Eye from Albany
June 2006
Charting a course for urban public schools
by Paul M. Bray
Across from the State Capitol in Albany stands a classical
temple built in
the early 20th century to honor the notion of public education.
This long
colonnaded and distinguished building represents a time when
public education was
held in the high regard and represented the society's highest
aspirations for
the future.
I wish that was the case today when at best urban public education
is a
political football and at worst a failed institution in the nation's
cities when it
comes to reaching low income students. (Suburban schools have
more than their
share of problems, but suburbanites are better able to cover
up their
pathologies.) Notwithstanding the failures, I strongly believe
public education is
the finest symbol and institutional bedrock of American democracy
and our hope
for the future.
There is no quick and even commonly acceptable fix for what
is broken.
Proposed fixes like charter schools have in many places like
Albany been more
effective in undermining public schools than meeting the needs
of students and the
emphasis on testing has resulted in teaching for the test rather
than teaching
to learn.
Conservatives are now trying to shape the debate as between
structural reform
(what they see as the nasty liberal tendency to throw money at
social
problems) versus focusing on a cultural solution or what NY Times
columnist David
Brooks calls the importance of schools emphasizing "the
moral and psychological
traits that are at the heart of actual success". In other
words for
conservatives, damn those unionized teachers for not helping
students avoid distractions
and develop good work habits. Besides it moves the focus from
costly steps
that will require wealthy suburban taxpayers from paying more
money to support
urban schools. (The suburbanites will neither have poor urban
school children in
their schools nor be willing to pay to see that these children
have quality
education in the cities.)
My take is we need to both spend more on our urban schools
for teachers,
technology and buildings, but also make sure our communities
set the tone and
create a culture that promotes and rewards academic engagement
by all students. Of
course, that is easy to say, but to stay on the hook let me offer
some
suggestions on how to do this.
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing. Whether we like it or not,
we are
overwhelmingly a consumer society and what gets marketed well
usually succeeds whether
it is Nike shoes or Ivy League colleges. Recently a group of
Cornell students
undertook a campaign to have their school better marketed as
a premier member
of the Ivy League. Learning is fine, but what is it worth without
the hype?
Harvard, Princeton and Yale get the recognition, why not Cornell?
Increasingly,
schools like Albany Law School which just rebranded itself are
devoting time
and money on branding, state of the art websites and other marketing
steps. It
is a competitive world even between the ivory towers.
So, what are public school districts doing? I have noticed
some increase in
marketing material but there is no sizzle let alone feel-good
in the message
that must compete with media ready to blow up any incident of
violence or
failure in the urban schoolhouse. Believe it or not, there is
top-notch education
taking place in urban public school rooms like the International
Baccalaureate
and numerous advance placement courses at Albany High School
and it is worth
the investment for every urban community to hire the best pr
people available to
get the message out about quality and diversity. It is time for
taxpayers to
expect and be willing to pay for professional pr for their public
schools.
Linkage, Linkage, Linkage. We all know the notion of it taking
a village, but
we have a long way to go when it comes to public k through 12
schools with
their high walls and for the most part separate budgets. Just
as we are
increasingly realizing that education is a life long pursuit,
we need to realize that
education is not just a classroom activity. Instead of seeing
themselves
locked away in a classroom, urban public school students need
to see themselves as
part of a larger enterprise, there city, where once they graduate
there will
be a meaningful and desirable place for them. We need to increasingly
see
members of the community in school building and classrooms and
young people
pursuing educational activities throughout the community.
Linkage is getting better, but we have so much further to
go. My wife mentors
7 year olds in the schoolhouse. The University at Albany shows
off its campus
to high schools students each year and developing other connections
with
Albany's public schools. And so forth. But the physical and mental
walls are still
there and we need a much broader and concerted effort by the
business,
nonprofit, civic and governmental sectors to integrate what they
do so that all k
through 12 students see their city as a whole as a classroom.
Public entrepreneurialism. Public education has to move beyond
thinking if
you build a schoolhouse and there are children, they will come.
First, urban
public schools now have to be competitive with charter schools
but urban public
school administrators along with city leaders should also think
more about
being competitive with suburban schools-their real competitors.
Many public schools are offering a better education than their
suburban
neighbors. My wife heard two women talking at a tennis club about
how they moved to
an Albany suburb from the city when their children were in second
grade. They
were talking about how much more advance their children were
than the
suburban students because of the enrichment they got in the Albany
schools. But, one
said and the other nodded, "of course, we couldn't stay
in Albany".
But city schools need to do more than just offer enriched
courses, they have
to strategically be competitive as former Mayor David Rusk was
in Albuquerque,
New Mexico. When he thought about the many office workers coming
into
Albuquerque from the suburbs and the declining central city schools,
he got involved
in establishing two mixed-enrollment downtown schools, Longfellow
Elementary
and Lew Wallace Elementary, that would draw suburbanites back
to the city so
that they wouldn't need to do the commute and would be able to
live and have
their children go to school all proximate to where they worked.
This is the kind
of creative social entrepreneurialism we need in our cities.
Finally, Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Philanthropy. We have
a great tradition
of philanthropy in America. If you have any doubts, visit the
many other
nations where philanthropy is sorely missing. When it comes to
public schools, for
example, there is the "I have a dream" model where
donors have supported inner
city students in meeting the cost of higher education. By intervening
early,
like the 6th grade, this program with community support helps
put inner city
kids on the track of higher education. These programs are around,
work and get
publicity, but we could do much more to put them on the pedestal
they deserve.
None of my suggestions will do the trick, but they and like
ideas have the
potential of creating a culture and will to move urban education
from failure to
shining example of what make America great.