Regional
(2010-01-18)
Listen Now:
GREELEY, CO
(KUNC) -
As school choice deadlines approach for many Colorado School Districts - KUNC commentator Laura Bridgwater wonders what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would think about the current state of education.
null
As a parent and a state-certified teacher, I believe in neighborhood schools. I think strong neighborhood schools build strong communities, which build strong states and therefore a strong nation.
But when I was a new parent in the late 90s, I climbed on the school choice bandwagon. School choice means that parents can apply to send their children to any public or charter school that has space available, regardless of the family's residence.
Like many parents, my husband and I wanted what was best for our children. Maybe there was a better school than our neighborhood one.
Playing it safe, we put our then-six-month-old daughter's name on a waiting list for a bilingual school. Then when our second daughter was born, we filled out paperwork for an International Baccalaureate school.
But when it was finally time for kindergarten to start, we were no longer freshmen parents. We'd relaxed a bit (lack of sleep will do that.) We opted for our neighborhood school, a place like Cheers where everyone knows your name. And we've been happy with our choice.
But for many parents, once they choose a school to attend, then the second-guessing begins. I've been disappointed that families change schools. I don't think the grass is any greener--in life or on playgrounds.
To be fair, sometimes children change schools for valid reasons maybe a parent takes a new job and the new school is on the way to work. But it saddens me when I overhear comments like these from children playing at the park, a place where adults and kids alike talk casually:
"My mom didn't like the principal, so we changed schools."
Or, "The teacher was mean to me, so we changed schools."
What kind of messages are those children taking away from the right to exercise school choice? The message I hear is that when the going gets tough, you should get going.
But a child bragging about why he traded in one playground for another isn't the part of school choice that bothers me the most. What I really hate to hear are casual comments tossed out on the soccer sidelines or any other place where parents congregate. Comments like, "My kid's not going to that school." And, "I've heard bad things about that school."
So much is said with those two little words--that school. School choice gives parents the ability to segregate along socio-economic, racial, and religious lines.
And segregate we do says author Jonathon Kozol. In his book The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, Kozol says public schools in most major cities in 2005 still had 1968 levels of integration.
How did we get from desegregation to resegregation? Well, school choice grew out of the charter school movement. The charter school movement started in the early 90s as forced busing was ending. Forced busing was a response to white flight. White flight was a consequence of, among other factors, the Supreme Court's landmark decision Brown V Board of Education in 1954 to desegregate public schools.
Pieces of that civil rights history are part of my oral history. Being from the South, I grew up listening to my mother tell the story about how Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior's son was denied acceptance to the private high school in Atlanta where she attended in the early 60s.
Her parents chose a private school over a public school because many public schools across the nation were closing to avoid integrating. When her family had lived in Virginia, her older sister took summer school classes in order to graduate before her public school shut down. My grandparents didn't want to risk Mom's graduation, either.
Half a century after Dr. King's famous speech, the current school choice system does not support his dream. School choice makes it easier for parents to segregate, it creates weaker neighborhoods, and it makes it difficult for school districts to balance enrollment.
Dr. King dreamed that all men are created equal. All schools should be created equal, too.
© Copyright 2012, KUNC
