What is the school that children deserve? It is not a difficult question. Children can answer the question. Teachers can answer the question. Parents can answer the question. Employers and college admission personnel can answer the question. Interestingly, each of these groups has a different concept of the school that children deserve.
The stickler to making such an answer is that children, teachers, parents, employers and college admission personnel only have opinions about the school that children deserve. None of the these significant groups actually is allowed to determine the school that children deserve.
Real answers about the school that children get, not deserve, are written by politicians and taxpayers. For some reason, politics wag the politicians and taxes wag the taxpayers. Some days it seems more like games than real world problem solving. Politicians use educational policy to seduce voters who have the power to keep politicians in office. Too often, educational policy is not in the best interest of children, but what is in the best interest of adults politicizing education. Taxpayers only remember what they paid each year in taxes and seldom remember what they received in exchange for what the taxes they paid. There is a reciprocal rule that can be applied. The further the tax benefit is from the taxpayer, the less likely the taxpayer is to support that benefit. The benefits of public education are twenty years in the making. We never really know the benefits of a public education until a graduated student moves into the real world and applies the valued of what he or she learned in school. Twenty years of deferred gratification is too long for most taxpayers.
Too often, the school children deserve is so much less than the school they have. Too often, the school children have is the school that fits into the intersection of politicians and taxpayers and is the lower of the possible denominators.
Now and again, we are surprised. There is a school up the road from my home that lacks for little because the politics of the school board develops the optimum of educational programs and the community of taxpayers says “yes!” at the ballot box. Surprise gives way too often to not being surprised. There is a school down the road from my home where non-elected politicians downspeak everything about the school and their vehemence influences that community of taxpayers to say “no way!” at the ballot box. That leaves the school board with the mandate of minimizing educational programs for children in that school.
The real sin in all of this is that twenty years from now young people trying to make their contribution in the real world may look back and realize “when I was in school, the school couldn’t afford (science or higher math or music or art or computer science or whatever school program created a gap in their education). I am not able to do this work today.”
The school that children deserve is the school that will best prepare them for their future; a future we cannot predict. Hence, the school that children deserve is a school of optimal opportunities for every child. We and they really cannot afford anything less.