We Should Protect our Public Schools

The election of Donald Trump as the president-elect of the United States leaves many feeling apprehensive for the future of our nation, while some are believing that positive change is ahead.  Minimal discussions have been in the forefront of Trump’s campaign regarding the funding of public K-12 schools or education; which leaves educators like myself wondering, but hoping for the best. In retrospect, Mr. Trump has mentioned of school choice in his speeches, as through voucher programs, allowing public monies to pay for private school tuition. Our current President Barack Obama’s efforts for educational reform also embraced school choice. His Race to the Top rewards were given to states with innovative plans for, a) turning around low achieving schools; b) teacher effectiveness; c) data systems measuring student growth; and d) the adopting of assessments and standards for preparing students for the global economy. His Race to the Top reform resulted in rewards with a federal budget of 4.35 billion dollars. If states were to receive any of the Race to the Top funding they had to be amenable to charter public schools. President Obama spoke fondly of charter schools as providing choice for families.  

 My concern is that the threat of closing traditional public schools has become a reality in many urban areas. Selling the idea of alternative kinds of schooling for one’s child is a huge issue for many educators and urban families. While some charter schools have little to no oversight from the communities where they reside, I believe we should be constructively watchful of those who require more public school funding without any oversite from the communities. 40% of charter schools are for-profit schools and 60% are non-profit organizations. Unfortunately, organizations and public school unions throughout the country have had the challenge and threat of public school closures. The issue is relevant particularly as we see the strategies and plans for charter schools for replacing present public schools. Questions one may ask are: why not improve on the already traditional public school as the stakeholders and community are already invested in their success.  Why must innovation and improvement mean to scrap a societal system already in place? Where is the scientific evidence that says charter schools are a better choice or that vouchers will improve for equality in American education? Privatizing seems to be the recent buzz word in public education. Out-sourcing everything from school maintenance, school nurses, and substitute teachers. In the state of Pennsylvania, the newly elected Governor Tom Wolf signed a vetoed spending plan of 23.4 billion dollars; a proposed educational budget, while reinstating the needed funding to public schools contrary to the wishes of the republicans.  

I personally believe we should guard the current public school system, and fund them as an asset to our communities as we apply best practices from teachers and administrators, and the support of parents, stakeholders, and the communities where they exist. Providing the needed funding for educating children, can help to produce successful public schools in America that can restore American pride to our educational institutes and communities.  I do not wish to compare the charter to the traditional public school at this time, but I believe that with everyone doing their part, while not relinquishing ones responsibility fully to the schools, then the work of educating will be successful and rewarding.  To extract funding from already struggling systems is suicide. No school should be expected to function without the needed supports, tools and funding, while at the same time fearing the loss of additional funds for the sake of innovation or vouchers. This to me is futile. The NCLB act has been relaxed and much is presently in the hands of the states for improving education in America.  If other countries can value their public education systems and lead in the world system, so can America. I believe we should work to guard public education as they represent the system of the people.  As Abraham Lincoln once said of our government, we are a system for the people, of the people, and by the people. 

The Student Loan Crisis In America

I graduated from Temple University in 1981. As an undergraduate, my student loan was 7,500.00, of which I paid back in a few years shortly after my graduation. Today, young people enroll in college hoping to have a fair opportunity in adulthood. Many do not receive scholarships or special grants toward tuition and are presented with the dilemma of how they will afford college tuition since tuition is much higher than when I attended undergraduate school. I do not remember ever being confronted with the idea of parent plus loans when I attended college. My parents had six children and would have never agreed to such a program.  Today, students who cannot afford college are given the option of parent plus loans or not attending college at all.  Parents are forced to make decisions to take out high interest loans for their children for fear that their children will not have a fair chance to excel in life.

