Turner: Problems With Education Can Be Traced Back To Busing
Posted on June 15, 2009 at 11:32 amAs Aunt B. noted, the statements by Rep. Mike Turner on Liberadio(!) today were controversial. In discussing the problems with the state of the public schools and why charter schools are not the answer, Turner attempted to trace the problem of education in our state to it’s root. The root, in Turner’s mind is busing, i.e. the integration of the public school system:
“We do have a problem with public schools. They were not performing adequately. The problem that we created was because of the political correctness we did in the sixties. We started busing and closing neighborhood schools. Now our Schools were inadequate and we needed to do something to address that inefficiency and inequality in schools. I just think we chose the wrong thing. And now we’re trying to dig out of that.”
Now, Turner is obviously gonna take some heat on this. To say that the organized integration of the public schools is the reason our school system is not THAT controversial statement for conservative Republican or a Dixiecrat, but this is the state House’s Democratic Caucus chair. This is the type of statement, whatever the merits, that ends up with people closing their ears. But they shouldn’t, because Turner does go on.
“Middle class African Americans have joined the white flight. Either to private schools or the surrounding counties. And its going to end up hurting us. We’re going to end up like our friends in Memphis where we have a few enclaves of wealthy people surrounded by a lot of poverty. We don’t want that here in Nashville. We want a very diverse society as we have today. But if we don’t do something about getting back to neighborhood schools, we are gonna have problem, in the short term, less than twenty years. Charter schools don’t address that problem.”
So this, for Turner, is not about race at all but neighborhoods. But it is hard to see the difference and in many ways the two are, in fact, intertwined.
Because let’s be honest. While there are diverse and integrated neighborhoods, many people chose to live amongst people they feel most comfortable with. If you have neighborhood schools, you will, by definition, have segregation to a certain extent. Not Jim Crow, nothing proscribed by law, but it will be the result nonetheless.
The question is who are the true progressives here? Democrats, like Turner, who wish to try and get back to something we have lost in the public schools, neighborhood schools, which could result a slow desegregation of the public schools or the Republicans who are just trying to shake the system up and properly educate as many kids as they can with the proviso they some may be left behind?
Is there a workable synthesis of these two views? I don’t know but this debate is interesting.
Comments
22 Responses to “Turner: Problems With Education Can Be Traced Back To Busing”
Workable synthesis: 1) Acknowledge that private schools are siphoning $ and students/families away from our public system. 2) Recognize that “we’re all in this together” and it’s not “every man for himself”. 3) Acknowledge, as Turner did, that our low-quality public schools are a big reason why families and businesses don’t bring more work/jobs to Tennessee. 4) Push for charter schools, but first and foremost, push for adequate funding of public school system (higher property taxes, etc. if needed, because better schools bring more jobs and business). 5) Use top-notch grad schools (Peabody, etc.) and programs like Teach for America to bring innovation and use local community organization (like what Bill Frist is proposing) to get parent groups, teachers, and others working together.
The bottom line is that the private schools need to stop attacking the public schools unless the private schools are willing to provide scholarships to 100% of Nashville students.
Hegel would be proud, common sense. But I don’t think your proposition 4 would (higher property taxes) would find much footing right now (or ever).
Interesting thought considering all of the many wonderful schools in Nashville. They could formulate some good ideas on the problem, or at least provide some assistance.
Sitting there listening to Turner in the studio, it was hard for me to hear him either saying something patently controversial or unintentional. What I heard was his saying that busing was not necessarily the silver bullet solution to separate-but-equal, and I think that notion is very worth discussion.
There’s no circumstance under which I can imagine Turner, despite his clear support of neighborhood schools, suggesting that separate-but-equal as an intentional public policy is acceptable.
I disagree completely. I know for a fact that there is a critical mass of Nashville-area residents who believe that education is worth the investment. Truth is, it must be a public-private partnership when it comes to making this work. But too often, it’s a public-private competition - with private school proponents trying to denigrate and cut down our public schools.
That’s exactly what Turner was saying - and you were in the room, Freddie. (The Dept. of Ed interview was also interesting - worth a listen for everyone, because it demonstrates the strategy that Arne Duncan is using: support high standards and then work with local governments to make that happen … NOT telling local gov’t how to do things.) The point was not that race was unimportant or that injustice (or white flight) was not real or that segregation wasn’t an issue. The point was that busing students wasn’t going to end segregation - all it did in Nashville was dilute the community-based model of schools. Even Mayor Bill Purcell agreed with that point of view, though I’d imagine that Purcell might put it differently than Turner did (then again, Purcell is a Yankee … Turner grew up in Nashville).
