to transform it. For them, it is about comforting their ideological visions, their pocketbooks, and their allies and friends. This isn’t to say that these folks don’t care about children. What I will say is that they don’t care enough to provide all of our kids with high-quality schools at the center of their lives that can equip them to seek out brighter futures. Their defense of failed and amoral practices ensure that high-quality teaching and rigorous curricula remain as haphazard now as it was when my grandmother was growing up in the Great Depression. And for that, they deserve our constant scorn and strong, strident, factual criticism.
So it is important for all of us, especially those reformers in the Beltway, as well as Parent Power activists and social entrepreneurs at the grassroots and institutional levels, to keep driving. This means unapologetically articulating why a Model T system of education is absolutely unacceptable, offering solutions that can address myriad ills, and battling rhetorically, on the streets, in statehouses, and during election campaigns. And ultimately, remind everyone that high-quality education can help transform lives and communities. For the long run, it is the only solution for advancing our society, our economy, and the lives of every child, regardless of the color of their skin or their station in life.
We need a revolution, not an evolution, in American public education. Our children deserve nothing less.
