Who’s Afraid of Public Schools? by Steven Singer

Originally posted at: https://gadflyonthewallblog.com/2019/03/16/whos-afraid-of-public-schools/?fbclid=IwAR1jUJ02Cef-1koudVcETUz_4EYwMCMZa5657tDm6zMBTctPq-ZfpgCBPyE

Public schools are the bogeymen of American life.

 
We so often hear the bedtime story of “Failing Schools” that it’s no wonder some folks will do anything to ensure their kids get in elsewhere.

 
And let’s be honest. It’s the same impulse behind the latest college admissions cheating scandal.

 
A group of wealthy – though not too wealthy – parents thought their children should be able to enroll in the most prestigious schools.

 
So they bribed college admissions officers, cheated on standardized tests or paid coaches or other officials to accept their children as college athletes even if their kids had never played the sport.

 
We see the same kind of thing everyday in public schools – a confederacy of white parents terrified that their kids might have to go to class with black kids. So they dip into their stock portfolios to pay for enrollment at a private or parochial school.

 
Or they take advantage of a tax scholarship or school voucher to avoid an institution with low test scores by enrolling in one where students don’t have to take the tests at all.

 
Or they cross their fingers and enter their kid in a lottery to a charter school praying their precious progeny will escape the horrors of being treated just like everyone else’s kids.

 
And they call it a meritocracy!

 
What a joke!

 
They pretend that their children have earned special treatment.

 
WRONG.

 
No child deserves favoritism – paradoxically –  because all children do!

 
There are really two important but related points here:

 
1)  The children of the privileged don’t deserve a better education than anyone else’s.

2)  Children who come from wealthy families (and or from privileged social circumstances) don’t do anything to distinguish themselves from the underprivileged.

 
But these nouveau riche parents tried to bribe the way forward for their kids anyway even though to do so they had to launder the money through a fake “charity.” They didn’t care that doing so would earn them a tax deduction and thus result in even less money for the underprivileged. They didn’t care about the underlying inequalities in the system. No. They only wanted their children to remain in the class of America’s chosen few.

 
And the best way to do that is with cold, hard cash.

 
America doesn’t run on Dunkin. It runs on greenbacks. Dinero. Swag. Bling. The prosperity doctrine made physical, quantifiable and mean.

 
No one really denies that there are two Americas anymore. We just lie to ourselves about how you get placed in one or the other.

 
And that lie is called excellence, quality, worth – the ultimate in class war gaslighting.

 
It’s a deception that this scandal has shattered to pieces.

 
The privileged don’t earn their privilege. It’s not something they possess on the basis of intelligence or hard work shown through test scores. They don’t have it because of drive, determination or grit – once again shown through test scores. They have it based on wealth – the kind of wealth that buys time and resources to either pass the tests or bribe the gatekeepers to change the scores.

 
Think about it.

 
George W. Bush got into Yale and Harvard and graduated with a 2.35 GPA. Why? Not because he had the grades and demonstrated his worth. He was a legacy. Like at least one third of all admissions to Ivy League schools, he got in purely because he had family who graduated from there.

 
You think Donald Trump threatened the College Board not to release his grades because they were all A’s!?

 
According to one account, his scores were merely “respectable.” Yet he still dropped out of the prestigious Fordham University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years based on family connections and the reputation of his father, Fred Trump, one of the wealthiest businessmen in New York at the time.

 
Moreover, his kids, Don Jr. and Ivanka, were both enrolled at Penn around the same time as their father made hefty contributions. They began classes in 1996 and 2000, respectively, just as the university and its private Manhattan clubhouse received more than $1.4 million in pledged donations from Trump, the school newspaper reported.

This is not merit. This has nothing to do with what these people deserve. It is money – a pure transaction, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

 
The only thing that separates what the Trumps and the Bushes did with this latest scandal – the so-called Operation Varsity Blues – is the amount of wealth involved.
If you’re super rich, you can get away with it. If you’re just rich, you’d better not get caught.

 
And if you’re poor or middle class, you’d better stay in your lane.

 
But there shouldn’t be any lanes on this highway. Or at least they should only be in place to maximize fairness and student success.

 
We sneer at the idea of Affirmative Action but only because it’s directed at people of color. No one says anything about the real Affirmative Action that’s been in place since before our country even began – the system of reciprocity and privilege keeping wealthy white families in positions of power like Lords and Ladies while the rest of us serfs scramble for their leavings.

