On the Razor’s Edge – The Crisis in Public Education

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a retired public-school teacher who loved his job. Well, almost all aspects of it. I loved being in the classroom, I loved working with my students, even those who resisted learning with all their might. I had the greatest co-workers - teachers, aides, administrators, janitors and cafeteria workers! And even though I frequently worked 60-70 hours a week, brought grading with me when we went on vacation and, in the early years, struggled to pay my bills I LOVED MY JOB.

As a historian, I understood the role of free public education during the 20^th century in creating opportunity for white working-class children to climb the ladder into the middle class. And it was the demand to extend that ladder to Black children that sparked the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.  

As the grandson of immigrants, I understood how free, public education attracted millions of immigrants from Europe to come to America and take advantage of that opportunity. And it is that opportunity that continues to pull millions of immigrants from the Global South (particularly Mexico and Central America) to the US. It is a fundamental part of the “American Dream”.

But today, public education is in crisis. While COVID might have been the catalyst for the immediate predicament, it’s been building for a long time. Public schools have been in the crosshairs of both the private equity corporate raiders and banksters and a resurgent white supremacist movement in the US. The former want to privatize education and thereby make another part of the public sphere into a source of their profit; the latter want to reserve quality education for their white children as part of their white privilege. They are busy making common cause and have seized upon the pandemic to intensify their attacks.

I’m sorry to report that they are winning. Throughout the country, school boards are caving to the demands of a vocal minority of white parents who want to roll back the gains of the past 50 years in diversity and equity for students of color, LGBTQ students and students with disabilities. Indeed, attacking teachers and schools over both Covid-19 and “critical race theory” has become a primary Republican Party organizing strategy. As of December of 2021, eight Republican-controlled states had passed anti-democratic laws restricting teachers’ ability to teach the truth about US history. In Tennessee, teachers who teach about the history of racial discrimination risk losing funding for their schools. In Wisconsin, Republican legislators passed a law that would result in multi-thousand-dollar fines for teachers who mention topics like race or equity. In Texas, teachers are being required to teach “both sides” of topics such as the Holocaust and slavery. And in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has introduced a bill that would empower parents to sue teachers for teaching the truth about US history. Meanwhile, just last week, a school board in Pennsylvania explicitly instructed teachers not to teach about the January 6 insurrection.

When the pandemic hit, many school systems across the country, particularly those which serve marginalized communities, were already experiencing significant defunding as a result of government “austerity” following the 2008 recession and the transfer of our tax monies to private and charter schools. Under the rubric of school choice, more and more private businesses began to control a significant sector of what was formerly our public sphere, claiming to offer a superior product (a claim that has absolutely no merit). This, coupled with re-segregation under the guise of neighborhood schools, has had the effect of creating greater disparities both within and between school districts. 

Attempts to rectify that situation have been met with stonewalling. For example, in my adopted state of North Carolina, a judicial order resulting from a suit filed more than 25 years ago (known as the Leandro ruling) has still not been implemented by the NC legislature. This ruling required the state to provide funding to overcome inequalities between more and less affluent school districts in the state.  Thus, two plus generations of children from these less affluent communities have been denied their right to a sound education, which is supposedly guaranteed under the NC state constitution.

Now the rightwing extremists (which apparently includes the majority of the Republican Party) along with some “nice white parents” are using the chaos created by the pandemic to discredit public education and in particular, teachers. Which brings me to the crux of the issue. Despite the attempts to degrade public education, the one bulwark that has prevented the collapse of our educational system are its educators. Dysfunctional school boards can create problems; local and state legislatures can screw things up, but the heroes in this story have carried on, and on, and on.  Until now.

It looks like a very substantial number of teachers have had enough. We are certainly hearing it from teachers here in Wilmington, NC. In recent contacts with friends who are still teaching in Montgomery County, MD I’ve heard similar concerns. Teachers whom I respect and who work in a system that by all accounts does not have many of the issues that are confronting most districts, are calling it quits or expressing doubts about how much longer they want to deal with the situation in their schools.

On the national level, polls show that almost ½ of all currently employed teachers are considering leaving teaching. Their complaints run the gamut from lack of resources to lack of respect; from inadequate measures to protect them from COVID to confusion as BOE and administration policies keep changing without their input. Even school administrators in my old district are publicly expressing their dissatisfaction in an open letter to their BOE. In fact, conflicts between school boards, school administrators and teacher organizations are intensifying. This is not a good thing, since it plays into the hands of those who want to destroy public education.

As if COVID and the incredible demands of teaching virtually (not to mention having to switch back and forth between online and in person and sometime even do both at the same time as the pandemic surges and then abates a little) and dealing with the learning loss this crisis has created are not enough, the attacks on public schools and our dedicated educators from the right have exacerbated the stress. To quote the title of an article I read recently, “there is something very wrong with a society that scapegoats its teachers.”

So, the question becomes, what is to be done? Some preliminary thoughts:

·         Support teachers and school staff with all our might! This includes: demands for wages commensurate with their status as HEROES in our current crisis and beyond; demands for making in person teaching SAFE for both staff and students and when that is not possible, ensuring that virtual education is accessible to ALL students; demands for the resources to meet the needs of ALL students; vigorous opposition to attempts to restrict the teaching of the truth about US history and our society and defense of teachers who are to targets of these anti-democratic laws.

·         Continue the struggle to guarantee the full benefits of a quality education to ALL students, particularly those from marginalized communities and those with disabilities. The effects of the chaos in education for the past couple of years are, and will continue to be, most debilitating for students of color, students from low income communities and students with disabilities.

·         Attempt to deal with conflicts within the public school systems (between school boards, administrators and school staff) as disagreements that can (and I would argue, must) be resolved in house, without reinforcing the attacks on public education.

 

If we are to save and extend our democracy, we must fight like hell to protect public education and in particular our teachers. They are the instrument that will shape our future.