New Rhode Island Commissioner says she wouldn’t send her own children to the public schools in Providence. Would you?
Yikes. Honest. Real, for sure. No surprise. But please don’t just blame schools. Don’t! It’s a far bigger slate for action: For starters, we need families and schools to be engaged — together. Families need to be strong and supportive of their children’s schools (or if not a family, a strong adult role model who supports the child). Schools need to be effective for all learners. Together — we can succeed. You can’t have one without the other. Continuing to blame schools alone will not get us there.
We need laws that are for our children — not just forother (poor) people’s children — with ridiculous bureaucratic requirements that defy common sense and reality. We need government to be on board — with their own children.
Now we have this latest honest admission by new Rhode Island commissioner that she would not send her own children to the Providence Public Schools. I applaud the Commissioner her honesty and hope that Rhode Island gets the job done.
But, as I’ve written many times before, including here on Medium.com, so long as our public schools are just for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN — and not for those of us who can quietly exit to charters, private schools, and home schooling, the system will not work. There will always be plenty of excuses, as this piece hints at — teachers unions, not enough charters, the same old same old — and again, not a word about the family’s necessary responsibility for a student’s success.
Our response has to be far more disruptive. There is NO excuse for a high school graduate who can’t read. Or compute. Don’t graduate him! Educate her! And, even if just for the sake of discusion, how about actually closing the loopholes that allow those who can pay to play to leave through the back door? Here’s my piece on that. https://medium.com/@miriamkfreedman/the-only-real-and-effective-radical-way-to-fix-public-schools-f191be522abd
Or, if we can’t stomach that proposal, which I know to be “unAmerican” and not realistic, we are still left with the challenge that affects our nation and will bring it down — it’s not just about other people’s children. We need to work hard to solve this. How do we force all stakeholders: the community, our nation, families — both rich and poor, teachers, students, taxpayers — to the same table. Our nation owns this problem. It cannot endure such a catastrophic failure. There is plenty of hard work ahead for all. There is no magic cure.