 
All children deserve the same opportunities to succeed. All children deserve the chance to get an excellent education. All children should attend a first class school filled with highly educated and experienced teachers who can draw on plenty of resources, wide curriculum, tutoring, counseling and support.

 
And the only way we’ll ever achieve that is through a robust system of public schools.

 
I’m not saying they’re perfect. In many neighborhoods, they’ve been sabotaged and surgically dismantled, but that’s a problem with an easy solution. Invest in public schools!

 
Because the stated purpose of public education, the reason it exists at all, is equity.
The alternatives – private and charter schools – are essentially unequal.  That’s their raison d’être – to create a market that justifies their existence.

 
In order for charter and private schools to be a thing, there must be schools that don’t otherwise meet students’ needs. There must be an unreasonable demand that schools indoctrinate students into parents’ religious beliefs. There must be schools that aren’t as well funded or that have to meet ridiculous federal and state mandates.

 
The result is a two-tiered system. Schools for the haves and for the have-nots.
It’s an apparatus that perverts the public to make room for the private.

 
In the public system, students are segregated into communities based on race and class and then their community schools are funded based on what their parents can afford. The rich shower their children with the best of everything. The poor do what they can.

 
Then the federal government pretends to hold everyone “accountable” by forcing students to take standardized tests that merely recreate the economic and racial disparities already present in their districts and neighborhoods. In turn, this provides the justification for charter and voucher schools that further erode public school budgets and increases the downward spiral of disinvestment.

Meanwhile, few notice how the equity built into authentic public schools gets left behind by those enrolling in privatized alternatives. No more open meetings. No more elected school boards. No more public comment or even a voice in how the money is spent.
 

So long as there are two Americas, the fear of being in the wrong one will motivate the privileged to cheat and steal their way to the top. They will horde resources and wealth for themselves and their children while denying it to others.

 
It is a self-perpetuating system – a loop that we’re all caught in.
We must break the chain. We must recognize our common humanity and stop the zero sum game.

 
And perhaps the best way to begin is by supporting authentic public schools and not privatization.

 
We have been taught to fear public education, because it is really our only hope.

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Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Public Education Funding MUST become a National Priority!

It is clear that President Trump has an agenda that does not support public education. His recent budget proposal is evidence of this. This year’s 2019 budget proposal includes the following cuts:  

- $2 billion from the Supporting Effective Instruction State Grant Program

- $1.2 billion from Afterschool programs

- $1.2 billion from Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants

- $29 million from Arts in Education

- $17.6 million from the Special Olympics

- $840 million from Supplemental Opportunity Grants

- $630 million from the Federal Work Study Program

Additionally, Trump is proposing $5 billion for the expansion and creation of new private school voucher programs in the form of tax credit scholarships.

It is a fact that our public school system can not sustain budgetary cuts of this size. The truth is, the Federal Government actually owes our states and our schools millions, if not billions, of dollars in IDEA funding. We need our Federal Legislators to speak out against this budget proposal and demand a shift in the prioritization of spending that puts the focus on our future.

Our BATs Board of Directors had a few comments about the recent budget proposal.

Cutting education funding is a symbol of how much disdain this administration has for public education. It is clear that with Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, this administration will continue to push neoliberal privatization policies that weaken the ability of states to provide high-quality public education for all. If we truly want to see America be a great country, we must invest in a democratic free public education system that provides equity to the most marginalized children and their families.

Denisha Jones, Assistant Executive Director, BATS

Why would Trump make radical cuts to public education in his proposed budget? Trump’s cuts to public education are a direct attack on democracy, freedom, and equality. Public education creates a well-educated civil society, a society engaged and informed in our democracy, and America’s best hope for equality. A well educated society is an existential threat to Trump’s authoritarian world view. DeVos plans to remove the separation between church and State by any means necessary. These draconian budget cuts, along with the Trump and DeVos’ policies, are further steps that would deliver America deeper into authoritarianism. We must protect our public schools by refusing Trump’s budget and their policies. Susan DuFresne, Director, BATs

