[Peace-discuss] NYTimes.com Article: The War on Schools

[scarsey at uiuc.edu]

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by scarsey at uiuc.edu.



The War on Schools

March 6, 2003
By BOB HERBERT 




 

There's something surreal about the fact that the United
States of America, the richest, most powerful nation in
history, can't provide a basic public school education for
all of its children. 

Actually, that's wrong. Strike the word "can't." The
correct word is more damning, more reflective of the
motives of the people in power. The correct word is
"won't." 

Without giving the costs much thought, we'll spend hundreds
of billions of dollars on an oil-powered misadventure in
the Middle East. But we won't scrape together the money for
sufficient textbooks and teachers, or even, in some cases,
to keep the doors open at public schools in struggling
districts from Boston on the East Coast to Portland on the
West. 

In Oregon, which is one of many states facing an extreme
budget crisis, teachers have agreed to work two weeks
without pay, thus averting plans to shorten the school year
by nearly five weeks. A funding crisis in Texas, where the
state share of school financing has reached a 50-year low
and is expected to go lower, has local officials preparing
for cuts in everything from extracurricular activities and
elective subjects (like journalism) to teachers, counselors
and nurses. 

"Districts across the state have been in a cost-cutting
mode for a number of years," said Karen Soehnge of the
Texas Association of School Administrators. "When you
continue that cutting over a lengthy period of time, you're
cutting to the bone. We're concerned because in Texas we
have increased standards for student learning. So we have
increasing expectations and diminishing resources, two
irreconcilable forces." 

Similar stories can be heard in state after state. In New
York, more than 1,000 students, teachers, administrators
and activists traveled to Albany on Tuesday to march
against proposed state budget cuts that are so severe they
mock the very idea of the sound, basic education the state
is obliged by law to provide. 

Among the banners and signs waved by the students was a
placard that showed an American flag and said: "Public
Education - An American Dream. A Dream That No One Wants to
Pay For." 

The superintendent of the Buffalo school system, Marion
Canedo, was among those who traveled to Albany. When she
talks about the cuts she's had to make and the cuts
currently being considered, her voice has the tone of
someone who has just witnessed a chain-reaction auto wreck.


"It's the worst thing I've ever seen, and I've been in the
district 35 years," she said. "I mean we're looking at
crazy things, like a four-day week, no kindergarten, no
pre-kindergarten, no sports." 

If Gov. George Pataki's proposed cuts are enacted, the
Buffalo schools will be in a $65 million budget hole, with
no viable solutions in sight. 

"I've done everything I could think of," Ms. Canedo said.
"I've closed schools. I've suspended service at schools.
It's been horrible." 

There is no way to overstate the gulf between the need for
funding and the reality of funding in urban school
districts. And that gulf is widening, not narrowing. 

Ms. Canedo gave one example of the many extraordinary
needs. "I have students who come here as maybe sophomores
speaking no English whatsoever," she said. "We have to make
sure they pass the English Regents or they're not going to
have a high school diploma. Our job, our core mission, is
to educate, not to warehouse. So we need to give that
student extra English all year long." 

Education is the food that nourishes the nation's soul.
When public officials refuse to provide adequate school
resources for the young, it's the same as parents refusing
to feed their children. 

It's unconscionable. It's criminal. 

The public school
picture across the country is wildly uneven. There are many
superb school districts. But there are so many places like
Buffalo (including big and small cities and rural areas),
where the schools are deliberately starved of the resources
they need, and those districts are the shame of a great
nation. 

When it comes to education financing, the divisions among
federal, state and local government entities are mostly
artificial. It's everyone's obligation to educate the next
generation of Americans. 

It's an insane society that can contemplate devastating and
then rebuilding Iraq, but can't bring itself to provide
schooling for all of its young people here at home.    




http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/opinion/06HERB.html?ex=1047968198&ei=1&en=40748459b1f57613



HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters 
or other creative advertising opportunities with The 
New York Times on the Web, please contact
onlinesales at nytimes.com or visit our online media 
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo

For general information about NYTimes.com, write to 
help at nytimes.com.  

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company