PJ Media

“Is there anyone out there who really believes the education problem is a shortage of money? Can you really say that with a straight face? ”

Well, in a very broad sense, “the education problem” is that we’re basically asking the schools to fix society. They can only do so much; beyond that, truly substantial change is needed, reaching far beyond the schools. But that aside – yes, Jeffrey, there are, many, many people, from researchers to teachers to regular citizens.

Remember, “the education problem” isn’t the widespread failure of generic, undifferentiated “public schools”. Well-funded public schools serving a relatively affluent and educated population do fine, as do similar private schools. “The education problem” is that underfunded schools serving high-poverty, often majority-minority populations, with generally low levels of education, in areas with high levels of violence, drugs, social chaos, struggling famillies, and even environmental hazards. Now ask yourself – which situation might require more resources?

Don’t forget, literal school funding captures only one part of the picture. When one looks at the affluent schools, one has to add in the massive, high-return investments – of social, cultural, fiscal capital – that these middle+ parents are providing to help their children succeed. What’s the value of nightly bedtime readings by well-educated, comfortably literate parents? Of being surrounded by adults modeling not just the expectation but the possibility and practices of middleclass+ success, and the value of education? If being constantly bathed in an high-vocabulary environment, unconsciously trained in a specifically middle-class discourse of questioning and negotiation? Of being safe, safe enough so that one’s parents fear the latest media bogeyman, not stray bullets? Of being buffered from the stresses and strains of poverty, drugs, and violence? Of having an abundant & high-quality diet? Of low levels of lead – which seems to have even worse effects on learning and behavior than previously feared? Of – etc., etc., etc.

Now, proportionately, I’d guess poor but functioning parents spend as many/even more resources on their kids as the most hyper-organized soccer mom (although much of this is invisible to the mainstream – an investment of money in new, high-price&quality clothes for school says care, but a similar or greater investment of careful labor in a multitude of brightly festooned braids says nothing; skills necessary for survival on the street rarely transfer over to school success). Countless poor children have had in their parents or guardians models of strength, perseverance, love, and faith. But where affluent parents send their kids off to school (public or private) with massive advantages – equal to what, a doubling of school spending? more? – poor kids face massive disadvantages.

That’s what those public schools – serving urban inner cities or impoverished rural regions – are faced with. One not-insubstantial chunk of the budget for high-poverty urban school systems? Trying to make sure the kids have at least two meals a day (hard to learn when you haven’t really eaten since yesterday afternoon, y’know?)

It’s pretty obvious that adequate funding not just helps, but is necessary. With adequate funding, you can – for example – reduce class size, which has been shown to provide substantial and lasting improvement especially for poor kids.

Or – one major problem in impoverished schools is that an obscene number of new teachers leave in the first few years – the school, the district, perhaps the profession – so that there’s a constant turnover of inexperienced teachers making up a high proportion of the teaching staff. It’s not a surprise – kids fresh out of college are tossed right into the classroom by themselves, to deal with 30+ (at a time) extremely challenging kids in a extraordinary difficult situation without much support. (Talk to actual inner city teachers about the feel-good fictionalized fantasies depicted in Hollywood/made-for-tv movies about inner city schools, and they’ll laugh, because those pretend schools are often so much better than the real thing. Look, there’s glass in the windows, and a working door! Ha! S/he raised her voice once/opened up/pulled off some quirky stunt, and they all sat up straight and started behaving – ha ha!) And many experienced, talented teachers aren’t going to try filling those vacancies – working extremely hard in a sometimes soul-sucking (and physically dangerous) job is one thing, but in conditions where nothing you do seems to matter . . .well that’s another thing entirely.

But enough funding to offer serious mentoring and support for new teachers, and working conditions – enough support staff, some supplies, small classes, etc. – where one can see the difference one’s making, etc. – well, you can work that out for yourself.

And you can get enough high quality specialists that you can catch kids early and provide intensive (and expensive) intervention, so that they don’t end up in third grade unable to read, or in midle school grades and grades behind, unlikely ever to catch up, and often deciding that at least they can excel in making trouble . . .

And etc., and etc., and etc. It’s ridiculously obvious – but of course, there’s an enormous amount of energy expended to not see this, so that it isn’t obvious. That’s why we have people talking about the massive failures of “the public schools” – when, again, affluent public schools are doing fine. That’s also one reason (besides ideological fixations and partisan strategy) that there’s so much shrieking about unions and bureaucracy, and such naked . . . loathing, I’d have to say . . . directed at pubic school teachers. The last is particularly bizarre for people who know (or are) actual public school teachers, especially in poor areas, and who know how little the fantasy of underachieving, lazy,8-3 with summers off incompetents actually fits. No, not all teachers are perfect, unions and bureaucracies have genuine issues, and for adequate funding to be effective there are concessions from various parties that would need to be made – but these are practical issues, ways to work out a problem, which is why it doesn’t come up here. Instead, they function as devil-figures, in a discourse that serves to obscure the reality of the situation, to render it non-obvious.

______
“ If they can’t deliver success, then they lose in the marketplace. And that is a good thing.”

And the voice of the ideologue will be heard in our lands . . . After all, one might well believe that building failure into the system is unfortunately necessary if one wants good schools, yet still realize, and seek to ameliorate, the cost to actual poor children hidden away behind blithe references to “los[ing] in the marketplace.” For ideologues, swept up in the abstract beauty of their grand plans, such trifling details are completely unimportant.