If budgets are moral documents, this budget is evidence of the moral bankruptcy of this administration. There is nothing more important to building the future than an investment in our children, ALL of our children! Over 90% of children attend public school in the United States. Those of us who grew up in a world where our elders invested in us, in the future, have benefitted from all that investment brought us. We can’t allow our children and grandchildren to be abandoned in favor of making sure that just a few wealthy citizens get tax breaks and tuition breaks at their private schools. The hypocrisy of an administration that claims to be “pro-life” and care about children presenting a budget like this is stunning. Kathleen Jeskey, Co-Director of State Administrators

One has to wonder why any administration would reduce funding for education, instead of increasing it. Let's consider who gets hurt the most and who stands to capitalize from that hurt. Looking at each of the areas being cut, it is clear it will be children living in poverty, children with special needs, and children of color. It doesn't take an expert to see who they're looking to “fix” it. The business of education is booming, increasing segregation through charter schools and creating a “for profit” environment in education. Pedagogy isn't a business. Children aren't employees who can be “fired” if they don't produce. They come with trauma, hunger, mental health, physical health and cognitive development needs, which require specialized training and services that require funding. It is not enough to just take a small group, in the name of “choice” and throw all others by the wayside. No. We must educate ALL children and that requires more funding, not less. Yarissa Ramos, Director, BATs

Minority groups and the poor have always had to fight for a decent education, and in the immediate post Civil Rights Movement era it seemed possible. People began to catch up and close the gaps. Now we have budget and program cuts meant to upend any progress toward educational equity that may have been achieved during that interim. This is the agenda behind these cuts and the scuttling of the public education system; elimination of competition and ensuring a two-tiered education system of haves and have-nots.

What people fail to realize is by doing will eventually harm the general public good and not just the currently targeted populations. Investment in people benefits everyone. Disinvestment in people hurts everyone whether people acknowledge it or not. -Wilma de Soto, Director, BATs

29 Billion being cut from Arts Education -- will have a devastating impact on our students. Excellent programs that now infuse in our public school children with hope and expression will be gone. Cultural enlightenment will be gone. Children who who are motivated to learn because of the arts will not learn.

Their Arts educators will be gone. The American cultural landscape is fed by our arts programs. 29 million will not add very much to a wall used for nothing except division and ego. 29 million gone will deprive the motivations for lifelong learning dependent upon arts education. It will matter to our future, most certainly, because the quality of public education will be gone.

These cuts are evidence of the utter disdain for childhood, pedagogical and cultural ignorance. 29 million gone, and so will be the cornerstone of American education. Susan M. Goncarovs, Co-Director, BATs Meme Team and Retired Visual Arts Specialist.

It’s clear that the educators in this country are done with accepting the leftover crumbs that are given to public education after other budgetary areas are funded. The #Red4Ed movement is distinct evidence of that. Push back from public educators have swept across the country in different states, at different times. This leads one to wonder what could potentially happen if and when we create a united front to raise our voices as one and demand that public education become a main priority on a national level. No Child Left Behind became synonymous with corporate ed reform, high-stakes testing, and neoliberal policies. It’s time to reclaim these words and redefine what this really means. It’s time to demand that we truly invest in our future!

Send your legislator an email today! https://actionnetwork.org/letters/prioritize-public-education-spending

Social Justice And Arts Education by Sue Goncarovs, MPA

Humanizing America’s classrooms starts and ends with social justice. For too many years, our curriculum danced around America's love affair with inequity, violence and intolerance. Testing became the norm and as a result what’s being taught resembles a highly sanitized one-size-fits-all box instead of a tempered reflection of America's struggles with equality and peace. Even though educational research is replete with facts and documentation about how the Arts help students succeed, there has been purposeful marginalization of Arts Education. It is my personal belief that the ultimate purpose is gentrification and racist contribution to the failure narrative.

Humanizing our nation’s classrooms will require that we re-adjust our basic, professional equipment. Specifically, teacher training and professional development needs to be reclaimed for racial and social justice inside an artistic medium.

As an Art Specialist, I taught about how artists struggle, use endurance and, persistence in order to make Art. I conveyed to my students that struggle makes us human. Struggle gives meaning and teaches the truths of ‘difficult.’ When we bond together against our own struggles, we learn what it means to become human.

To learn from struggle identifies essential human capacity.

