It takes two to tangle up the schools

The current New York Review of Books has a polemic by Diane Ravitch that provides an interesting counterpoint to the "Waiting for Superman" craze.  I have no great love for any particular variant of schools, but I find the arguments Ravitch makes here about the flaws of charter schools, the virtues of regular public schools, and the importance of investing in traditional public education pretty compelling.  


Ravitch lays out convincing evidence and arguments against the trope of poverty not being the reason kids fail and money not being the reason schools fail. The single data point I can draw on (my son's local public school) seems to support Ravitch's contentions.  It's a pretty good place.  The parents are involved, the principal runs a tight ship, the teachers teach, and the kids learn.  There are no major discipline problems, the building is in pretty good shape, and the parents raise a fair amount of money to support the school.  The basic reason it's a good school is that it is in a school zone that (by luck) is coterminous with a stable middle class neighborhood (that is in the process of turning into an upper middle class neighborhood).


The only thing stopping this school from becoming every bit as impressive as a wealthy suburban school or a fancy Manhattan private school is lack of money.  If the school had (I'm guessing), 30% more money, we'd have enriched curricula, activities, supplies, recess.  Instead, we get the basics, reasonably capably presented, a bit of sadness about how spartan our kids' school experience is, and relentless parental fundraising.

I also agree with what Ravitch has to say about the demonization of teachers and their unions.  I've been on both sides of  the union/management divide (and oddly enough am currently in a management union that is a subsidiary of the teachers' union), and have no particular love of unions.  They suck up a big piece of my paycheck in exchange for a pretty low rate of return in benefits and raises.  But: 1) every contract has two sides; you can't blame unions for the terms of contracts that management signs. 2) Unions may sometimes impede firing, but they don't hire, grant tenure, or stop management from giving merit raises. 3) It's a myth that "union work rules" stifle public sector productivity; civil service rules and crappy management are much more to blame for the shoddiness of the public sector business culture.


This not to say the unions have no role in any of this, but see point 1).  Politicians negotiate and sign public sector labor agreements and appoint the people who manage public sector agencies.  If you want better public sector workers (including teachers), you need politicians who look out for something other than their own electoral and personal interests, actually know something about the operations they ostensibly manage, and stop accepting political support from unions (as well as other special interests, but that's another rant).  In  New York there are  the added complications of the City's limited home rule and subordinate status to the State on labor and civil service matters.  This creates opportunities for our corrupt state legislators to accept campaign donations from public sector unions in exchange for writing counterproductive employment terms and conditions into State laws.  You can blame the unions for pushing these agendas, but as with politicians caving in to corporate special interests against the public interest, the bulk of the blame falls squarely on the politicians.


They way I see it, "saving our schools" is a matter of money, managerial/educational  competence, and politics.  To get this, we need an involved citizenry with a stake in the game.  In New York City, we have had the twin problems of the middle and upper classes opting out in favor of private schools and the lower classes either being too dysfunctional to contribute, or opting out in favor of parochial or charter schools.  If there's a silver lining, it's that private schools have become absurdly expensive, parochial schools are disappearing, and so many of us have dropped out of the classes that could afford these options in the past, that there is now a growing cohort of involved and informed parents militating for improvements in the core public schools system.  Bloomberg and Klein have probably lost the confidence of this cohort because of the testing fiascoes, which leaves a huge opportunity for the next generation of politicians.  I don't know who  (if anybody) will fill that void, but I'm interested in seeing who does.  And for now, sending my kid to a plain old public school.