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Monday, February 9, 2009
Public needs schools that listen, not vouchers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before my twins entered first grade, I sent a note to the principal asking if one of them could have the same teacher who taught my older children in first grade and was dearly loved by them. Close to retirement, this teacher would be one of the few that my teens and my younger kids would ever share in common.
With only four first-grade classes, the odds were already good that one of my pair would end up in her class. Neither did. And when I inquired, the principal suggested it was because I asked.
The class was not full. In fact, the principal added students to the roster even after school started. Nor had there been a long list of requests, she said. And, yes, the principal acknowledged, either of the twins would have been a fine fit for the class. But she just didn’t believe in honoring parent requests even when it was possible and painless to do so.
That uncompromising posture — shared by many school leaders across the state — has helped lay the groundwork for the voucher bill introduced last week in the state Legislature that would allow all parents to use tax dollars to send their kids to private schools.
Let me be clear. I think the voucher bill is counterproductive legislation that will only help its sponsor’s political career. However, I also think the bill represents an overdue wake-up call for public schools that they must be more responsive to parents.
Schools can’t afford to brush off parents as irrelevant, irritating and uninformed. They can’t ask parents to hold bake sales, chaperone class trips and organize field days and then deny them a meaningful voice in their children’s education.
I wouldn’t pull my kids out of public school because they didn’t get the teacher I wanted — I’m aware of the many pressures on principals, and can recall only one other time in 16 years that I even met with a principal about one of my children. But I left the principal’s office that day feeling that she valued absolute control more than parental goodwill, and that she preferred parents be seen and not heard. For the rest of her tenure, I kept my distance and my tongue.
During legislative hearings on vouchers, many parents testified to far greater disappointments with their local public schools. I recognize that for some parents, public school will never be good enough; they will always find reasons why their children belong in private schools. But there are also parents who have been pushed out of public schools by repeated indifference to their concerns or rigid adherence to policy and procedure.
At the hearings, parents described public schools that wouldn’t accelerate bright kids who were way ahead of their peers, often because of the administrative headaches involved. Conversely, parents complained about schools that were slow to provide their struggling student with individualized help. Parents told lawmakers that they found private schools more responsive and more flexible in such instances.
In battling the voucher bill, public education advocates can and should point to research raising doubts about the effectiveness of vouchers. But the most forceful defense against vouchers is a receptive, creative and innovative public school system that doesn’t treat parents as uninvited guests, that doesn’t wield policy as a shield and where children are more than faces in the crowd.
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