Backpack Full of Cash

Public School Problems

Last night my friend invited me to a screening of “Backpack Full of Cash”, a documentary vilifying charter school and school-for-profit education models. The film did convince me that certain charter schools, schools-for-profit or vouchers don’t always work just as public schools don’t always work. By the end of the film viewers were supposed to love the teachers union. The film used the turnaround in NJ’s Union City School district to make a point about how working together with teachers, public schools can be made into a shining example of how to educate our children. The most telling point of the film was the audience reaction when Governor Chris Christie says that the Teachers Union is what is killing public schools in America. The audience sighs. I want to applaud his honesty and wish he would run for president.

But let’s get back to Union City, NJ. The turnaround to becoming a great school happened during Gov. Christie’s tenure. How did this high poverty school district get so smart? It started because court decision required the state to infuse poor school districts with cash.  But if you look at other NJ low –income districts that got money, they still perform poorly.  Money doesn’t solve the public school education problems. In the book “Improbable Scholars” by David Kirp goes into the explanation of how Union City achieved this status. They adopted a consistent curriculum across classrooms with a focus on early reading and vocabulary. It is for this and other reasons I support the common core.  Union City used best practices, tests as diagnostic tools rather than to punish students, and every teacher got a mentor. Tests used measured critical thinking not rote memorization.

So now my daughter is in 6^th grade. She did brilliantly in 4^th and 5^th grade at public school so I hoped middle school would continue the trend. I lobbied for certain teachers in 4^th and 5^th grade, but knew little about 6^th grade and thought I'd just go with the flow once I got her placed in 7th grade math (no 6th grade accelerated). 

The first week of school she comes home and makes cartoons of what happened in school. It’s prison. It’s memorized this and takes a test. It’s awful. I speak to the principal and ask him to ease up on teacher’s threatening students with detention for every little infraction. The policy is don’t talk and do what you are told or you will get detention. Joking around with your best friend a bit too loudly – in school suspension and you are not to attend classes and must miss the review for the midterm.

Within a few months my daughter came home dejected. She lost interest in everything extracurricular. Her primary focus is how not to make the teacher’s mad. No going to the bathroom. No asking clarification on subject matter. Do your rote homework, and only her homework. She loved playing in the orchestra and where as in 5^th grade she played the cello and violin, she despised the policies of the new orchestra teacher she did not want to pursue any additional time with the music teacher.

I thought it would get better, but it got worse.  They took a student who loved-to-learn and consistently tested in the 99^th percentile on standardized tests and turned her into a mind-numbing bob.  It’s an educationally known fact that students who are on the bottom of the bell curve often need something that public school can’t provide. We are looking at private schools.