a sermon by Leo Jones
Paint Branch UU Church
June 27, 2004

Our sermon topic, Is Public Education Dead? is intentionally provocative. I hoped to attract your attention to what I consider an issue of primary importance to all of us. In my opinion, public education reform is the preeminent social justice issue of our times because of the convergence of matters related to race, culture, language, and economic opportunity. My aim quite simply is to incite the most subversive activity known to humankind: thought. If I’ve gotten it right, you will find in my remarks cause for concern, if not outright alarm; you will note areas of agreement, and matters about which we will have to agree to disagree. I have been a Unitarian Universalist long enough to know that there are very few subjects that result in unanimous assent among us. For we are by nature a thoughtful, skeptical, and, sometimes, an oppositional bunch that weighs carefully matters of importance, always testing our conclusions with head and heart. Certainly, the future of public education is of such enormous significance that we must bring to bear love, reason, and energy.

I will have much to say that is critical of the system of public education as it now exists, but I do not intend in any way to demean the efforts of the men and women who have dedicated their professional lives to such a vital and noble cause. In my work I have witnessed them struggle to overcome tremendous challenges to educate our children, and I can only wish that in the future we as a society will do more to recognize and support their efforts.

I grew up in a family of educators. Teaching was one of the few professions open to African-Americans, so many of those who were fortunate enough and persistent enough to earn a college education chose to teach. And I can say, without contradiction, that they were very good teachers. For my mother and my aunts every event, no matter how routine, provided a teachable moment. They took advantage of every opportunity to reinforce a reading or mathematics skill. If we went to the supermarket with my mother, for example, she might have one of us handle the shopping list, while the other calculated how much we spent, plus tax. On weekends, my mother and her sisters gleefully visited school supply stores searching for materials for lessons, bulletin boards, and classroom activities. Many nights my mother stayed awake until the early morning perfecting her lesson plans and writing charts in her impeccable handwriting. My father’s view of education was no nonsense. “Your mother and I go to work to bring home the money to run the house; your job is to go to school and bring home good grades.” My sister and I listened because life became extremely uncomfortable if my parents thought that we had not done our best. In word and deed they told us that education was important. They believed that a good education was essential to overcoming the challenges that were peculiar to blacks in America.

After college and law school, I accepted an appointment as an Assistant State’s Attorney in Prince George’s County, where I learned firsthand what became of those who had not been fortunate enough to complete their education. Day after day I watched as young men who were overwhelmingly black marched in lock step through the criminal justice system. I remember vividly one day in the courthouse as I watched a Sheriff’s deputy escort five or six defendants to a courtroom. They were bound together by their handcuffs and their manacles, and as they walked down the hallway the usually bustling crowd became silent. I could not help thinking that generations earlier a similar group of young black men was marched to the courthouse steps as chattel to be auctioned off. The young men I saw were slaves to poverty, drugs, poor housing, and a lack of education. Somewhere along the way public education did not provide them the escape from poverty that my parents’ generation had enjoyed. I knew from experience that none of these young men had likely graduated from high school; that their reading and mathematics skills were probably inadequate. When I left the prosecutor’s office to enter private practice, my worse suspicions were confirmed. I had several clients who could only recognize their own names on a printed page.

When I decided that the law was not necessarily my vocation, I looked for opportunities to affect the lives of children. I ended up at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University where researchers had developed a model to help improve the performance of schools with significant populations of students placed at risk for academic failure and dropout. For the next four years, I worked with schools, school districts, and state departments of education to facilitate high school reform. Much of what I have to say about public education comes from the observations I’ve made as I’ve traveled from coast-to-coast visiting schools.

The ideas that would become this sermon began to form when I attended a conference on high schools in Washington. The conference was hosted by a well-known nonprofit organization dedicated to helping create a skilled and educated work force, and was supported by no less than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Seven hundred educators from around the country assembled to focus on the challenges and opportunities of the American high school. The workshops featured charter schools, private schools, schools founded by universities, all using a variety of creative methods to improve the achievement of children. As the day wore on, however, I noticed something so odd that I doubted my powers of observation. For there among all of the best and brightest thinkers, movers and shakers of the world of education reform there was a stunning lack: not one public school was represented—not one. There was not a teacher, administrator, or student from any institution that you and I would recognize as a public high school—not even from the most affluent suburbs, and certainly not from any of America’s largest cities. After the general sessions and after the workshops I realized that the education reformers gathered at this conference had simply given up on public education as we know it. In response to my questions, panel members gave the same response: “I’d love to work with the public schools,” they said, “but there just wasn’t any synergy,” or, “we couldn’t get anyone to listen,” or, “no one would make a decision.” This group of staunch liberals had simply abandoned all attempts to work within our current educational system.

