Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Common Dreams writer Kenny Stancil uses the White Paper from the Network for Public Education (NPE) as the basis for his article that offers a clear direction for the Biden administration to take if they hope to undo 20 years of “accountability driven school reform”. Calling on President Biden to fulfill “promised commitment to our nation’s public schools”, NPE Executive Director Carol Burris offered five clear objectives that will do just that:

• Rebuild our nation’s public schools, which have been battered by the pandemic, two decades of failed federal policy, and years of financial neglect;

• Reject efforts to privatize public schools, whether those efforts be via vouchers or charter schools;

• End the era of high-stakes standardized testing—in both the immediate future and beyond;

• Promote diversity, desegregation (both among and within schools), and commit to eliminating institutional racism in school policy and practices; and

• Promote educational practices that are child-centered, inquiry-based, intellectually challenging, culturally responsive, and respectful of all students’ innate capacities and potential to thrive.

In the White Paper Ms. Burris also calls for sufficient funding to re-open schools in a fashion that ensures that the physical and mental health of students is addressed and the lost funding is restored. Most importantly, NPE wants schools to be governed by democratically elected officials and all programs designed to provide tuition to private and religious schools ended:

“Neighborhood public schools governed by their communities are essential to the health of our democracy and the well-being of children,” NPE noted. “We need a public education champion in the Department of Education who rejects efforts to privatize public schools, whether those efforts be via private school vouchers or charter schools.”

…the Biden administration “must oppose any congressional attempts to institute tax credit programs designed to subsidize private and religious school tuition,” which siphons much-needed resources from underfunded and unequal public schools…

Mr. Stancil’s article elaborates on the consequences of implementing the five objectives, the most far reaching of which would be the end to any and all standardized testing.

The pandemic MAY have a positive by-product: the de facto closure of school-as-we-know-it opens the door for a reinvention of public education, a reinvention that would be well served if it met the five objectives NPE sets forth…. and in doing so he could create jobs in construction and human services, empower locally elected officials to meet the unique needs of the children in their community, and build democracy back. The only losers in all of this: the venture capitalists who seek efficiency over creativity.