Reflections on First Day of Class

The first chapter of Current Issues and Trends in Education by Jerry Aldridge and Renitta Goldman (2007) dealt with politics and education. This chapter really hit home for me. My husband is the former mayor of the town where I happen to teach. Politics is viewed as having a very negative influence on education but it can also have a positive effect as well. My husband was and is extremely supportive of public education (ed. note: my husband is a republican so many may find this incongruous) and this support translated into overwhelming support for the school budget each year he was mayor. But, this isn't the typical political influence as there is much interference by politicians who think they know best how our schools should be run. This is very unfortunate because most if not all of these politicians have no teaching experience at all. It was brought up in class that many of these politicians didn't even attend public schools.

Although the No Child Left Behind legislation was sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans, it seems to be most closely identified with the administration of George Bush. There seems to be an overly punitive aspect of the legislation. While the goal of having all students succeed, the promised financial support has not been forthcoming. The ramifications for schools that have large populations of minority, English Language Learner, and special education populations seem to be primed for failure and not success with the provisions of NCLB. The authors of our book, Aldrige and Goldman point out on pg. 10 that educational reforms have failed our inner city youth. And it seems to me that the punitive nature of NCLB coincide with the statement the authors (paraphrasing Giroux, 1998) make on pg. 10 concerning the conservative backlash on education that is an "increasingly growing attempt to decimate the public school system as part of a larger assault on the democratic foundations of political, social, and cultural life."

It seems to me that this assault is directed not so much at the lily-white, wealthier districts, but rather at districts with larger minority populations. In my opinion this assault is a veiled way of introducing school vouchers into our society. If a school can't succeed then who wouldn't want those children to have options? But schools in poorer, multicultural neighborhoods have many more hurdles to jump over than affluent white communities. So, are vouchers just am "easy" solution to a very complex But I am not so sure that vouchers are the answer. What is going to happen when our countries demographics change as indicated in Chapt. 2 of our book? Will every child in the urban core have access to a private school? Would vouchers pay for the full cost of this education? What happens to parents who can't navigate through the application process?

This was an interesting start to a class that promises to become more and more interesting as we look into all of the many issues and controversies that continue to swirl around education. Some of these issues are new such as integrating technology into the curriculum and some issues such as who decides what should be part of the curriculum have probably been around since the very first school was started.