My professional struggle to protect the integrity of my integrated Art program meant that I disagreed with administrative colleagues woefully ignorant about how integrated Arts work. Many colleagues called themselves out for lack of formal Arts training while others wore their ignorance proudly. A few teachers were open about not caring about Art whatsoever. I personally detested the teachers who declared such pronouncements in front of our students.

In my opinion, Teacher and administrative preparation programs that ignore the value and substance of the Arts and the tenets of social justice reject the foundations of education itself. Without humanistic substance, teachers and administrators rely on incorrect presumptions and stereotypes. These programs need to be identified and buried.

It is perhaps the primary reason for my writing this.

More often than I cared to count out loud, I had to dispel pre-conceptions as well as bury serious bits of disinformation:

• First. Art does not necessarily mean already accomplished freestyle drawing that encouraged “free expression” or staying inside coloring book lines. Art was not always ‘pretty;’

• Second. The Arts do not exist inside a box marked "Western European.”

American Art has Eurocentric roots, but are not exclusively. The Arts are often judged on white male standards in order to marginalize our diverse roots.

• Third. Administrative disinformation ubiquitously assigns the label ‘non-academic' since testmaniacs use the label to invalidate responsibility for understanding or funding staff development work involving human development, creativity, and humanity.“ Everyone has heard: Cut the Arts? Why not? --- – after all, we’re really interested in ‘improving academics.’” Yuck.

• Fourth. Art classes should never be used as a classroom teacher’s prep time on the master schedule. Cutting away Art time makes it difficult for classroom teachers to embed basic and complex concepts. Classroom teachers need to be involved and engaged in the integrated art lesson as well as plan with the Arts specialists. Art Time should never be used for testing.

In order to infuse social justice into my own Art, I crisscrossed my own readings of Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Romare Bearden, Jonathan Kozol and Faith Ringgold. Their writings were my early teachers, and marches against apartheid and segregation were my lab studio.

Social Justice became as essential to my art education study as comprehending how the principles and elements of design connect to mathematics, economics, language arts and history.

Since the McCarthy era, academic witness at colleges and universities all over the world intersected Art and Social Justice. Drama, Theatre and Creative Writing were adapted into the English, Music and Language Arts curricula and yet School Boards and Districts ignorantly marginalized Music and Visual Arts by labeling programs small and “non-academic.” When School Boards and Districts did this, they marginalized potential, for cultural understanding, and humanism.

An example of a unit I designed as a fourth grade cooperative learning lesson that introduced symmetry, repetition, color, symbolism and balance by creating a paper quilt based on the Gee’s Bend quilters. Just as students were uncovering post-Civil War Reconstruction in Social Studies, division and fractions in mathematics, the Gee’s Bend quilts asked students to create blocks that demonstrated how poverty controlled the economics of human survival. Using paper and glue to, young hands planned their quilt blocks using overlap, contrast and symbolism, and inside their heads imagined how life was like the Gee’s Bend quilt makers. These quilts embodied the economics of poverty dictated by survival.

While many Teachers were trained to see the Artistic connections as thematic, social justice connections went deep and beyond the learning surface.

A second example is a second grade printmaking lesson on Adinkra introduced at a juncture when second graders merge concrete thinking in order to organize abstraction and symbolism. Insofar as the Adinkra West African roots heavily influenced American culture, mathematics, music and language, the lesson celebrated Adinkra influence in textiles and printmaking.

As if to scream out their cultural ignorance, our State Board of education voted to replace Adinkra with study of a North African city. No concern for substantive contributions of the Adinkra to American culture was contained in their edict.

Our Board of Education gave Testmakers permission to implement a sanitized, testable “Pearson-ized” curriculum without concern for the impact on either on real human development or critical thinking. Authentic assessment was replaced by data.

In order to pave the way forward to removing Art and Art Teachers, our state removed one of two required high school graduation Fine Arts credits in order to insert “personal finance.” The assault on Arts and Music staff resulted in a cascade-like elimination of certified Art teachers. Many were asked if they had certifications in “real” subjects so they could be placed elsewhere. Arts educators were treated as dispensable, disposable and irrelevant by their administrators. 

• Kindergarten Art time was cut to 45 minutes from one hour.

• Time was taken away from scheduled Arts classes in order to test.

• Decisions were made to disarrange the curriculum in each grade in order to remove the logic with which the Arts curriculum had been designed.

