BC March
29, 2012 By Carl Bloice
On the same day a national task force warned that the country’s
security and economic prosperity are at risk if America’s schools don’t
improve, California State University system said it would shut out thousands of
mid-year applicants for spring terms starting in January.
According to the Oakland Tribune, only eight of the system’s
23 campuses will accept transfer students for the spring 2013 term, and none
will accept new freshmen. “The decision will leave thousands of community-college
students with an unenviable choice:
Spend the time and money taking unnecessary community-college
classes for an extra semester or drop out and try to make ends meet until Cal
State reopens its doors,” wrote Matt Krupnick.
“The dominant power of the 21st century will
depend on human capital,” the 30-member task force, led by former Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City’s
school, declared this week. “The failure to produce that capital will undermine
American security.” This statement came shortly after U. S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan told a Howard University gathering, “President Obama has
challenged all of us to lead the world with college graduates by 2020. But we
cannot reach that goal unless educational opportunities are extended to
everyone fairly and accurately.”
Regrettably, the contrast between what is being said about
education in our country, and what is actually happening on the ground, serves
to illustrate the galling amount of flim-flam and hypocrisy that characterizes
today’s public discussion of the nation’s schools from kindergarten to the
university level.
Since Duncan took up his post, somewhere in the vicinity
of 270,000 teachers and other public school employees have lost their jobs
because state and local education budgets have been slashed. “The teachers who have
not been laid off have also been deeply affected by the economic downturn:
class sizes are larger, after-school and arts enrichment programs have been cut,
and an increasing number of their students are relying on safety net sources
for health services and other basic needs,” observed the New York Times March 7.
In California alone, the number of full-time teachers has
decreased by 32,000 statewide over the past four years.
It’s not Duncan’s fault or the Administration’s. The crisis
has arisen in part because of the economic recession and the responses to it.
The problem is however lofty the proclamations are about the value of education,
the schools, teachers and students are still getting the short end of the
austerity stick. Regrettably, the
task of conducting a struggle to improve the schools - or at least to prevent
their further decimation—has fallen largely upon the teachers, instructors and
professors, a task not made any easier by the incessant attacks upon them.
When President Obama met with the nation’s governors last
month he said, “Too many states are making cuts that I think are too big.
Budgets are by choice, so today I’m calling on all of you: invest more in education,
invest more in our children.”
“California public schools are in crisis - and they are getting
worse,” educator Duane Campbell wrote recently. “This is a direct result of massive budget cuts imposed by
the legislature and the governor in the last four years. Total per pupil
expenditure is down by over $1,000 per student. The result: massive class size increases.
Students are often in classes too large for quality learning. Supplementary
services such as tutoring and art classes have been eliminated. Over 14,000
teachers have been dismissed, and thousands more face layoffs this fall.”
“California schools are now 47th in the nation
in per pupil expenditure and 49th in class size,” continued Campbell,
a Professor (emeritus) of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at CSU-Sacramento
and the area chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. “Our low achievement scores on national
tests reflect this severe underfunding.”
I had to laugh out loud last Sunday when the New York Times
Thomas Friedman indignantly decried Egypt’s “deficit of modern education.” “Our
response should have been to shift our aid money from military equipment to
building science-and-technology high schools and community colleges across
Egypt,” he wrote. I’m certainly
for assistance to Egyptian education, and $1.3 billion in aid to the Egypt’s
hardly-pro-democracy military serves no useful purpose. Still, why couldn’t some
of our country’s bloated military budget be directed toward building
science-and-technology high schools and community colleges across the U.S?
After all, Rice, Klein and their panel say it’s a matter
of national security.
Media reports on the Rice-Klein panel’s conclusions have
emphasized its recommendations having to do with the usual litany of
educational “reforms,” including school choice and vouchers - “so many students
aren’t stuck in underperforming schools.”
According to the Associated Press, the report does, however,
add a new element to the debate, a “national security readiness audit” that “can
be used to judge whether schools are meeting national expectations in education”
especially as regards a “common core initiative to include skill sets critical
to national security such as science, technology and foreign languages.”
Evidently, some people think that it’s a good idea to posit
education as a national security imperative rather than what it should be - an
indispensible element of a functioning democratic society. It sounds a lot like
a desire to produce graduates fit for military service rather than
scientifically, culturally and technologically equipped citizens.
“I don’t think people have really thought about the national
security implications and the inability to have people who speak the requisite
languages who can staff a volunteer military, the kind of morale and human
conviction you need to hold a country together. I don’t think people have
thought about it in those terms,” Klein told AP.
There will probably be a measure on the California ballot
in November that would provide new funding for the schools and somewhat lessen
the impact of the current crisis. If it fails, as many as 25,000 qualified
applicants could to be turned away by the CSU system next year.
“The California economy needs to invest in roads, bridges,
telephone lines, communications systems, clean energy and quality education,”
writes Campbell. “These are the down payments that make prosperity possible.” Conservative
opposition to any new tax ignores the undeniable, historic fact that prosperity
depends upon having a viable educational system and a well functioning infrastructure.
Rather than invest in something that pays itself back many times over, the Republicans
have led the effort to starve public education of desperately needed revenue.”
“The good news is polling consistently shows that the California
voters are willing to pay for a quality public education system. The hurdle to
putting these poll numbers to the test has been getting such a historic choice
and opportunity onto the ballot. It appears that this November Californians
just may finally have a chance to make their voices heard.”
“The American people are right to be concerned about our
education system,” writes Diana Epstein, senior education policy analyst at the
Center for American Progress. “The United States suffers from persistent achievement
gaps between groups of students defined by race or family income. And our
students also rank well behind those in economically competitive countries on international
academic-achievement tests. Racial and income achievement gaps run counter to
America’s founding ideals of an equal and just society. Further, lower levels
of achievement are also associated with poorer health, lower earnings, and
higher levels of incarceration.”
Noting that federal education spending is projected to be
reduced by 8 percent or 9 percent next year, Epstein writes, “Cuts of this
magnitude will make it far more difficult for schools to provide the education
that our students need in order to grow our economy and rebuild the middle
class. Deeper cuts would put our students even further behind where they need
to be.”
Taking aim at the education cuts contained in the budget
proposals of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, Epstein
continues: the cuts “are shortsighted and harmful for a number of reasons.
First of all, continued investment in education is critical in order to put our
economy on the path to sustained growth. Second, a reduction in federal support
would take resources away from critically important programs at a time when
states are also making significant cuts to education. Third, federal education
programs provide more equitable resources for students who need it most -
without federal support, many hard-fought gains would erode for children living
in poverty.”
“To achieve desired levels of economic growth and live up
to our founding ideals, the United States must increase the overall level of
achievement of students in the K-12 education system and close both international
achievement gaps and the persistent achievement gaps between groups of American
children defined by ethnicity or family income. Simply put, the House budget
plan is a huge step in the wrong direction.”
What are needed now are big steps in the right direction,
something missing from the much discussed proposals emanating from either the
conservative or the liberal reformers.
What the Rice-Klein panel’s
recommendations do not include is adequate warning about the harm being currently
inflicted on the nation’s schools, or the crying need to call a halt to the
funding cutbacks and teacher layoffs. Thus it avoids what I think is the question
at the heart of the situation: why do there have to be “underperforming schools”
and why is it that the richest and most powerful country on the planet appears
to be unwilling or unable to afford to adequately educate its younger
generations?
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is
a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of
the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked
for a healthcare union.
No comments:
Post a Comment