Randi Weingarten on Community Schools
What a pass we have come to when this is news, a “new vision” according to an article in today’s NYTimes. Randi Weingarten asks us to, “imagine a federal law that promoted community schools —
schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one
roof all the services and activities they and their families need — imagine schools
that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational
activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework
assistance, schools that include dental, medical
and counseling clinics.”
This is not news. Any number of educators have been saying pretty much the same thing, probably since the time of John Dewey nearly 100 years ago, if not before. More recently James Coleman, Jonathan Kozol, David Berliner and many, many others have highlighted the central roles of the family and the community in the education of children. Certainly these and similar considerations were paramount on the minds of the creators of the Head Start Program in 1965.
But what’s always left out of these and other educational reform proposals are several vital considerations. First, there is the money thing, something that reformers have a hard time with. Ms. Weingarten does not mention the cost of “community schools.” We know they are extremely expensive, as any number of programs such as the Harlem Children’s Zone of Geoffrey Canada have made clear.
In a time of recession, even in a “normal” time, where is the new money for the reform proposals going to come from? Schools that are open all day, providing after school and recreational activities, will double, or more likely triple the costs to the tax payers. That’s most of all why community schools don’t exist, except perhaps in those affluent communities where they are not even needed.
Second, Ms. Weingarten speaks of the Federal Law that would create these community schools. It won’t happen. Education in this country is and always has been locally driven and funded. Ms. Weingarten does not mention the all important role of the local communities, mayors, school boards, and parents. Without these groups no reform will ever take place. The Union’s power and influence doesn’t extend that far.
Fundamental changes in our public education would have to begin with the groups I mention. Without their active involvement and substantial support nothing will happen. We have known forever that community schools are necessary. Of course, “It takes a village.” But we have never known how, or have never been willing to make the sacrifices, to bring them about.
Third, and most important, Ms. Weingarten doesn’t mention the ultimate beneficiaries of her proposal, the kids themselves, and especially those living in our impoverished and otherwise disadvantaged inner cities and rural countrysides.
Education is still in her eyes, even in her common sensical take on what is most needed, what we do to the students, and not most of all, and what it should be, how we can help them, the students, do for and to themselves.
For in fact the history of public schooling in this country is the history of the ideas of educators, each new generation trying to correct (reform) the work of its predecessors. One looks in vain for the history of how the students have benefitted from being subjected to their ideas, be they those of Horace Mann, John Dewey, and on up to the education writers and reformers, of which there are legion, of the present time.
We are often told of how the schools are failing to educate, and this in spite of the seemingly constant series of reforms that were to improve students’ learning. Our educators have acted as if student learning depended primarily on them. Anyone who has ever watched a child take his first step, say his first word, knows that it doesn’t.
Community schools will only make a difference if the students’ responsibility for their own learning is brought to the fore. In general government help programs fail because they are primarily doing things for people, providing rent free housing, make-work jobs, and public education. When “education” is given to kids on a platter and when the kids are not held accountable for what they do with what they are given, the effort is bound to fail.