• Administrators in charge of showed NO concern for student completion of artwork, student art exhibitions or concerts.

• Administrators ordered Testing Time scheduled during Arts classes.

• Art rooms be sequestered for testing.

• Arts Teachers were burdened with complicated, irrelevant rubrics requiring 4 different art grades on every report card in each quarter. Given that elementary Arts teachers teach as many as 600-800 students, grading meant planning time was eaten away by learning how to grade and then bubbling in over 3200 grades quarterly.

• Visual Art was removed from the elementary core without real discussion with parents or teachers. No provision was made to secure classroom assistance for students with ED, mental or physical limitations during Art. I had no access to the specialist for the visually impaired when I taught a blind child. Art Teachers were no longer included in IEP meetings. 

Our classes were considered planning time for classroom teachers. No common planning was possible.

Although 94 percent of Elementary Art Teachers surveyed opposed the idea, scurrilous maladaptation of a marginally valid test designed for 8th graders was implemented for our sixth graders. High School art teachers with no elementary experience were asked to validate the importance of the test down Elementary teachers’ throats and the survey was abandoned.

The assessment cut out and replaced no fewer than 6 classes out of 18 weekly art lessons. The most heinous objection was named by surveyed teachers as cutting away the social justice curricular content. It had to be dropped in order to accommodate this maladapted test. Sixth grade was the year to study westward expansion. Hand-on lessons that engaged content knowledge of the slave trade, Native American cultural iconography, and Chinese immigration had to be abandoned. Since we were “assigned” times for the testing, we had NO choice in our scope and sequence.

This art “assessment” intimidated youngsters expected to master technique techniques with no instruction that couldn’t and wouldn’t be introduced until High School.

Proctoring this “assessment” mandated a verbatim style with no demo or Q&A.

Schools with the highest concentration of diverse students were forced to eliminate yearlong instruction so Art could be truncated into only one quarter of the school year. These students weren’t included in the collected “assessment” data, so test data from sixth grade programs in less diverse schools were “mingled.”

In middle schools, “required electives” began to replace middle school Arts electives, so Arts teachers to “compete” against other teachers! This meant their time was cut back students endured larger classes, giving students less Art experience in prep for high school upper level. Specialty classes had to be eliminated or dumbed down so college preparation was not as competitive.

My middle school initiated Visual literacy as a core subject through 8th grade as a way to provide our 99% non-English speaking student population [who had little school background] meaningful and educationally relevant ways to acquire English and school readiness. We succeeded, and instead of replicating Visual Literacy throughout other diverse school populations, it was abandoned by our County. A charter school had been proposed so it was necessary to characterize our students as failures who needed military style discipline.

Experienced teachers were demoralized. Our Arts community had carefully woven drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and fibers strands with social justice to teach the truth of our country’s struggles with racism, sexism and gender bias.

Ignorance eliminated what it had taken years to forge. 

If we are to reinstate humanity in our classrooms Teachers must re-educate themselves beyond capability to interpret data from high stakes tests. We must insist that social justice and humanity support our students as their academic backbone.

If the politics of today have anything to show, it’s that truth must be taught.

A complete restoration of an integrated Arts curriculum should be included in ALL teacher training programs and post grad professional development. Social justice must be reintroduced in the lower, middle and upper grades. We need truth and humanity to inform administrators – who should be hired from the ranks of experience --- so we can competently reinstate the truth, especially if we are to be conscientious about teaching against social injustice.

Just ask any teacher.

Suggested resources.

https://www.scpr.org/…/using-art-making-to-start-conversat…/

http://paeablog.org/tag/art-educators/

https://www.thewadsworth.org/edu…/teachers/teacherresources/

http://arted.fsu.edu/art-for-social-justice-camp/

https://www.mcgill.ca/…/huddle-action-and-social-justice-28…

http://iraaa.museum.hamptonu.edu/…/Applying-Art-Criticism-t…

https://cmasj.org/exhibitions-and-events/ 

http://www.allthewonders.com/…/forty-picture-books-for-you…/ 

https://www.edutopia.org/…/creating-classrooms-for-social-j…

http://www.jonathankozol.com/books/the-shame-of-the-nation/

https://www.umass.edu/education/…/social-justice/certificate

About the author: Sue Goncarovs, MPA is a Visual Arts Specialist and Co-Director, BATs Meme Team