Friday, August 27, 2010
A lot has changed in the 12 years since today’s high school senior was a kindergartner, but one thing remains the same for those students who are beginning their new school years — for the first time or the last.
The first day of school brings with it a clean slate, one on which the youngest student or the oldest can write a new chapter in his or her life.
But they can’t do it alone. A student’s success depends on a partnership among the school, the parents and the student. And, of course, the schools must have the support of the community.
That’s not a complicated formula, and yet it is becoming more and more difficult to determine who is failing whom.
For the last 20 years there’s been a strong voice in Ohio that has maintained that assigning blame was simple: The onus fell on the public school system. Teachers, some individually, and certainly through their collective voice, the teachers unions, were just as sure that the fault lay with underfunding, unsupportive administrators and uninvolved parents.
The Legislature responded with what was billed as an experiment, charter schools, and then expanded charter schools and voucher programs every time it got a chance — and long before the numbers were in that would have shown whether the experiment was working. There’s no hard evidence that charter schools do a better job than public schools, especially in urban school districts where poverty is an over arching factor.
The state of education
And so, as the new school year opens, students will be heading off to a polyglot of public schools, charter schools and voucher-supported parochial schools, and Ohio taxpayers know no more today about what will work for that kindergarten child than they knew about what would work for today’s seniors when they first got on the school bus in 1998.
The state report cards that are coming out today give a snapshot of those districts that have been judged the best and the worst, based on various criteria. But that hardly means that all Youngstown has to do is be more like Poland or that all Warren has to do is be more like Bloomfield-Mespo, to cite examples from the two ends of the state’s spectrum of failure and success.
Each district has its own challenges and its own advantages, and each must find its own way.
Those that are failing — be they public or charter schools — cannot let another generation of students founder.
At the same time, each student is carrying that clean slate, which allows him or her to do the very best job possible, learning and growing throughout the year. It’s tougher for some than others, because some are sitting on a solid chair with four legs, others are on three-legged stools and others find themselves with very little help in keeping their balance because they lack the support of a good school, a generous community or a stable family.
That should not be, but it is. And it’s difficult to grasp for those of us who have nothing but fond memories of the first ringing of the school bell.