To Strengthen Democracy, Invest in Our Public Schools

By Emily Gasoi and workers and the children of factory owners, schools closed nationwide in 2013 alone.2 Deborah Meier would be educated together. As Mann wrote Nowhere is this trend more dramatically in 1848, “Education ... beyond all other played out than in Secretary of Education ho could have imagined devices of human origin, is the great equal- Betsy DeVos’s home state of Michigan, that, more than 150 years izer of the conditions of men—the balance- where entire school districts are losing the into this bold project of wheel of the social machinery.”1 battle against unregulated privatization preparing successive gen- Of course, Mann’s own understanding of through for-profit charter management erationsW for informed citizenship, our sys- equality and citizenship was surely limited, entities and voucher programs. And while tem of universal education would be as as he wrote these words at a time when only there is no evidence that school choice imperiled as it is today? One of the original white men had the vote, the Emancipation alone helps to create more equitable educa- ideas behind establishing a system of Proclamation was yet to be signed, and the tional opportunities, DeVos seems deter- “common schools”—as one of the early children of workers were more likely to be mined to make Michigan a model for the advocates for public education, Horace working in factories themselves than they rest of the country.3 Mann, referred to them—was not that they were to be attending school. And while With the very existence of our system of would all be mediocre, but that children schools have historically mirrored society’s free, universal education hanging in the bal- from different backgrounds, the children of inequities as much as they have inoculated ance, there has not been much of a frame of against them, our public institutions never- reference for discussing the need to make theless have at their foundation the ideals our schools more democratic. However, in Emily Gasoi, a cofounder of the consulting firm set forth in Mann’s quote and in our most our recent book, These Schools Belong to You Artful Education, teaches in the education, inquiry, and justice program at Georgetown soaring rhetoric about individual freedom and Me: Why We Can’t Afford to Abandon University. She was a founding teacher at Mis- and the common good. Our Public Schools, we argue that the threat sion Hill School in Boston. Deborah Meier is a And yet, in our current reform climate, facing public education is a threat to our former senior scholar at New York University’s our system of public education is often democracy writ large. Thus, if we are to take Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and referred to as a “monopoly” rather than a seriously our nation’s founding ideals, Human Development and the author of numer- ous books and articles about public education. A public good. As such, in districts around the schools must remain grounded in the former teacher and principal, she is also a country, public schools are being shuttered humanistic values underlying the original MacArthur Foundation award winner. at an alarming rate, with more than 1,700 purpose of a system of education that aims

