Public Schools

I have been thinking a lot about the concept of a public school lately.  Most of this thinking has been driven by my growing displeasure with public policy and the influential power of "elite" reformers with slim resumes over our entire public school system.  More and more, however, my thinking is driven by my work with individual students.  The more I think about the individual students and their individual stories the more apparent the need becomes to me for us to protect the concept of a public school for all.  Presently, I am serving a fairly affluent community with an abundance of resources.   The recession has hit this community but not as hard as many others.  Even with this relative abundance of resources, many of our students continue to struggle with learning issues and anxieties about self.  There needs are each unique and require much from our school.  When I reflect about how we actually meet these various needs the debates about school reform seem appallingly trivial.  Debates about teacher pay, standards, testing, unions and teacher training really do miss the central point.  It is about the uniqueness of each student.  Yes, we should embrace our profession as one of constant reform and learning that includes appropriate levels of accountability.  For me, however, it seems more important that we defend the concept of a public school.  By doing so, we defend our ability as educators to welcome and work with all students regardless of their need.  I worry accepting anything less than the principle of a public school will lead us to create a system with incentives for schools to not work with all students.  More and more, it seems to me this is how the debate about school reform needs to be framed.   Either we are for public schools, or we are not.   This foundational principle should be what drives our debate about policy and practice.  It might just lead us to authentic reform ideas rather than back to the same old debate.