Demand Smaller Schools
If we choose, we can get ahead in the growing trend toward small high schools, each with a focused mission and heavy emphasis on a personalized approach to learning. We can organize our schools so that no teacher has a caseload of more than 60 students per day, compared to the standard 150, so that no principal leads a school with more than 400 students. We are clearly not afraid of innovation in our community. We aspire to lead the world in the new information-based economy. Why do we treat our schools any differently?
Why should we reconsider our conception of a high school education? We first must know what we want for our children. The answers are simple and go to the core of our hopes and aspirations. We want [our children] to be safe, loved and fulfilled. We want our high schools to understand that our children are fragile and vulnerable to the senseless violence and toxic culture around them. We also want our high schools to embrace our adolescents regardless of how they have been labeled (learning disabled, Free Lunch or Limited English Proficient). We want our children to be known, and we want the schools to be capable of nurturing them so that they will have a bright and even illustrious future. In fact, we want our high schools to provide our children the education we would provide the leaders of tomorrow if we were creating schools just for that purpose. Those are our dreams, and if you are a single parent, work two jobs or come from a community with no cultural capital you might just dare to pray that the school system will help you make that happen.
We will not make good on these hopes with our high schools as they are currently configured. They are big, mechanized, and unable to personalize their approach to a growing number of students. The evidence lies in the sudden emergence of charter schools. Twenty percent of high school students have left comprehensive high schools and now attend charter schools and there is no end to their growth in sight. These schools are choices of last resort for many students because they have failed to succeed in the traditional system. Here is an ominous prediction: Our children will be alienated from school in larger numbers than ever before as a result of the increasing expectations of the No Child Left Behind Act. Can our traditional comprehensive high schools that enroll 80 percent of the students reorganize themselves to prevent hemorrhaging? Or will the charter schools continue to act as a safety valve for traditional schools as more students get the not-so-subtle message that they are getting left behind? Can we avoid the scenario that requires adolescents to fail before they can succeed?
I am afraid that we will turn down the opportunity to build schools that can prepare students for the future. Bill Gates, a man who has invested $1 billion of his own money on this idea through his foundation, would say that it is a result of complacency and a lack of vision.
I ask those of you who live on the Westside to take this opportunity to create new and better schools and resist the temptation to demand big schools just because you want your turn. Those schools are not working for more and more kids and you have the chance to have something better for your community.
A Little Appreciation
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A Lack Of Appreciation
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A Little More Appreciation
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