It will not be a pretty campaign. President Bush is already
seeing to that. And the people who analyze this stuff say the election will be
decided by 8 to 10 percent of voters — the folks who haven’t already lined up
ardently behind Bush or Kerry.
The Bush
money, and the Bush attack ads, may give us four more years of a disastrous
administration. Kerry has a chance, though — if he can cut through the Bush
smokescreen.
That means
it’s crucial that grassroots organizations, as well as reporters and editorial
writers, show the Bush record for what it is.
Bush will
sneer that Kerry is “liberal.” Democrats have waited way too long to define
that word.
“Liberals”
expect government to collect enough money to pay for a good education for all
children. “Liberals” believe that quality, affordable health care is a right,
not a luxury.
“Liberals”
believe that the way out of poverty is a decent wage. “Liberals” want to the
government to help protect the nation’s environment — to make sure that air
and water don’t make us sick, that forests and national parks are treated as
treasures, not as commercial opportunities.
“Liberals”
want a government that respects and fosters individual rights and privacy, not
a government that spies on its own citizens or detains and abuses innocent
visitors and non-citizen residents.
“Liberals”
want a progressive tax system. “Liberals” believe that citizens and businesses
should provide money not only for defense but also for vital social programs.
“Liberals” believe that the wealthiest people in the nation have a
responsibility to pay higher taxes than low and middle-income people.
“Liberals”
believe that corporations should pay their fair share of taxes, that the
government should not give tax breaks to US corporations that ship jobs out of
the country — or that set up fake headquarters in non-tax countries.
There are
long months ahead. President Bush will campaign on meaningless slogans, because
he is compelled to keep attention off of his record. John Kerry will have a
tough race. But no one, not Kerry, and not voters, should let the president
define the terms and the language of the race.
If they
look hard, average voters may realize that they’re more liberal than they
think.
Beyond ‘Choice’
The Hot Topic for the Rochester
school district this winter has been the new School Choice plan. The district
has been divided into three zones, and parents of kindergarten children can
choose which school in their zone they want.
Most of the
seats in each school will be reserved for children from the immediate
neighborhood. But not all of them will be, and so it’s possible that some
children will not get to go to their neighborhood school, even if they want to.
It’s also possible (and probably likely) that children who choose a school
outside their neighborhood won’t get their first choice. In other words, there
are no guarantees. And some parents have been upset.
I would
welcome the plan if I thought it would improve education. But I don’t think it
will.
In part,
the School Choice plan is a school-integration plan. It lets parents in poorer
neighborhoods choose a school with a not-quite-so-poor student body. I believe
in school integration. I’ve applauded many a school-integration plan. Our
oldest daughter was bused to an elementary school across the city during the
height of Rochester’s
school-integration days. And she’s much the better for it.
But we’re
way past the time when Rochester
could integrate its schools. The student population is heavily non-white and
heavily poor. This district is impossible to integrate.
Integration isn’t the
primary purpose of School Choice. Choice is supposed to improve students’ performance.
It’s supposed to make “selecting a school fairer and more equitable for all
families.”
Simply put,
the plan is supposed to give parents of children in “bad” schools a way to send
them to “better” ones.
But there,
the logic breaks down. If school board members endorse the School Choice plan,
aren’t they agreeing that some schools really are bad? So bad that parents should pull their children out of
them? And when the “better” schools fill up, what should school board members
do? Shrug their shoulders and say “better luck next year”?
The fact
is, it isn’t the schools that are bad. It’s the concentration of poverty in the
city, the concentration of children with multiple health problems, the
concentration of children from troubled neighborhoods and troubled homes, the
concentration of children whose parents themselves were poorly educated.
If school
board members believe that some schools are so bad that children should be
given a chance to escape them, they should close those schools down. Right now.
That’s not
the answer, of course. Neither, unfortunately, is School Choice.
School
Choice kicks in next fall. My hunch is that it will be far less traumatic than
its critics fear. My hunch is that most parents won’t opt to send their
children to a different school, and that most children, if not all, will get to
go to their neighborhood school if they want to.
But in the
end, little will have changed. We’ll spend a bit more on transportation and on
whatever administrative work is needed to start the plan and keep it going. But
it won’t improve the “bad” schools. And it won’t have much effect on students’
performance.
What is the answer? Oh, I don’t know.
Nothing that anybody wants to do, that’s for sure. But in my most idealistic
moments, I look back on the early days of Rochester
school integration, when our oldest daughter caught a bus and rode 30 minutes
to her elementary school just off Genesee Street
in Rochester’s inner city.
There, she
was joined by an almost electrically charged group of teachers and
administrators — and children from all over MonroeCounty: inner city, outer city, and
suburban; poor and affluent; black, white, Hispanic.
There were
small classes, and an incredible art room and science room. Jazz great Marian
McPartland showed up one day with her band, and played, and let the children
try the instruments.
There was a
waiting list to get into the school. Parents signed up their children at birth. The place was so popular, and
visited so often, that parent volunteers gave tours.
The school
was the World of Inquiry — a city elementary
school. It lives today, less well funded, less publicized, and less the
county-wide magnet that it once was.
So here’s
my idea: Establish a city-suburban magnet school, with support from the Rochester
district and a couple of suburbs. Make it so special, so attractive, so unusual
that parents will stand in line to get their children into it.
Then
establish another. And another. And another.
Can we
afford it? I don’t know. In its first years, the World of Inquiry got funding
from the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation, among others.
But not
everything about that kind of school costs a lot of money. My hunch is that if
Rochester Superintendent Manny Rivera could convince, say, the Brighton
and Fairport superintendents to join him in founding a new, “metropolitan”
school, the three districts wouldn’t pay much more, per pupil, than they do
today.
The State
of New York is now trying to find
a way to comply with a court order that will add millions of dollars a year to
the state budget. The court found that New York City
does not provide enough money to give its children the quality education
guaranteed by the state constitution.
Whatever
the state does to meet the court order, it will not be cheap. And, in the end,
the state will have to provide more money for all of its other urban school
districts.
Establishing
city-suburban schools — letting poor children attend racially and
economically integrated schools — is a heck of a lot cheaper.
And more
effective.
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This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2004.
