Photo Credit: Albert H. Teich via Shutterstock.com “Public education in the United States has historically been driven by a philosophy of expanding systemic inclusion. Over time public policy has been devised to require that schools address the needs of all children as a civil right. The policies that followed the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education,for example, were designed to address past injustices that derived from racial segregation and poverty. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act protected the rights of children with special needs. “The policies of Arne Duncan’s Department of Education have instead favored a strategy of social innovation through the establishment of charter schools. The idea is that committed individuals, with grants from the government, design schools that will serve a few children, with the innovation injected back into the public schools. There is considerable evidence that many charters — especially the huge for-profit charter chains — have not innovated, that a philosophy of social innovation through charters (that serve about 6 percent of our nation’s 50 million children today) fails to consider the scale of our education challenges, that whatever innovation there has been has not spread widely, that charters have served primarily the children of parents who know how to play the school choice game, that considerable money from charter schools has flowed into private profits, and that the growth of charters in many city school districts has sucked out money and promising children and left students with serious disabilities, English language learners and the very poorest children including homeless children behind in what are becoming public school districts of last resort.” READMORE
I keep reading this sort of thing with the magic word “evidence” followed by anecdotal data.
In the 200 years since Jefferson, we actually got close to his ideals. After WWII the quality of America’s public schools seemed with no parallels in the private world and that achievement was as true of the K-12 system as it was of the colleges and universities enriched by students using GI Bill to pay their way. The schools themselves were enriched by teachers who chose public education as a career because of the lessons of the Great Depression and the idealism of the Great War.
Now we are headed back toward the Dickens era. At the fin de siecle, Americans as well as Britons attended two very different systems … one for the poor who are forced to attend public school and a very different system for the rich who choose their schools by buying homes in school districts they control or simply sending their kids to private schools.