Parents to Save Public Schools

After reading a great article in Washington City Paper, Neighborhood Schooled, by Jonetta Rose Barras, I was challenged again by the age-old issue: How do you make a public school great? How do you turn it around?

As the Daniel Holt states in the article, "Economic integration is the quickest way in our lifetimes to make schools better." I believe this whole-heartedly. In order to improve the school systems, all children need to be put into their neighborhood schools. Having the kids their, and their parents to support the system, will give the school what it needs to grow and transform. This is a difficult decision to make, evidenced by even some of DC's top education reform leaders, who send their own children to charter schools, private schools, and notable public schools outside their district in order for them to have a better education. No one wants to see their child as a sacrifice in order to build up the neighborhood schools. If a child needs advanced classes, he/she should be sent where they are available.
Or...if all advanced children stay in their district at their neighborhood school, perhaps that school will aquire these programs?

It's a hard line to walk. Who wants to send their child to a failing school for the greater good of improved schools in the future? Yet it is clear that those schools need those students and their parents to come in and empower them. School districts need informed parents to make changes and fight for the rights of the students--not all these decisions can be put in the hands of the government. Schools need family and community involvement, and likewise, a good school will transform a family and community.

Barras makes the arguement that middle-class black families are resisting this issue because they don't want to be seen on the same side as the "gentrifiers" or "for whites and against blacks." Instead of going into their neighborhood schools and attempting to change things, they are quietly sending their children to better schools across the district. Flight and not fight she calls it. With these parents investing their time into far-away schools, the only parents left in these districts are often very young and underinformed. They might not have the time or the understanding to go to PTA meetings, and they have no idea what their children are missing out on.

It's all very interesting how social implications can impact our realities over time. It seems the right answer is clear enough: well integrated, local, community schools full of opportunity and socioeconomic development succeed. These schools have more access to technologies and curriculums that are beneficial to their students. There is no longer a stigma attached to these schools (often a school being labeled as "bad" or "failing" is what makes it so).  However, the route to these ideal school systems is rocky. No one wants to make the sacrifice alone, understandably so.

How do we convince people to send their children to the neighborhood schools?


--Megan