The Common Problem

The Common Problem . . .

Is that back-to-school time in many of the largest urban school districts represents more harm than good. What is the point of requiring students to attend in a school district where the pregnancy rate is higher than the literacy rate? What is the point of forcing young people into an environment where they are more likely to witness a violent crime than to graduate? As a nation, we spend more time discussing refugees from failed states than we devote to providing refuge from failed schools.

Ignore test scores. Look at graduation rates, at literacy rates in high schools. Compare them to the crime rates for the same demographics. Identify the schools that have failed for years, for generations in some cases. They have failed their student populations. They have failed the neighborhoods they are supposed to serve. They have failed to deliver on the resources spent to build and run them. These kids would learn better math skills making change at a burger joint. They already do get more practice in literacy skills via social media than they do via school. Letting good kids get out of bad schools and build a work history earlier only adds options for the working poor in the urban core.

Every school would be a more productive learning environment if certain students didn’t show up. For the schools in worst trouble, make that an option. Don’t waste resources forcing kids into an environment where they deliberately interrupt someone else’s opportunity to learn, to have better options in life. If the school population was made up of only students who had someone at home emphasizing the importance of education, how much more time would teachers have to teach? How many frustrated students who drop out with a GPA in the “C-” or “D” range would instead graduate?

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Free public education is supposed to be universal in industrialized societies. In the cases where it is very public that education is not happening, give people the option of a free education for their children, and the freedom to enroll them in the school of hard knocks.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis