I believe our response has to be collective, which is why it cries out for the leadership of Fenty, his team, and Gray. My colleague at Georgetown and former school board member Chuck Lawrence has written about this. He says parents with options almost always take their kids out of D.C. schools, because they make the decision in isolation. They are afraid that doing otherwise would be to sacrifice their own child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s education because of a philosophical belief in the importance of public education. Realistically they know that alone, they won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really be able to improve their local school.<\/p>\n
But what if all these neighbors, who are all struggling with these decisions, knew that they would not be alone? What if they knew that around the corner, down the block, next door even . . . other people were making the same commitment to the public school? Of course, not everyone is going to choose the public schools. Some have religious reasons to choose a private school. Others want what they perceive as being the absolute best for their child and have $20,000 a year to spend on it.<\/p>\n
But the point isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t to convince everybody. Even if we got half, or a quarter of parents, to make a different decision we could increase the number of people with a direct investment in the schools.<\/p>\n
So we need a city-wide movement (which could be a model for a national movement). And the movement needs leaders. Any takers?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A nice sentiment that can’t (and shouldn’t) work. Sadly, inner city g-schools (and DC is just a bad example of a bad lot) are in such a state of systemic failure that turning them around will be a decades long proposal. We’ve been reforming them for decades already. What kind of parents, having made the decision to abandon ship for the sake of their kids, are going to re-enroll them in the hope that meaningful change is just around the corner? Sure, the educrats, like an abusive spouse, may make all kinds of apologies and promises about how this time it’s going to be different, how this time it will be a true partnership, how this time it really will be all about the kids.<\/p>\n
The smart parents– the ones who have already pulled the rip cord and sent their kids to charters or private schools or are home educating– will reject the call as way too little and far too late. And the ones who are making their decisions today, the quarter or half that Forman is pinning his hopes on, need to be given more meaningful choices. That’s how the system will (eventually) fix itself. More charters, more vouchers, more freedom. Yeah, it sucks for the kids who are left behind. But maybe the more altruistic among us can find time to volunteer at our kids’ former<\/i> schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At edspresso.com, James Forman Jr. calls for a movement that will bring parents who have abandoned the g-schools in search of something better back into the system: I believe our response has to be collective, which is why it cries out for the leadership of Fenty, his team, and Gray. My colleague at Georgetown and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}