Driven in large part by the billions of dollars donated by the Gates Foundation, the schools and the nonprofit agencies that seek to facilitate school reform have adopted the strategy of creating new small schools. These were the schools represented at the conference I attended, schools with enrollments of 100 to 300 students. No wonder they reported wonderful results; it makes sense that concentrating time, resources, and energy on a small group of students achievement improves. But what of the children who remain in schools of 1500, 2000, and in some places, 4000 students? These are likely to be the students who are at greatest risk for academic failure and dropout, and might succumb to a variety social pitfalls from drug abuse to criminal conduct.

I was quite familiar with the efforts of those on the right to marginalize public education. There were those conservatives who thought that the federal government had no role in public education—and even attempted to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education—and those who believed that only federal intervention could quote-save public education-unquote. First there were vouchers, intended to allow parents to opt out of failing schools. Then the Bush Administration introduced the No Child Left Behind Act to identify failing schools. . The commentary on No Child Left Behind could fill a library, so I will not address it here in any great detail. I will say, however, that the Act serves further to identify failing schools, but provides little or no guidance about how schools can be helped to improve. More importantly, proponents of No Child Left Behind have nothing to say about the future of those students who remain dependent on failing schools, those unable or unwilling to move to other schools. Similarly, what is to be done when there are no successful schools for students to attend? And how is any of this to be paid for? If we are to be informed citizens, one of the important distinctions we must understand is the difference between authorization and appropriations. The ceremony in the Rose Garden was held to celebrate the signing of the bill that authorized No Child Left Behind, but there were no funds attached. The funding of the program was handled in a separate bill. Appropriations bills rarely receive the same attention as authorizations, and for that reason few know that the appropriations bill under funded No Child Left Behind by as much as $6 billion.

Some cynics believe that the real aim of the conservatives in the White House and on Capital Hill is to allow public education to flounder so badly that the public will eagerly embrace vouchers and other measures that may lead to the near extinction of public school systems. I am reluctant to embrace such a conspiracy theory, but we do know that the Act subjects schools to increased scrutiny, does not prescribe methods by which they could improve, and fails to appropriate adequate funds for the states to meet the new mandates.

Public education has always been of great concern to Unitarians. Horace Mann, secretary of education in Massachusetts, and a Unitarian, is often called “the father of public education.” More importantly, our seven principles point to a deep and abiding interest in this vital social activity. By affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity, and compassion in human relations; a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process; we commit ourselves to supporting the means by which the society that we envision can come to pass. None of theses goals are possible if every child does not receive an education that enables him or her to participate fully and meaningfully in the world we seek.

When I look at the current state of public education, I see many issues that must be addressed if it is to become a successful enterprise. I will talk about governance, decision-making, curriculum and instruction, the profession of teaching, and the social context against which the system must be understood.

Here in Prince George’s County and in the District of Columbia a good deal of attention has been paid to the question, who is in charge of public education? The DC mayor argues that he and his successors should assume responsibility for the public schools. He points with some justification to the current state of dysfunction caused at least in part by the various agencies that often work at cross-purposes. The City Council, the school board, the superintendent, and the Mayor’s Office all purport to handle some aspect of the city’s school system. As a result, more than one superintendent has chosen to leave rather than navigate the murky political waters, and at least one prominent superintendent candidate chose to accept a position in another city.

In Prince George’s County, the question of who runs the schools has been answered, at least for the time being, following a public battle between the former superintendent and the president of the school board. Still the county executive has suggested that, like his counterpart in the District, he would like to control the school budget. Meanwhile, some commentators argue that the voters of Prince George’s County have been disenfranchised by the removal of an elected school board.

