I’ve been holding off on writing the third part of this series on education reform and the Democratic Party because I thought to myself, “the people who need to listen to this — won’t.” In fact, they didn’t when members of my party gleefully defeated a key piece of President Obama’s education agenda. They made it clear they are not interested in thinking about how education reform really should be a key democratic issue.
In part one of this series, I challenged the premise of the Democratic Party’s resistance to education reform and the contradictory nature of the Party’s arguments. In part two, I laid out how it is possible to be pro-union and not agree with the teacher’s union 100 percent of the time.
from St. Louis, Mo.
Now, in part 3, I want to talk about the common sense education policy solutions to statewide problems in our current education system.
Briefly, first the problems:
1. 73% percent of Missouri graduates taking the ACT are not ready for college in all four tested subjects.
2. Without significant policy change, it will take decades to close the achievement gap between black students and white students; Hispanic students and white students; and poor student and non-poor students.
3. The students who need the most support are the ones least likely to have access to high-quality early childhood education.
These are not problems Missouri can ignore for long. Job creators can read the ACT reports and see the high levels of college remediation required for many Missouri students just like I can. They will, if they haven’t already, begin taking note of our poor outcomes because it’s bad for business to have a work force that is unable to compete and innovate. It is mind-boggling to me that so many Republicans, especially the self -proclaimed “pro business, rural” ones, are unable to see this connection. But worse than that, it is disappointing to me that the party that prides itself on providing opportunity for the underdog, has largely put their head in the sand rather than embrace the need for change in our education system. Luckily, forward thinking Democrats like President Barack Obama, Mayor Corey Booker, California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, along with former AFT and NEA leadership are leading the charge to promote these changes.
Democrats constantly find themselves on defense about education reform because we are fighting from a position of weakness about this issue. We are attacking anyone who has an opposing view about the issue and vilifying them rather then engaging them in their ideas and data. That’s not the Democratic Party I worked over 12 years all over the country for. We are the intellectuals, not the reactionaries.
The Solutions:
1. More high quality options. Consider for a moment the father who can’t afford to send his child to a private school but knows the education his child is receiving is sub-par so he sends his child to a public charter school. The child’s attitude and outcomes improve which makes the parent happy.
You may point to the fact that this does not happen very often and that public schools are outperforming the charter schools in St. Louis. That’s only half true. Only the selective enrollment schools (meaning the schools get to choose who attends their school based on testing — presumably a standardized test) are outperforming the charter schools in St. Louis. Charter schools, which are not selective enrollment, are outperforming every neighborhood St. Louis public school at their grade level. When the school is not up to standards, it is closed, like the ill-fated Imagine Academy, and more recently Gordon Parks in Kansas City. By contrast, when a public district school fails it continues on and on and on. I do not dispute that charter schools need to find the formula for faster success; they cannot take five years to show results. However, the fact that charters can change quickly, that they can be closed for lack of progress, and that parents are able to decide when it is time to come or go puts them light years ahead of district schools.
2. Evaluate teachers on student academic growth. This is very simple. Under George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, schools were evaluated on the number of students who were proficient. While this highlighted the achievement gap, it did nothing to reward the hundreds of thousands of teachers who were making huge academic gains with students coming to them well below grade level.
In my wife’s first year of teaching fourth grade, most of her students were reading on a second grade level when they entered her classroom. For her school to get credit under NCLB, she would have had to make three years worth of academic growth in just nine months. That is nearly impossible to do when more than 15 of her 23 kids were well below grade level. What she was capable of doing, and did do, is make 1.5 to two years worth of academic growth with each of those 23 kids. If Missouri adopts a value-added model of evaluating teachers, she and her school would get credit for these significant gains, if they don’t, she and her school would be deemed a failure.
3. Create a universal pre-K program with rigorous standards and the highest levels of accountability. For the last year, my daughter has been attending University City Children’s Center. This is one of the premier early childhood centers in the Saint Louis region. It is mixed income and extremely diverse. I have watched as the highly talented staff at UCCC worked with the two- and three-year-olds in her classroom from all kinds of backgrounds. Each of the children in her room, from a U.S. Senator’s grandchild to children with teenage single mothers who dropped out of school, knows his or her ABCs, can identify colors and shapes, and most importantly has learned social behaviors necessary for a successful academic career and life. The problem is this center can only hold about 180 kids. This kind of mixed income, mixed finance model works. It is expensive to replicate, but Missouri’s children are worth it.
In the end though, opponents of education reform are choosing to look at the issue as an “us vs. them” battle. In truth, our main objective is not to destroy public schools but to ask for our schools to change the way and idea they educate our children.
Martin Casas lives in St. Louis with his wife and very funny daughter. He is the former owner of Frontyard Features and currently “guy who runs the thing” at Grand Market at new outdoor marketplace in Grand Center. He is also active in his community, working on whichever issues cross his path.
