The
Children Charters Choose to Leave Behind
By Robert
Yarnall
A continuing series of Providence
Journal editorials encouraging the state legislature to turn a deaf ear to the
concerns of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns about “public” charter school
financing turns a blind eye to the reality of life in a “traditional” public school
classroom for students and teachers alike.
Charter school proponents claim
that charter schools do the same job as public schools at a cost savings to the
taxpayer. However, unlike traditional public schools, public charter schools
are not required to take all comers, so those tax savings (assuming they
materialize) come at a huge cost to the children they leave behind.
Whether the “public” charter
school movement qualifies as progressively visionary or regressively
irresponsible deserves a more thorough discussion than the state’s only major
publication seems willing, or is able, to provide.
This
year marks the golden anniversary of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA), a comprehensive statute
that funds primary and secondary education and followed closely on the heels of
the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Johnson’s trademark War on Poverty. LBJ believed
that "full educational opportunity" should be "our first national
goal.”
The most
highly trumpeted component of the 1965 ESEA was neatly tagged as “Title I,” a
basic academic skills program that provided “…financial
assistance to local educational agencies (LEA’s) and schools with high numbers
or high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that
all children meet challenging state academic standards.”
It just so happened that, also in
1965, an impressive young African American social worker named Hubert “Hubie”
Jones had been hired as the Director of the Roxbury Multi-Service Center.
Under Jones’ watchful demeanor, “…RMC became a national model for neighborhood
based social services for low-income city residents.”
As Title I became operational over the next
two years, Jones networked with his counterparts around the city. It became
increasingly apparent that there were significant numbers of children who had
been excluded from the city’s public schools because of physical or mental
disabilities, behavioral problems, medical issues, or simply because they could
not speak English.
The
Massachusetts Department of Health and the Boston Public Schools denied any
such policies or practices existed. They did agree, however, to join a task
force convened by Jones to address the burgeoning issue. The findings of the
Task Force on Children out of School were summarized in The Way
We Go to School: Children Excluded in Boston.
State
government had nowhere left to hide. In 1972 Massachusetts enacted Chapter
766, the country’s first law guaranteeing the educational rights of special
needs students, ages 3-22. Three years later, 1975, the federal government
followed suit with PL
94-142, “The Education for all Handicapped Children Act.” Students with
special needs could no longer be denied access to constitutionally guaranteed
educational opportunities.
The
implications of PL 94-142 were obvious: to comply with the law, public school
districts would need to provide full educational programs to a wide range of
special needs students. The additional programming would require specialized teachers,
specialized instructional materials, and physical plant modifications for
students with vision, mobility, or health related limitations.
Rhode
Island communities were able to successfully meet the early challenges of the
implementation of PL94-142 thanks to the core mission of Rhode Island College
as the state’s teacher preparation school. Additionally, RIC had a long history
of advocacy for handicapped people linked to support from more than one
influential Rhode Island political family with children in residency at the
former Ladd School in Exeter.
The newest instructional methods, materials and assistive devices were explained and demonstrated, even loaned out if requested. Overviews of trending building accessibility modifications and transportation logistics were presented.
The initial
implementation of PL94-142 (1976-80) took place concurrently with the Carter
Administration and substantive start-up funding was made available to the
states. Rhode Island cities and towns were able to access federal monies to
hire new special education teachers and support staff, equip classrooms,
retrain teachers, and initiate other related efforts to begin compliance with
federal mandates.
In 1981,
under the Reagan
Administration, spending priorities changed. Block grants for
community-based social services were slashed. Assistance to families with children
who depended on the guidance, intervention, and advocacy of community social
workers for access to food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and other essentials,
was dramatically curtailed or simply shut off.
Neighborhood
schools were left to pick up the pieces and solve a homemade jigsaw puzzle-style
school model that still paid homage to the American standard crafted by Horace Mann. Mann identified teaching as the key component to maintain
and improve public schools, to benefit society as a whole. Could he have
envisioned the current state of affairs, wherein the federal government’s willful
abandonment of social services led to their forced adoption by public schools? Welcome
to compassionate
conservatism, Horace.
No
branch of social services defunding compromised the instructional mission of
public education more than the gutting of community-based support systems for children
with serious behavioral problems. There remains a skeleton network of comprehensive
counseling agencies, such as The
Providence Center, trying to bridge the gap, but the muddied waters run
wide and deep.
A select
few students (who can blame them?) hope to escape the dystopian remnants of
Hubert Jones’ and Horace Mann’s combined legacy by learning how to play and win
the taxpayer-subsidized charter boat lottery. But they will be leaving their
friends behind.
For the Wall
Street pirates who are busy hijacking state governments, it is a small price to
pay to restructure the War on Poverty as an investment opportunity.
John
Arnold will be happy.