I have yet to hear anyone articulate how any of these schemes leads to decision-making that improves the lives of children and advances the cause of public education. I have been amazed by the number of decisions that bear little or no relationship to the well-being of students. As a matter of fact, I have witnessed many decisions that were so poorly made that they qualify as what I call educational atrocities:

• In a large midwestern city, the decision was made to eliminate all so-called remedial courses from the curriculum. Instead, any student who needed additional help would receive it in the context of standards-based instruction. The result was an 80% failure rate for students taking Algebra I.
• An associate superintendent in the most populous city of a northeastern state decided in the third week of the semester to replace the ninth grade mathematics course that had yielded the first positive results in years. One otherwise ordinary school day, trucks delivered new textbooks to every high school with instructions to begin immediately. There was no discussion, no explanation, and no professional development.
• In the west, a large school district announced a major reorganization plan a mere two weeks before it was to go into effect. District personnel, who were not warned of the change, scrambled to determine where they were to report for work.

These are just a few examples of the questionable decisions made almost daily in local school districts. I hear such stories in every district I visit. They demonstrate a stunning lack of understanding about basic management, and a lack of concern for the students who are to be educated and the adults who teach them. Often, these decisions are the result of competing egos and personal ambition. If public education is to prosper, decision-makers must somehow avoid such wrongheaded, self-defeating, and educationally unsound policies.

What are students taught, and how? There is no simple and direct answer to this question. For what we laymen think of as a carefully conceived, logically constructed system of research-proven methods and content is in fact a hodgepodge of state-mandated standards, standardized tests, wrinkled yellow course outlines, and textbooks. Whether a student is actually educated is largely a matter of chance. If a child finds his or her way into the right classroom and the right teacher he or she might learn to read or write or compute. Teaching content and methods vary widely within the same school building, district, and state.

State departments of education have spent the last several years writing standards, the things that every student should know. Writing a standard is only part of the job. For example, at the end of this sermon every member of the congregation will be able to throw a ninety-mile per hour fastball. There, I’ve set a standard. How much closer are we to actually being able to throw a ninety-mile an hour fastball? How do we go about teaching those of us with various levels of ability? What about those of us who will never come close? I think it’s safe to say that the standard is impossible to reach in the allotted time.

Schools react to standards by asking one question: on what will students be tested? Then they simply teach to the test. In some districts normal instruction comes to a grinding halt a few weeks before standardized testing to allow teachers to focus all their time and energy on the test. As a result, the students who are at greatest risk for academic failure and dropout receive instruction in the most basic skills in hopes that they can pass the state assessments. To my knowledge, this approach has not proven more effective than solid instruction that is intended to teach students to think critically, express themselves persuasively, or to reason mathematically. Yet this practice is like an addiction for school personnel who know that they will be judged solely by their school’s test results.

We are aiming much too low, and we are failing to meet one of the primary aims of education: to pass along to our children the core concepts of our culture. In an effort to provide measurable proof of the effectiveness of our schools we have reduced education to a series of mere skills without historical or social context. In doing so we deprive our children of the knowledge that will allow them to make informed decisions about the direction of government, and of the comfort of the personal perspective that can come from an understanding of literature. I worry that even those children who manage to graduate will lack a common framework that will permit them to live more satisfying, well-examined lives.

Who teaches our children? In our most troubled schools, along with those who are truly dedicated to their craft, are teachers who chose their profession by default; who see themselves as little more than civic employees, and are determined to hang on until they can safely retire. To make matters worse, these teachers don’t really believe that all children can learn. I have met such people nearly everywhere I have traveled. They seem to think that their schools would improve if they had better students. One day, exasperated by this attitude, I responded, “I’m a very good doctor. My patients keep dying, but that’s because they lack longevity.” The teacher to whom I was responding simply did not see that it was his job to adjust his methods to meet the needs of his students. He was content to teach Algebra to students who could not add, subtract, multiply, or divide.

Yet, because of low pay, a perceived lack of status, and poor work conditions, fewer college students choose to enter the teaching profession. There is a distinct possibility that in a few years colleges will not graduate enough new teachers to replace the Baby Boomers who will soon retire. Already school districts are scrambling to find mathematics, science, and special education teachers, some going as far as Europe and India to find candidates.

In the meantime, we allocate scant resources for the continuing education of teachers. In some districts, only four days a year are set aside for teacher training. It is ironic that a system of education should give learning such short shrift.

Add to the issues I have listed the social context in which public education must operate. Some have said we have become a less literate society; that we do not truly prize literacy and education. Television, movies, video games, and the Internet have become our common national experiences, replacing books, ideas, conversation, and good old-fashioned storytelling. Perhaps with its concentration on reading and writing, public education is something of an anachronism. I have heard teachers say that even students who can read well will rarely take the time to read anything they haven’t been assigned. Still, I can think of no better way to teach children to reason, to think critically, and to resist the rampant consumerism that threatens to overwhelm our society than to lead them through the very best literature, art, music; than to teach them the rudiments of mathematics and logic. I can only hope that the pendulum will swing back toward literacy.

