Presently in Connecticut, we have over more than 220,000 children in Connecticut — or one out of every two kids — attend low-performing schools.These are children who do not vote, do not sign medical release forms, and do not sign the educational contracts that govern their educational experiences. And if the parents of those children try to advocate for their child’s educational rights, they will, more than likely, experience severe push back and retaliation from the status quo.
One would think that with the futures of these kids on the line, and $300 million if taxpayer dollars at risk, Connecticut’s legislators would ensure that families, along with administrators, small businesses and other taxpayers would be at the decision making table to help turn around low-performing schools. This would seem to be logical. Yet the only stakeholders allowed in the lawmakers “private” back door “education reform” conversations are the state’s teachers’ unions.
As a parent of color, knowing the achievement is comprised of majority people of color and impoverished communities and after seeing the “secret” partnerships between teachers’ unions and lawmakers, I can only conclude that for these people, the educational needs of some of our children don’t matter.
Ayn Rand once stated that the rights of individuals aren’t subjected to a vote. And this is especially true when it comes to the rights of our children to opportunities for a great education. Yet we as families struggle to give our kids the same opportunities to a better life as we did back in the civil rights struggle against Jim Crow in the last century.
Martin Luther King once declared that the law can’t force men to love me, but it can keep them from killing me. Today, we need laws and policies in education that allow our children, especially children of color and those who live in poverty in rural and urban areas, to get the high-quality education they deserve.
Yet we have teachers’ unions who essentially want to deny our kids opportunities for high-quality education. What they do is the 21st century of lynching. It leads our kids from schools to prisons, where we as taxpayers spend $41,000 a year to incarcerate men and women who could have been kept out of jails if they received a great education. And we have political leaders who support this 21st century form of lynching because only some kids matter to them.
As families, we must vote for people that are willing to pass laws that end 21st-century lynching and keep our dollars from being spent on ineffectiveness teaching and schooling. When more than 40 percent of our children are condemned to prison and poverty, and $300 million dollars of our taxpayer dollars are wasted, we as families, homeowners, business owners, and college students cannot afford for this to continue.
It starts by demanding our legislators to support Gov. Dan Malloy’s SB 24, which will start our efforts towards giving our kids high-quality schools and teachers. We know that the law, as Gov. Malloy originally drafted, will not solve the entire states crisis. But it will help level the playing field towards equitable access to opportunity. And it is the most comprehensive education reform plan produced by any leader in this state.
It must be paired together with efforts to help our kids read, overhauling how we teach our kids how to read. Certainly the “universal reading” bill being proposed could help reduce the nation’s worst racial and economic achievement gaps by retaining third graders that don’t make the grade. But it will not work without passing SB 24, which will hold teachers and principals accountable through comprehensive evaluation of their performance as instructors and school leaders.
Yet other legislators want to support the universal reading law without passing SB 24 as originally crafted. How can our house speaker and senate leaders implement this effort at improving literacy without holding those who teach our children and lead our schools responsible and accountable?
The fact that they stood before teachers’ union leaders this week and pledged to not hold them accountable boggles the mind. What these legislative leaders have said is crystal clear: Teachers’ unions are more important than one out of every two kids who attend our schools. And that they will allow teachers’ union leaders and those who support them to bully families and other taxpayers who only want the best for all of our children.
This is why the uprising among families to protect the rights of their kids to high-quality educational opportunities, both in Connecticut and across the country, has only just begun. We are tired of political leaders and teachers’ union officials who make education all about their interests and not about the children we love.