The Ship is SInking

I just got my hands on Jonathan Kozol's book Shame of the Nation.  The subtitle reads: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.  Another book is Many Children Left Behind, by Deborah Meier, et al.  It summarily states that No Child Left Behind helps further the agenda of privatization and an attack on public schools and how the focus only on testing dumbs down the classroom.  Funny how in big urban high schools in Buffalo, these two books are not the required reading.  Instead Administrators (and next year teachers) have to read the embattled Superintendent Rudy Crew's book Only Connect: The Way to Save Our Schools, and We Can't Teach What We Don't Know, by Gary R. Howard which argues white teachers can't effectively teach urban black children due to inherent privilege.  Seems like we should be looking more at the problems explored by Kozol's outrage instead of setting up more useless workshops on how to think black. There is no difference the way kids think when they are engaged.  Kids, when involved and guards are down, think together, they think of each other, not themselves.  They think aloud about things that bother them. For faculty to be focused  on differences will help no one. We can't change skin color but we can change what a kid thinks. Problem is, the Republican Agenda does not promote or foster any real thinking. Solving the race problem lies within the simplicity kids being friends who hang out together at each other's house and ask each other what they think about things. If people stopped focusing on difference and getting dissed we could move forward. We need to think in terms of the future of this country. It lies solely in the ability of our children to be friends. Eight years of the Bush administration has in effect reversed Brown vs. The Board of Education decision from fifty years ago.  Segregation is at its highest since 1968.  Is it just a coincidence that one of the most racist, right-white neocon Presidents and his cronies are at the helm during this poignant point in history, or is it just me again?  There certainly does appear to be a clear agenda to keep the poor not only locked within the grips of generational poverty, but to keep them stupid as well.  First, second and third ring suburbs around the City of Buffalo seem so out of touch with the disparity between the public schools that it's frightening.  Is this another part of the agenda?  To isolate and disconnect us from each other?  More and more headlines are reporting percentages in the 90% rate of students achieving Regents Diplomas in the surrounding suburbs, most recently Alden.  Even though Buffalo Schools is spending per pupil an agreed rate that is acceptable, if not high, it brings us to where the root of the problem lies.  It isn't about money, Buffalo Schools are overrun with money.  The sad part is they pay teachers a joke of a salary (compared to all the wasteful spending practiced as protocol) and have nothing in place to support young teachers up against the odds in public schools, never mind support systems established for the children that are desperately needed like triage units.  Urban school systems behave almost as if teachers are in the way, or a part of the problem instead of an integral part of the solutions they are supposedly seeking.  It doesn't appear they are seeking any common ground with professional teachers, instead they treat us as hostile witnesses to their crimes.  Outsourcing our public education woes sounds great but is destined to fail.  There is no long term research showing Charter Schools really do any better than the public schools.  Why this country does not wake up and realize we are creating millions of unskilled, angry, confused young adults from our failing schools is a crime.  Talk about the head in the sand policies.  Charter schooling has merit, however it needs to be tailored to those who are not going to pass these institutionalized testing practices which Kozol calls "pathological and punitive".  Charters should be the renewed vision of the vocation school where America is once again at the top of the trades and in building.  Charters should be sponsored by unions across the country instilling pride and membership in not only a Union, but as part of the family, community and most importantly this Great Nation.  Outsource Special Education, that's where all the money is.  It's rumored Buffalo Public Schools rakes in somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million dollars a year from Medicaid alone.  The Federal Government should provide for the disabled.  That's what good governments do for its people, they take care of them when they can't for themselves. That's what a community is all about.  Academic rigor and excellence should be left intact within the public education realm where teachers are not expected to be Warden, Social Worker, Parent, Police Officer and Psychiatrist.  If kids were tracked out into trade schools, the public classroom would be open to those other millions of kids most often forgotten about, the good ones who really want to learn and enjoy it.  But that would make sense putting the booming prison business into a halt and the blame game in Washington turned on its heels.  Time to wake up people.  If we don't change something and fast, we are the Titanic going down fast while the violins play.