The real “solution” came from folks like Nelson Andrews (rest his soul - why hasn’t ACK talked more about him?), who helped develop community leaders and get them talking to folks who had a different cultural/ethnic background. That did more to change things in Nashville than any mandate could do.
Not all that controversial. People in education circles have been saying this for years.
If you think that the Pubic schools are good lets learn a lesson from Professional teachers.
Teachers are under paid right, they do not have a lot of extra money. But they spend money sending their kids to private schools.
Alfred E. Newman put it very well
“Nuff Said!”
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/15818/Where_Do_Public_School_Teachers_Send_Their_Kids_to_School.html
While just 12.2 percent of U.S. families send their children to private schools, that figure rises to 17.5 percent among urban families in general and to 21.5 percent among urban public school teachers, almost twice the national average
In Milwaukee, for instance, home of the nation’s oldest publicly funded voucher program, 29.4 percent of public school teachers send their children to private schools, versus 23.4 percent of the general public.
Public schools are created to fail. They Socially promote, instead of promotion by ablitly.
I think Pubic Schools should be abolished. I don’t want our children studying anything “pubic”.
Teachers are under paid right, they do not have a lot of extra money. But they spend money sending their kids to private schools.
Right, because if 20% of them have a rich husband, they all must, right?
CS,
How are private schools siphoning $ away from public schools?
How much money to fund public education will be enough, in your estimation?
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Freddie: I was the one who called in about this on the show.. I don’t have a problem with the idea that bussing harms neighborhood schools, and that neighborhood schools (or smaller schools, he talks about them as if they are one and the same) are benificial. While I have signifigant concerns about the local schools movement when schools are funded by property taxes, that is an entirely different discussion.
What really triggered my alarms about this is that he claimed was done because it was “Politically Correct”. It was not, it was done as a compliance measure with a court mandate, and my understanding is that it was fought with tooth and nail. The statement also strongly implies a lack of concern with the problem that busing was intended to solve, regardless of his intent in saying it, or his actual detailed views on the desegregation measures taken during those times.
To characterize busing as PC and saying it’s weakening of the neighborhood school is the root of all our educational problems is oversimplifying and unhelpful. We need a comprehensive approach to fixing our schools, and it should start with looking at how we fund them. (Not how much mind you, but HOW)
Come on Kleinheider. This is no interesting debate. It is a situation where interet groups - teachers’ union and assorted others - are fighting genuine reform tooth and nail. There are many good and thoughtful people - LWC and CS for example - who have to gain a certain comfort level before embracing charter schools but any debate is over.
“1) Acknowledge that private schools are siphoning $ and students/families away from our public system.”
Do what? What if all of the families with children in private schools put their children in public schools? How much more would that cost tax payers? What if all the private schools closed down and metro had to educate all those children? How many new schools would have to be built? How many new teachers hired? If you send your child to a public school, thank a private school parent for paying the way for their child and yours.
Also I think its funny when black people get all upset because their child might have to go to school with other black people, ie: metro rezoning.
Trevin: that’s not what’s upsetting about it. It’s upsetting because the schools are underfunded, and it’s another example of how segregation works to disenfranchise minorities. Even if in this case the segregation is de-facto instead of de-jure, it will end up in white kids going to better funded and staffed schools, while black kids are stuck in failing schools.
Here’s a great report on education in America.
I’m black and went to a public school by the way, before I get called a racist.
What family doesn’t get the choice of going to a school in its neighborhood? At least through 8th grade. Very few. Now if by neighborhood school, we mean an exclusive school that people in other, different neighborhoods aren’t allowed into, I hope we never return to that.
Having grown up in that era, I never meet anyone these days — black, white, or mixed — who doesn’t agree that busing created more problems than it solved. I am referring to busing, not to racial integration of schools.
It’s a shame Turner and company are blocking innovative efforts by the mayor, the governor, the president, and the legislature to improve our school system.
[...] chair, Mike Turner (D-Old Hickory, the Fightin’ 51st!). Hear the interview that has the whole town talking about *gasp* public education reform! Just what did Chairman Turner mean when he said, [...]