EDUCATION: Closing School 6 Will Hurt, Not Help

    The mother from School #6 who came to the microphone at Saturday's superintendent selection forum was angry. She was angry that School #6 was being closed, angry that their school based planning representative never came to meetings, angry that their school liaison never visited, angry that the school had been labeled as failing, angry that their school community would be scattered to the winds. Her words were met with silence.
    School #6 is in a hard neighborhood - one where somebody is shot regularly and where families struggle with the consequences of what feels like a war zone. In this neighborhood, School #6 exists as a safe zone with the Jordan Medical Center attached to it, and is a place where children can be nurtured, at least during the day. Good things happen at this school although not always the same kinds of good things that we might find at schools where children are more reliably safe, well-fed, and unburdened by unrelenting family tragedy. School #6 is defined by being surrounded by crisis and this demands different evaluative lenses than are used for schools in more stable neighborhoods.
    When we use low student scores as a basis for closing schools in crisis locations, that’s as non-sensical as saying, “Let’s use the fact that patients aren’t doing well in war zones to shut down war zone hospitals because their patients don’t compare well to patients in other hospitals.” I don’t mean to imply that students are like patients but highlight that there are parallels in educational and medical human services worth considering. A hospital’s goal is to help its patients thrive and gain health at whatever stage and degree of need they’re in. Learning goals need to be similarly differentiated and are especially challenging at schools in difficult neighborhoods because of the extra stressers in children’s lives. Using testing as the main criteria for judging a school’s purpose, value, and “success” amounts to policy that’s used to destabilize children further.
    Any parent whose school community is dismantled because of unjust evaluative criteria would feel like saying what this mother said on Saturday. One devastating thing she shared was that when the children heard their school labeled as failing, they thought of themselves as “almost smart”... not able to make the grade. This kind of thought poisons young learners. Who can justify education policies whose labeling and school closures destroy students’ self-esteem and the very networks that are foundational to any student’s success? That mom’s words remind us of how our last superintendent’s corporate reform legacies continue to affect our children and why we cannot stand for more of the same in our next one.
    I’m not arguing to keep every school open no matter what, but ask that we become more creative than simply shutting schools with struggling students. Here are a few ideas. Protect institutions that serve as scarce resources in fragile neighborhoods. Broaden evaluative lenses about what school success can mean and ask the teachers who work in them for improvement ideas. Help children maintain and deepen their relationships with caring adults so that communities are strengthened. And to the board, please design public structures that allow you to respond and interact with speakers in real time. Parent outrage won’t entirely disappear, but it will shrink and become more constructive through two-way discussion and responsive moderators.

Published in Rochester City Newspaper, Dec 7, 2011