For many of the students at greatest risk life is a minefield of social ills. Teenage pregnancy, gangs, poor housing, unemployment, and drugs are just a few of the problems with which they contend on an almost daily basis. It is not surprising that where the focus is on keeping body and soul together, education often is a very low priority. Parents often cannot or do not support the education. For children living in such circumstances, getting to school regularly is itself a victory.

In the current political climate there is no appetite for large government initiatives. Instead, the majority seem to enjoy their tax rebates, and in Prince George’s County the electorate enacted a limit on property taxes that some argue ties the government’s hands where school funding is concerned. Until we determine that public education reform is a top priority, and that we are willing to allocate the funds to pay for it, we cannot reasonably expect better results.

Is public education dead? Perhaps not, but it is certainly on life support, and without concerted intervention it will die, and with it will die the hopes and dreams of millions of children who have no votes and few advocates. Will we permit this to happen? How can we avoid such an unhappy ending? To begin with we must shine a bright light on those who are responsible for educating our children; we must make public their actions, and demand that they justify their practices logically. Only then will public education begin to achieve the ends we seek for every single child.

You may have heard the story that at a certain time and in a certain place that looks much like where you and I live, there was a great prophet who traveled throughout the world dispensing his great wisdom. The prophet was visiting a city that was neither poor nor particularly affluent, when he announced that it was time for him to leave. The people prevailed on him to stay a while longer, but he told them he had appointments to keep. So reluctantly they escorted him to the outskirts of the city. Just as he was about to leave, the prophet said, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. The Messiah is among your children.” The people asked the Prophet the meaning of this mysterious statement, but he offered no explanation. Instead, he left them rather quickly for such an ancient man.

As they returned to the city, the people speculated about the meaning of the Prophet’s pronouncement, “The Messiah is among your children.” A meeting of the city elders was hastily arranged, and after the elders had been told of the Prophet’s statement there was much debate about what to do. Eventually the elders developed a plan: they would set out to determine which of the boys could be the Messiah. The next day the elders subjected every male child in the city to extreme scrutiny. They devised ingenious tests of intelligence, agility, creativity, and skill. For all their efforts the elders simply could not identify which boy might be the Messiah. It seemed that nearly every boy excelled at something. Some could memorize great amounts of text; some were incredibly athletic; some possessed magnetic charm; some were unbelievably clever; some were cunning beyond compare; and some simply put Adonis to shame, but none of them were clearly Messiah material.

That night at home the weary mayor complained to his wife that the elders had wasted a great deal of time testing every boy only to find that none qualified as the Messiah. The mayor’s wife glared angrily at her husband, in that especially fearful and intimidating way that wives seem to reserve for their spouses. “So,” she snorted angrily, “you’re certain that the Messiah is a boy?” The mayor was too stunned to be angry. Of course that was it! The Messiah was a girl! He apologized quickly to his wife and retired to his study.

The next day, the elders subjected every girl in the city to the same tests given the boys, and the result was the same. Every girl excelled in at least one area, but none appeared to be the Messiah.

That night, the Council of Elders deliberated until early the next day. They debated about what to do next. Some even dared to argue that the Prophet might be wrong; perhaps the Messiah was not among their children. But the majority of the elders wouldn’t hear of it. The Prophet’s wisdom was legendary, and, after all, he had never steered them wrong. Exhausted, the council concluded there was only one thing to do: since they could not determine the identity of the Messiah, they must assume that any one of the many children in the city could be the Messiah. So, the elders decided to do everything necessary to prepare every child to lead the city. They invested in a first-class education system, and engaged the very best teachers and administrators. They erected school buildings that were places that adults and children like to be. A strange and wonderful thing happened: the city prospered. Parents who lived nearby moved to the city so that their children to attend the schools. Neighborhoods prospered, property increased in value, and businesses relocated to the city to take advantage of the well-educated workforce. The people never learned which of their children was the Messiah, but they were satisfied that whoever she or he might be, they had done everything possible to help the Messiah grow in knowledge and wisdom.

I believe that a society that truly puts the interests of its children first would be a wonderful place to live for all of us. My friends, the Messiah is among our children. What will we do to prepare?