"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" So goes the famous quote from the 1976 film, Network. I have to say, I’m beginning to have the same feeling. Teachers, teachers’ unions, and schools have come under constant and sustained fire from nearly every private and political sector in the U.S. These attacks are most commonly from individuals that have little or no understanding of how a classroom functions or what is truly valuable in making students successful. Instead, they look at public education through a business model and they make outrageous statements, even policy decisions, using a managerial framework.

            The problem is that the business model has a binary approach. Either a program or reform is successful, or it isn’t; success being based on a quantifiable outcome. They tally up the variables, look at the net profit, and make a decision to invest or not. Schools are not binary in that way, and kids are not a quantifiable set of variables. I don’t mean in the mushy way that all kids are unique snowflakes, but they’re sure as hell not assembly-line products. Even advertising, aware of the fickleness of consumer trends, don’t seem to understand that students in schools are subject to a limitless number of learning variables depending on a host of factors; anything from whether they have a consistent home to go to each night to whether they broke up with their girlfriend or boyfriend the morning of a high-stakes standardized test.

            In a recent article by Andrew Breitbart, entitled, “Americans Discern Correctly that Public Schools are a Poor ‘Investment’”, Breitbart cites a Rasmussen Report in which 72% of Americans believe that investing in schools is throwing good money after bad. To say nothing of the fact that Rasmussen Reports are a conservative byproduct, and their findings are not representative or objective, this seems to be a common sentiment among many on the right. Public schools are a bad investment because, according to business models, they don’t work. Graduation rates have been flat for almost ten years, there’s a measurable gap between the success of white, suburban students and minority inner-urban students. Accoding to a number of international comparison tests, the U.S. lags behind in science, math, and reading. All of these, factually, are true.

What is NOT included in the national conversation is the following:

- Graduation rates are flat in the last ten years, but there are also 4 million mor students in public schools than there was 10 years ago. Although they need to increase further, the issue is systemic and not just about schools. Kids are not cars coming off an assembly line.

- Inner-urban neighborhoods have a host of environmental issues that have nothing to do with the school, but which the school must address. It's like telling a fisherman to get a record catch in a polluted lake.

- International comparisons tests are not true comparisons. China, who is regularly held up by politicians as the biggest danger to the U.S., tracks children from 10 years old. Only their best and brightest science and math students’ scores are even reported. (Granted, they still have close to a hundred million “best and brightest”) But China and India are also attempting to figure out how we teach our children to be so innovative, creative, and entrepreneurial. Can’t measure that on a test.

            What I hope this illustrates is that making grandiose claims about the fallibility of public education today is misleading. There are many variables to every claim. However, a number of zealots at the national level, and among state and local business leaders, are attempting to characterize public schools as an across-the-board failure. This characterization does two things, it allows some policymakers and business leaders with an agenda to continue their push toward privatizing public education (a nearly $900 billion a year carrot) and it allows them to further attack, dilute, and hamstring teachers unions. A weak union allows private interests more strength in bargaining, setting salaries, cutting benefits, etc. No one would come outright and say we need to pay our teachers less, because that would be politically unpopular…until now.

            In Nebraska, whose teachers’ compensation ranks 43^rd in the nation, state legislators backed by strong business interests and Chambers of Commerce, are attempting to eliminate a governing body that arbitrates between school boards and teachers’ unions. If this body were to disappear the union would essentially lose its ability to negotiate for teachers’ salaries and benefits, having instead to take whatever the school board decides to give them. The Chambers, in an effort to support their opinion that teachers were overcompensated, had a state and national comparison of public workers’ compensation to private sector employees’ compensation. When the results came out, however, the Chambers decided to scrap the comparisons. Why? Public sector employees are, on average, paid between 2 % and 7 % less than private sector employees doing comparable work. In other words, the idea that public employees are compensated better than private sector employees is completely false, even by their own measurements! Somehow, though, this assumption continues to be a rallying cry against public employee unions by those that would tear them down.

            What’s even more troubling to me is that this has become more than a simple issue of a conservative vs. a liberal agenda or business interests vs. middle class. Bipartisan support exists among many individuals attempting to apply a business model to public schooling. Democrats for Education Reform have dedicated millions to undermining teachers’ unions. The Obama Administration’s Race to the Top initiative rewarded states that followed a charter school system, which employ non-union employees (and have been shown to be no more effective or even worse than the public school it took over). Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, is pushing a $360 million voucher system that will open up every public and private school in the state to any New Jersey student. These reforms treat parents as consumers and children as widgets, shopping for a school that meets their academic needs.

            In Omaha, we have been experimenting with the idea of school choice via an elected governing body called The Learning Community Coordinating Council. What they found regarding “school choice”, or parents’ ability to choose the school that their child attends regardless of zoning or enrollment quotas, is that the most at-risk kids that school choice is supposed to best serve, don’t want to go to different schools. Their parents don’t want them to, either. That’s because schools also function as community centers, places that give communities a lifeblood and identity. The fastest way to kill a neighborhood is to close its school. What our policymakers and business interests don’t understand is that a school isn’t a McDonald’s, or a Wal-Mart. You don’t just pick up and move your kids to a different school because you feel the service is lousy.

            Finally, to address Mr. Breitbart and those that are drinking the anti-school Kool-aid, the idea that schools are not a worthwhile investment is not only completely and utterly false, but it’s hypocritical, particularly of those pundits and politicians on the right that sing the praises of supply-side economics. Bank bailouts that have sat in financial institutions’ reserves, millionaire’s tax cuts that have failed to “trickle-down” into anything but their investment portfolios. These people assume that pumping billions into the largest, most wealthy companies int he country will somehow benefit people on mainstream, while having no real evidecne that it does. However, at the same time they don't want to invest any more tax money in schools, because there's no way to see a direct return on the investment until at least twelve years in the future. The answer, they believe, is to stop publicly funding and start privatizing schools, starting with voucher programs and charter schools. Anyone that wants to privatize education is not doing it for the children. Teachers don’t become teachers for the money. The minute they do, we’re in trouble.

             Instead, I want to advocate for school-side economics. Invest in school infrastructures that allow students, teachers, and support staff the flexibility and adaptability to educate in a variety of environments. Invest in educational research and development (rather than speculative stock-trading algorithms or bunker-busting bombs) to truly discern what best practices suit which learners and educators in different parts of the country. Invest in school-community programs to support parents in being involved in their child’s education (which research says is the single strongest predictor of a student’s success…not their test scores).

              Please, for the love of reason and goodness, invest in classroom instruction and teacher preparation, NOT standardized tests. To share a piece of Nebraska wisdom, “A cow doesn’t get any fatter by weighing it more.” Tests are mile-markers for kids, to see if they’re getting it. You can’t improve a student’s success with a test. If we were to make meaningful, data-driven (see: not politically or financially-driven) investments in our schools with guidance from local educational and organizational leaders rather than state politicians, we absolutely will see a return on investment.

              The return will be a generation of young adults that will not only be better off than the previous one, but will be a placeholder for future growth and development. One that understands that politics is local, and there’s no one right answer. A generation that understands that the best investment we can make as a society, is in the workers, thinkers, and doers of the future. If only the short-sighted members of the present generation could understand it too.

Photo from thecomingdepression.com