The problem is that students complete college often with all intentions of repaying the parent plus bill; however, parents remain stuck with the bill  often while their son or daughter pursues employment in their field of study in a time where employment opportunities are slim. In my daughter’s case, she had to go back to college for her masters degree, for a new field of study, because her original degree  from Penn State, did not produce relevant job opportunities in her field due to changing technology and professional networks. Just think, we live in what is believed to be one of the richest nations in the world, and a parent approaching retirement is stuck with a college tuition bill for her son or daughter. While many countries provide free education for their young people, we frown on them and call them socialist. Instead, in America, families struggling to educate their children become encumbered by debt from college loans. This is celebrated in our capitalistic society; where the poor systematically become poorer and the rich get richer.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders seemed to understand the need to help families while providing free college tuition, and for restructuring the loans for students and families, but of course he was called a socialist. So, we would rather promote a government where only a few at the top can afford to improve their educational status? Since the rich rule in America, providing help for common citizens is not something viewed as important.  Perpetuating a certain class is what seems to be the agenda. While one may believe that attending college will take one to a higher level and a better lifestyle, one then finds oneself trapped with a bill that ultimately does not significantly improve one’s situation if one considers the never-ending costs of repaying student loans.  The student loan crisis must be restructured, and hopefully in my lifetime.

The Truth about Education and Inequality

By Leah Spencer Hopkins

The issues of equality remain a top priority in education and in American culture but one must recognize that inequality is merely a symptom and not the cause for the lack of social justice in education and other systems. Too often our society chooses to turn its face to the matters that tarnish American culture and society in general. While segregation, racism, and slavery, have proven to be very much alive today, despite the good efforts of leaders over the generations, who have fought to make equitable change in our society; somehow, we still find that inequality is interwoven in every institution of our society.

Individuals continue to fight for civil rights and for acceptance, respect, equality, and freedom. When racism is symptomatic, the spectator often has no idea of what the victims of inequality feel and why they feel disquieted about their condition. Although one can only imagine what it is like to grow up as a superior race, the superior race can only seek to identify with what the non-superior race experience in America. Entitlement is real, and the entitled know that they are entitled to privilege on every level in America.

Entitlement contributes to one’s ability to make a decent wage for living in this economy. If one earns a good education, then one will qualify for a good job to help to avoid the stresses that so many in the lower class face. Good education does not guarantee a good job if one is in the minority race but the quality of the education will certainly create a greater-odds ratio (OR). If one happens to be privileged to attend a grade school and high school in an affluent community, then one may have exposure enough to gain the thinking needed for achieving high scores on standardized testing and will possibly receive scholarship or help for college tuition. On the other hand, if one is not so fortunate and had to grow up in a non-affluent community where one’s parent’s struggled and have to take out loans for paying tuition, then one has begun what I call the modern day educational slavery trade.  The lower class seek out higher education only to find that they have fallen into the rich man’s trap of taking risky loans in order to pay the tuition for schools that often do not prepare students for the current economy. Upon graduation, the loan payments begin, the debt to the rich continues and the cycle for the poor is perpetuated. The real battle is not a race war but a class war and the race war is a symptom and often a tool used by the super rich. As King Solomon would say, this too, I have learned under the sun.

While big business obviously has no compassion for small businesses, the middle class and lower class small business continue to support large businesses that do not care about the poor. This too is another modern day form of slavery. Paying low wages for an honest day’s work is slavery. The big companies pay minimal wages to employees that cannot begin to support their families. Big companies barely pay crumbs for earned education and hard labor while they earn billions off of the backs of the poor and poorly educated.

Race tensions have never ceased, as no matter how much money African Americans have made in this country over the years, we continue to witness their senseless demise, as their money is soon taken away through the hands of conniving individuals through intentional ruthless means whether through death or unjust courts. The senseless destruction, credibility, and the name of a rich Black man seems like fair game, but this too is slavery as the mocking of the name of a great African American is modern day lynching and also for the purpose of maintaining white supremacy. The savage attacks on successful African Americans are only to castrate or emasculate that individual for purposes of vain control. The evil has never stopped, as for centuries, history bears witness of this evil.

