Who decides your Education?

Who should be deciding what we teach our learners? School board? The government? Parents? The first reading is Chapter 8, “Local Control, Choice, Charter Schools, and Homeschooling” from Joel Spring’s book American Education. In this chapter Springs discussed the different ways education is controlled. Spring begins by illustrating the idea of the “education chair”. This chair is what is being taught in schools and the question again is, who controls it? Many of these answers depend on your own political views on education control.

There are many criticisms of each party trying to control education. The school board is criticized by the parents because parents feel their interests are not being heard. Springs then points out the demographic of the people who are in these positions on school boards, predominately white and upper to middle class, which do no match the population as a whole. “Boards of education are criticized for being dominated by white members when in 2014, discussed in Chapter 6, for the first time the “non-white” populations of U.S. public schools exceeded the number of whites.” (221)

Parents do have the choice to decide where to send their children to school and sometimes the government plays a role in that decision. Vouchers are given by the government and school get reimbursed when families choose their school. Being able to choose your children's school sounds like right people should have, yet, part of this method is taking finical support away from public schools.

I wanted to look more into vouchers being used in education.

I do see a benefit of allowing low-income families the chance to pay for private schooling but then I think about the rest of the community. The community that needs extra resources to support their learners but are limited due to tax dollars going elsewhere. Can privating school students be considered part of the community if they don't go to the school of their home community.

A quote I use in week 2 from “Imagining futures: the public school and possibility” by Maxine Greene, “the creation of communities in classrooms may be one of the most difficult and yet the most essential undertakings in the schools of the future.” (Greene, 273) I’m thinking how difficult will it be to create communities if the government gives vouchers to allow students leave their home community to go to another?

In the second reading, “Race, Charter Schools, and Conscious Capitalism: On the Spatial Politics of Whiteness as Property (and the Unconscionable Assault on Black New Orleans)” author Kristen L. Buras, discusses the effect on public schools and the rise of charter schools after Hurricane Katrina. Buras argues , “that New Orleans charter schools are less about responding to the needs of racially oppressed communities and more about the Reconstruction of a newly governed South.” (Buras 297) With the destruction of 80% of New Orleans schools a change was going to happen. The idea of opening Charter schools seemed like a good idea to bring society back to normal after a such a devastating event. Rebuilding, and reforming for the win right? A Louisiana Federation of Teachers representative said “we are going to have a brand new school system and it’s going to be the bright new city of great opportunity for all children” (Buras, 307)

This sounds like an exciting and great project but this great opportunity for all will just have “fewer poor people”.(Buras 307) The process the enroll student in Charters schools took many requirements. The New Orleans Parent Organizing Network had a guide available to parents who interested for their child to go to charters school. This was a 95 page document, which I’m sure required thorough reading and parents providing tangible items like report cards and test scores for the child. Something that can be impossible if the parent was able to further their educational or completely lost their personal belonging from the destruction of Katrina. A task like this can be done “easily by parents with surplus time, readily accessible transportation, intact documents, physically undamaged homes, monetary resources, and education, thereby advantaging more privileged families as well as families with “able” and “high-achieving” children.” (Buras 317) The upper class of white and the few black families would be the only ones to be able to send their child to these charter schools because they had that financial stability to recover from the hurricane while others are left behind in the wreckage and have very little choice for school. What happened to the great opportunity for all?

Both of these articles makes me think about the idea community. Our young learners are seeing the impact the government has on their communities. How does this look when only some people in a community get the benefits of education but others are left behind?