It will start in one of the Southern states. One of those states that always comes in near the bottom of all those well-publicized, all-important lists of educational effectiveness: the annual “Student Performance on Standardized Tests” list, the “Percent of High School Students Who Graduate” list, the “Money Spent Per Student” list.
One of those states that has a history of struggling to keep
teachers because the job conditions are onerous (huge classes, no support
services, hours of unpaid extra duties, unsafe classrooms), because they aren’t being paid a living wage (also in no
way commensurate with the level of education required), and because the
teachers have grown tired of being used as political punching bags (like being
forced to teach, unvaccinated and unmasked, during a pandemic).
One of those states that barely skirts past mandatory federal
guidelines by engaging in such manipulations as lowering the difficulty of
standardizing tests, inflating grades, and exploiting loopholes that allow them
to avoid testing struggling students – especially English language learners and students with
special needs.
One of those states that, frankly, would be okay with a less
populated citizenry, because uneducated voters are easier to manipulate, which
comes in handy when you need to persuade people that building roads through
long-established minority neighborhoods is necessary, that brown tapwater that
smells of sulfur is nothing to worry about, or that there’s nothing wrong with
a governor accepting huge donations from companies that are later awarded sole
source contracts for big state-funded initiatives.
One of those states that teachers are abandoning not in a steady
stream, but in a tsunami-like wave.
Which, ironically, will provide the state with the cover they need
to announce that they are moving to a four day school week, because in
times of emergency one has to take drastic measures, and no one wants to cut
electives like music, art, and health, but when you get right down to it, schools
have gotten too involved in social issues anyway – like teaching that evolution
is real, that climate change is happening, and that U.S. history contains fairly significant incidents of social injustice – so, really, it’s a mark of political and moral
leadership to be reigning in the excesses of public education by limiting it to readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic, right?
Which will last for a while until, facing increasingly serious
teacher retention issues, the state announces that they will be moving some
more rural students onto virtual learning, because in times of emergency
one has to take drastic measures, and no one wants to single out kids who
live in underserved rural areas but, hey, those districts are already safely
gerrymandered and with all the money that the state saves on efficiencies –
shutting down schools, selling school buses, reducing free meal programs – it’s
really a mark of smart governing to be reclaiming this money and directing it
towards more urgent issues, like giving tax breaks to chemical and petroleum
companies with reprehensible environmental records so that they’ll provide the
kind of low-paying jobs perfect for people who never finished high school. It’s a win-win!
Which will last for a while until, now facing whole-scale failure
on every possible measure (standardized test scores, high school graduation
rate, students mental health, teacher retention, etc.), the state announces
that they will be moving everyone to charter schools, because in times
of emergency one has to take drastic measures and what better way to fix broken
schools than to turn them over to businessmen who know how to get things done
better than a bunch of radicalized teachers, union-controlled school boards,
and godless curriculum experts? Sure, no
one wants to give up on public schools, but given that private schools have
so much more leeway to hire cheap (albeit wholly unqualified) teachers, omit
content that may offend local citizens, ban books, openly teach religion, adopt
factually dubious textbooks, fudge test scores, circumvent federal laws
protecting the rights of students with special needs, and refuse outright to
educate anyone with dubious citizenship status – then, really, isn’t this the “big
government, keep your hands off my children!” leadership that the citizens have
been asking for all along?
Which will last for a while until other states - states that have
heretofore been watching from the sidelines – announce that they too will moving
everyone to charter schools, because in times of emergency one has to take
drastic measures and what could be bolder than copying what other states have already done? Sure, no one wants to be
seen as racing to the bottom, but given that other states have already embraced
the model and getting rid of public schools frees up a lot of money to
fight court cases brought by outraged stakeholders, then, really,
isn’t it time to embrace the idea that the way we deliver public education needs to change to meet
the needs of a new century?
Sure, there will be complaints. Complaints from liberals concerned
that charter schools undermine the purpose of education, which is to ensure an
informed and considered electorate. Complaints from minorities claiming that
charter school entrance policies effectively restore segregation, discretely sorting students in ways that abet and reinforce racial
homogeneity. Complaints from the families of students with special needs claiming
that charter schools either (1) refuse to admit their students or (2) refuse to
provide them a fair and appropriate education. However, the Supreme Court
is now stacked with justices prepared to address these complaints by overturning
misguided past rulings and asserting that the federal government really has no
role to play in how states choose to provide education, that racially segregated
schools can be equal (if parents rather than laws are doing the selecting), and that special
needs students shouldn’t have to be tested (if states don't think it's necessary).
After all, hasn't the Supreme Court has already
decided that racism has been extinguished, that judicial precedent is
immaterial, and that the federal government should get out the business of
protecting individual rights?
But just think of the benefits! No more parents complaining about
teacher indoctrination, because parents will have the power to pick a school
that delivers exactly the level and manner of indoctrination they demand. What with liberal charter schools for liberals and conservative charter schools for conservatives, we're eliminating the need to acknowledge (much less evaluate) opposing viewpoints ... think of the unpleasantness this will save! Also, there will be no more bickering over school boards or school superintendents, because
charter schools operate independently of virtually any oversight. No more teacher shortages, because a certain
fairly stable number of high school graduates are always going to prefer
teaching over careers in fast food, and since all the curriculum is going to be
scripted and/or online anyway, they don’t actually have to know anything. No
more worrying about troubling educational gaps between majority and minority
populations, because charter schools have proven themselves adept at manipulating
data. Even students benefit, because think of the stress that will melt away when
they no longer have to demonstrate any actual content mastery in order to earn
As.
Best of all, the politicians finally get what they’ve
wanted all along – a populace that’s ignorant of history (and therefore contentedly
clueless as we repeat the errors of the past), ignorant of science (and
therefore content to trust politicians to protect their health, their
communities, and their planet), ignorant of math (and therefore happy to vote
for regressive tax structures that profit everyone but themselves), incapable
of deep reading (and therefore unable to access any lessons literature might
have to teach), ignorant of human rights (and therefore complacent when those
rights are gradually stripped away), and marvelously, blissfully unable to
engage in critical thinking, making them delightfully easy to manipulate.
For those of you who have gotten this far and are now wondering:
what is this woman’s problem? Has she been reading too much dystopian fiction? Overdoing
the doomscrolling? All I ask is that, before you judge, go back through the
steps in the process I’ve laid out and tell me precisely where you think my
reasoning goes astray. Tell me where the political support will come from to
protect public schools, where the institutional changes will come from to keep teachers from fleeing the field, where the motivation will come from to save a
system that almost everyone seems to believe is either inefficient, out-of-touch, inept,
unjust, unnecessary, godless, biased, bloated, bureaucratic, or a bastion of
indoctrination. Convince me, if you can, that this clumsy, cumbersome and yet
profoundly noble ideal, the right to a fair and equal publicly-funded
education, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure
against the rapidly advancing forces of political immorality, unconstrained capitalism,
ideological extremism, and unravelling civil protections.
Please, convince me. Because God
knows this isn’t the future I want – it’s barely a future I can endure
contemplating - but it is the future that I have begun bracing myself for.