36 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SPRING 2018 to prepare all comers for competent partici- freedom—the right of individuals to enrich Although it may seem impractical, pation in a country governed of, by, and for themselves—and the need for regulation, even naive, in our current reform climate the people. social services, and safety nets in the name to advocate for prioritizing democratic of creating a strong civic fabric is long- education, we argue that such a change in * * * standing in the evolution of our democracy. course is imperative if we are ever to get W. E. B. Du Bois laid claim to this original But over the last several decades, the ideas on track toward a more inclusive and, not purpose in 1905 when he declared in a of free-market thinkers, such as economist incidentally, more productive and just Niagara Movement speech: “When we call Milton Friedman, who wrote the 1995 essay society. Our work in democratically gov- for education we mean real education. ... “Public Schools: Make Them Private,”7 have erned settings has taught us about the Education is the development of power increasingly gained currency, in education benefits, difficulties, obstacles, and ways and ideal. We want our children trained as reform and beyond. forward for creating democratic public intelligent human beings should be, and Within the free-market paradigm, a one- schools that prepare the young for we will fight for all time against any pro- to-one correlation is drawn between what engaged citizenship. posal to educate black boys and girls sim- ply as servants and underlings, or simply for the use of other people.”4 All societies educate a ruling class to make important In democratic decisions in their own interests, as well as schools, teachers and for the society over which they rule. The history of our democracy is defined by the families discuss, struggle to expand who is part of that ruling class. Du Bois’s quote highlights both the debate, and, as much enduring shortcomings of our system of as possible, make public schooling and the promise it holds out to provide all children—the future important decisions stewards of our commonweal*—with a ruling-class education. that affect the school There are multiple and complex reasons community. why, more than a century after Du Bois spoke these words, and nearly two decades after the aggressive and ineffective accountability measures of No Child Left is framed as the “failure” of public schools It was in working together with col- Behind (NCLB), our schools remain as and what is seen as the “failure” of economi- leagues, students, and families that we segregated and unequal as ever.5 Certainly cally disadvantaged groups to pull them- learned more about the dilemmas a one of the primary causes is systemic rac- selves up and out of their circumstances. If democracy inevitably runs into and how ism that continues to plague our society. schools would just teach “those” students to get comfortable grappling with the While few schools, regardless of demo- more effectively, then, the argument goes, inevitable flaws and tradeoffs that arose graphics, have ever done a good job at they’d be as likely as their more advantaged within the system we created in our providing children or adults opportunities peers to compete competently in the pursuit school. And through such grappling, we to engage in experiences with democratic of material wealth and happiness. were able to model democratic practices life, in low-income communities of color, But market-oriented reforms prioritize and values for students. In democratic schools tend to be characterized by an the interests of the already advantaged. schools, teachers and families discuss, authoritative school culture. In fact, the This is evidenced in test-based account- (Continued on page 40) level of intellectual and physical freedom ability strategies used to leverage school in schools tends to correlate directly with equity, a centerpiece of NCLB. A quick the socioeconomic status and skin tone of scan of National Assessment of Educa- These Schools Belong the student body.6 tional Progress data reveals that white to You and Me, by But another strong factor in perpetuating students perpetually do better on stan- Deborah Meier and school inequality is our historic tendency to dardized tests than all other groups, ensur- Emily Gasoi, is conflate free-market ideology with demo- ing their demographically less privileged published by Beacon cratic ideals. The tension between economic peers a Sisyphean cycle of catch-up.8 And Press, which is yet, closing this elusive test-score gap has offering American Educator readers a 25 become a proxy for addressing the very real *The word commonweal is not often used in writing, let percent discount off alone common parlance. And yet the meaning, “the gaps in privilege. Thus, even as reform the purchase of the common welfare of the public,” should be more rhetoric champions the use of tests and book through May 31, familiar, especially in schools, where, we argue, students privatization as tools to level the playing 2018. To order, visit should be taught to care about the commonweal, their place in it, and what contributions they will make to field, such tactics actually move us further www.beacon.org and preserve and improve it. from that goal. use sales code AFT.

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precarious state of our public and demo- Type, and Charter Status: Selected Years, 1995–96 Investing in Public Schools through 2013–14,” in National Center for Education cratic institutions, it is clear that we are (Continued from page 37) Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 2015, table paying a price for not making democratic 216.95. 3. Kevin Carey, “Dismal Voucher Results Surprise debate, and, as much as possible, make citizenship an explicit and urgent goal of Researchers as DeVos Era Begins,” New York Times, important decisions that affect the school our national education reform agenda. For February 23, 2017; and Mari Binelli, “The Michigan Experiment,” New York Times Magazine, September 10, community. Similarly, in such settings, how can we hope to educate for democracy 2017. young people have the opportunity to be if children and the adults in their lives 4. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Niagara Movement Speech,” 1905, TeachingAmericanHistory.org, accessed January 2, 2018, “apprentice citizens” of their schools, in never have the opportunity to observe or www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/ order to practice becoming active citizens practice it? And if such an education niagara-movement-speech. 5. Gary Orfield et al., “Brown at 62: School Segregation in the larger society. doesn’t take place in our public schools, by Race, Poverty and State” (Los Angeles: Civil Rights Ultimately, the purpose of public edu- then where will it happen? ☐ Project, 2016), www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12- education/integration-and-diversity/brown-at-62-school- cation in a democracy is to get more segregation-by-race-poverty-and-state. Endnotes Americans, starting in early childhood, to 6. Jason P. Nance, “Student Surveillance, Racial 1. Horace Mann, “Twelfth Annual Report of the Secretary Inequalities, and Implicit Racial Bias,” Emory Law Journal internalize the idea that they are part of the of the Massachusetts School Board, 1848,” in American 66 (2017): 765–837. Educational Thought: Essays from 1640–1940, 2nd ed., deciding class, as entitled as anyone else to 7. Milton Friedman, “Public Schools: Make Them Private,” ed. Andrew J. Milson et al. (Charlotte, NC: Information Washington Post, February 19, 1995. voice an opinion and to make a mark on Age Publishing, 2010), 163–175. 8. See National Center for Education Statistics, The 2. “Number and Enrollment of Public Elementary and the world. That, of course, is the ideal—one Nation’s Report Card: Trends in Academic Progress 2012 Secondary Schools That Have Closed, by School Level, worth striving for. Given the increasingly (Washington, DC: Department of Education, 2013).

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