Relating To A Disaster
Posted on July 8, 2008 at 12:03 pmJeff Woods, in a post exploring the revelation of possible open meetings violations by the school board, calls the school rezoning plan set to be voted on today a “public-policy disaster.”
Public policy or public relations? Because no one has really been discussing whether the plan is better for Metro Schools in the aggregate or the students who compromise them.
Few people are discussing whether the concept of neighborhoods school enriches a community. Few people are discussing whether busing children of color across town as a human sacrifice to the gods of diversity helps any child learn.
All that is being discussed here the superficialities. Who said what when? Have there been enough meetings, enough discussion? Were the right players approached and appeased the right way?
This has not been a debate about policy. This has been a battle between folks trying to push through a plan before the knee-jerk activists could react and organize and the knee-jerk activists who are talking about how the plan’s cosmetic results will look and feel without asking themselves what is better for the students.
All the focus is on the politics, the payoffs and the fact that we may be defacto segregating the schools. Forget the politics and the public relations and talk about the policy. Then we can decide whether it is “a disaster.”
Forget how it looks, is diversity an end in and of itself? Does it help children learn? What is the benefit of reacting hysterically against “resegregation” other than to make us feel enlightened?
SEE ALSO: The Pedro Memo
Comments
3 Responses to “Relating To A Disaster”
Amen, and preach on.
As far as I can tell, this plan doesn’t rearrange the majority of students [maybe I'm wrong and I would be glad for someone to say so], but instead, tinkers at the edges, especially with a few schools in North and West Nashville.
Frankly, I’m not sure how to achieve a reasonable definition of “diversity” in a system where the student population of various racial, ethnic and economic groups is so far out of whack with those of the community it serves.
The short story to me is, so many middle-class, wealthy and white kids [sometimes the same, sometimes not] go to private school in Nashville, that the school system has a hard time achieving any measure of “diversity.” However you might define that.
So I want to know, what is the goal of the school board? Do they want to have such a good school system that they not only educate the students who MUST attend public school, but also attract back those who are currently choosing to attend elsewhere?
Or do they want to keep muddling along, rearranging deck chairs and not even helping the students who are already in public schools?
I’m hopeful for the continued intervention of the state, which has so far seemed to me to be a force for the good, but I’m not going to claim I can call this one yet.
The days of forced diversity in public shools are over. It worked in the Sixties and early Seventies before more private schools became available even in small towns and before the middle class could find a way to afford private schools. Forced busing was always a bad idea and offends the American spirit and sensibilities. The world has become a more dangerous place since the early Seventies. School is scary. People want their children in the safest possible environment when they have to be away from them.
In one month my granddaughter will start kindergarten in a Georgia public school a mile from her house. We know the school, and it draws from neighborhoods with which we are familiar. It has diversity, and if kids don’t behave, they will be sent to an alternative school. My granddaughter’s learning and safety will not be sacrificed on the altar of diversity. If we thought otherwise, my husband and I would spring for private school. We were prepared to do that, and my husband taught and was a principal in public schools for 40 years. Much has changed.
Well, he’s kind of right, as are you. It’s both a public policy and a public relations disaster. The rezoning plan doesn’t create any new problems- it just reshuffles ones we’ve already had. I don’t doubt the thoughtfulness of the committee that prepared it, but they were asked to answer the wrong questions from the start.
Here’s one measure of diversity that is easily monitored and pretty easily addressed: student mobility. It remains the best way to determine whether or not a school in Nashville is going to be a successful school, for common sense reasons. We’ve got great teachers in the system. We’ve got access to good research and researchers who want to support innovation. We’ve got a innovation-friendly administration. But there is no way a teacher, even the best of them, is going to be able to accomplish predictable growth year after year when she or he doesn’t have a predictable group of kids in the classroom day after day. Education is not a drop-in phenomenon. If the Board really wants to address the weaknesses in this system, they’ll stop playing with the political pressures of activist neighborhoods and start exerting some political pressure of their own: on the Council, on the Mayor’s Office, on the business community. Effective education policy is transportation policy, economic development, infrastructure, health care. It’s all connected.