In support of last week’s protests
For many years, the stance held by most progressive voters on public education has been both simple and narrow: schools are underfunded and need more money. Growing up in a progressive (and very political) household where issues of policy and politics were discussed nightly at the dinner table, insufficient levels of school funding were about the extent of the analysis we ever reached on California’s public education. Everyone knows that we are 47th in the country in per pupil funding, and all we need to do is fix that, pour in a bunch more money, and our problems will go away (so the thinking goes).
Much of the progressive community, led by transformative leaders like President Obama, has come around recently to the shortcomings of this analysis. The progressive education reform movement has concluded that our American system of public education – with huge centralized bureaucracies micromanaging our schools, no meaningful adult accountability for student performance, and little/no parental choice for working and middle class families – is fundamentally broken. President Obama and others have taken the lead, through innovative programs such as Race to the Top, in forcing states and school districts to make the politically difficult choices necessary to transform this system into something that will work for the 21st century, and will finally fulfill America’s promise of a great public education and real social mobility for all. Think tanks like Brookings have outlined how parental choice can work in a progressive context, and in a way that works for all students. And high-quality charter schools have proven that there are innovative school models that can effectively educate all students today, and send whole communities of children to college instead of prison.
However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that our schools in California ARE still badly underfunded, and DO need additional resources if they are ever to fulfill their potential and promise. And the current cycle of continuous budget cuts, both in K-12 and in higher ed, are dragging an already broken system even further towards the bottom, destroying the futures of countless young lives. Obviously these are difficult times across the board, but we at Parent Revolution stand with those who took to the streets last week and demanded no further cuts to our system of public education, be it K-12, community college, or the UC/CSU systems.
Again, there are structural changes that could help us better deal with the challenges we face. Layoffs based purely on seniority are decimating low-income schools throughout Los Angeles, and must be stopped. It is critical that we slim down LAUSD’s huge bureaucracy and drive more dollars to schools and classrooms where they belong.And future funding streams, such as LAUSD's proposed parcel tax, should help all public school students, and shouldn't unfairly penalize students and teachers in public charter schools. But we also must not forget the basic needs of our schools to have The promise of a great public education for all is the basis of the California and American dreams, and there is simply no way we can attain it without both structural reforms and additional investment of resources. All solutions must be on the table, and common sense ideas – like charging an oil severance fee to big oil companies to help preserve public education – must be adopted. The cuts have to stop.