The senseless struggle for more education, more money, and more respect can obviously leave one with a feeling of futility, but I submit that one must never quit. Despite the the cycle of historic and modern day martyrs, we must maintain hope. However, our hope can never be in the man made systems as the systems were made for the rule of men. Many have come before us, and have fought for equality, civil rights, and social justice in education and society, only to see the same issues exist in different forms hundreds of years later. Evil may look different today than it did 200 years ago, but evil is still evil. One can certainly recognize that the cycle and issues of mankind exist, even as far back as Adolf Hitler; who hated the Jews, and the dark ages in American history before the abolition of slavery. Man’s unwillingness to embrace the good from all humanity, and those who are racially different is an awful blight. All over the world, inequality and senseless race wars exist. Mankind is attacked and threatened for the elimination of a particular race or group of people. This somehow provides a sense of satisfaction for the internal hatred and contempt that exist as if the insatiable thrills of hate and evil rule the world.

The evil is loose and has been loosed. We have witnessed the evil but have not identified the evil. People adapt to the evil as though it is a way of life and spend years seeking how to exist with the evil as if we have no alternative.  I believe that education is a man made system and vehicle through which change can occur in our world as the world is receptive to knowledge whether it is good or bad.  Education is a mighty power but can also be infiltrated. Although the system is usually quite biased, good can still emerge.

One must know that we are not forsaken. The world is not forsaken for God sees. Real resolution is beyond education and is found in the system that God has given and that system is love. When love is present, hate, disdain, inequality, and all other human corruption, and dishonorable behaviors will dissolve. Love seems unattainable in our world and in education where God is not acknowledged, but God has deposited himself in all of us in the form of a conscious. God calls us to follow Him because His very essence is love and will solve problems of the entire world. Evil will not survive where love rules. Through love, we will learn that our differences are needed for helping one another to uncover the the prosperity available through love and acceptance. For nations who boast of their faith, but emphasize hate, these nations are far from God. God so loved the world that He gave. The point is that God’s presence and influence in the world is available as God is knocking at our door right now. He can heal the world but we must let Him rule.

    

No Child Left Behind Act Replaced with the “Every Student Succeeds Act”

The“Every Student Succeed Act "has replaced NCLB act for K-12 education in the United States. Congress voted to lessen the role that the federal government will play in education, while allowing for more decisions to occur in the districts and states. The over testing accountability culture that punished states if students did not score proficient in math and reading will be eliminated and replaced with the “Every Student Succeeds” measure. States will now fix their own problems by creating their own tests and creating their own evaluation for teachers.  States will determine for themselves how achievement gaps will be closed. Arne Duncan says that the top-down, one size fits all system of NCLB will be replaced with a system of laws that are more flexible for finding the best solutions locally. The secretary of education Arne Duncan stepped down as secretary of education and has an interim who is nominated to replace Duncan. The acting secretary of education  is John B. King; an African American and said to be a pro charter schools advocate, as he founded his own charter school, just outside of Boston in 1999 (Camera, 2015).

Some things remain the same in the new system for K-12 education, including the federal schedule of testing (testing grade 3-8 and once in high school in math and reading); and the annual reporting of achievement scores with a demographic break down. New safeguards include the monitoring from states for the underserved students. The new educational law is a direct response to President Obama’s executive authority and call for change in education. The bipartisan vote and legislation of congress is represented in the “Every Student Succeed Act” (Camera, 2015).  

Obviously, selection of local leadership for local developments and strategies need to be done with the most care and discretion. According to Rivera, 2015, the act provides for the states discretion for developing their own strategies for the lowest performing schools of Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, Governor Wolf secured an increased budget of 350 million dollars to strengthen education in the state. Now, we all share the goal for securing quality education for Pennsylvania (Reigelman, 2015).

                                                                       

                                                             References

Reigelman, N. (2015). Pennsylvania Pressroom, State department of education responds to congressional passage of Every Student Succeeds Act. http://www.media.pa.gov/Pages/Education-Details.aspx?newsid=199