Commentary—

No Letup In Fighting Over Schools

By William A. Collins

Education,

Shows our worst;

Need my kids,

To come in first.

So now it seems the US Department of Education (DOE) has concluded that public schools, overall, perform just about as well as private schools, overall. That’s no skin off the president’s nose. His push for the privates in No Child Left Behind was simply to placate the Christian Right, not promote better education. It’s the extremists’ problem, not his.

But does that DOE study really tell us anything useful? Probably not. Schools in impoverished districts are still lousy, while those in rich towns are still fine. High school sophomores in Hartford, for example, scored about 14 in last year’s composite statewide exam. Bridgeport and New London averaged 13 and New Haven 17. New Canaan and Avon were around 80.

Unfortunately averaging those wildly disparate numbers tells us less than we knew before. Unless of course you’re a teachers’ union. Then even the meaningless average provides vindication for public education.

And private schools can indeed be nearly as diverse (bad) as the publics. Some parochials in Northern ghettos do poorly too, as do Southern “academies,” aimed chiefly at getting white kids out of black schools.

At the other end of the scale are the rich privates. We attended a party at one the other night. The parents were from New Canaan, Westport, Darien, and other towns with spectacular public schools. So why do they spend that extra money to go private? To make sure their kid gets that little extra edge in today’s wealthy society, that’s why.

But putting the president’s misguided education policies aside, the gut issue over schools today, as usual, remains money. In every state save Hawaii, rich, poor, and average towns alike feel that the other guy is getting a better shake from the state’s distribution formula. It isn’t school quality that’s at stake here, it’s taxes. First things first. In the recent election lawmakers from every Nutmeg town ran campaigns based on changing the state formula, with those from poor New London and prosperous Lyme equally sure that they were getting gypped.

And you might expect that with all the hype during this Black History season, integration would be a big issue too. After all, Martin Luther King preached that he wanted his kids sitting next to white kids in class; otherwise they would get shortchanged by the government. Of course he was right, but he’s dead, and his successors, however dedicated, have not been able to keep up the same intensity of that crusade. Consequently, Connecticut is as segregated today as in King’s day, and poor Seattle is being sued for simply maintaining that level of integration which it already has.

But if stagnant test scores and mired integration make you sad, the problems of equalizing education overall should spur you to total despair. For example this column used to pontificate about steering resources into Head Start, preschool, 0–3 education, and prenatal care. Very insightful, right? Well, now a study has come out saying that prenatal care is too late! OK coach, now what?

The scary part of that revelation is that we can no longer get by with the simple notion that just providing special care to poor kids will cure society. It won’t. We have to deal with their parents, too. It turns out that for all kids to do well, everyone needs to have enough food, a place to live, health care, a job, and exemption from being sent to languish in jail on puny charges. Otherwise our progress on schools will remain glacial.

Well, if it takes all that to upgrade education, maybe it’s just not worth it. We’re surviving OK now, and new immigrant kids seem eventually able to penetrate the system. Our society may simply not be able to afford equality. To achieve it some of us might actually have to sacrifice.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)