State of Schools Meeting on Oct. 18

The Oct. 18 meeting of the CPC, held at the Butler School, was the annual address by the Superintendent. A new interactive format piloted last year calls for questions at key moments during the presentation. This was further augmented by a new feature that allowed viewers to email questions directly to the meeting. Since the meeting was broadcast live, thanks to the hard-working folks at Ch. 22, those watching from home could participate in the meeting. It was a great success and made for a dynamic and informative meeting.

I think we'll be trying this out more often in the future as it seems to be a way to encourage parent involvement, even when parents can't get out to the meetings.

School Funding

Both the Lowell Sun and the Boston Herald printed editorials this past week about the pending Hancock v Driscoll case in which students from the state's poorer school districts (including Lowell) have sued the Commonwealth in an effort to increase state funding for education. Both newspapers took the position that more money won't solve the problems in education. The solution, in their opinion, is "more accountability." This is the typical head-in-the-sand approach to education championed by these two papers. Many of the biggest impediments to education are societal problems that have nothing to do with schools. Yet we completely ignore these societal problems when we assess the effectiveness of schools. If a child is absent six weeks of the year, that's not the school's fault. Yet we hold the school accountable when that child fails. If society wants our school systems to solve all of society's ills, it's going to cost a lot of money. The sooner that our leaders - and our local newspapers - take a more realistic approach to what's going on, the better our chances of making progress.

Urban and Suburban classrooms, the real story

I'm still responding to the Sunday edition of the Lowell Sun, since a front-page article by Rebecca Piro ("A Tale of Two Classrooms") seemed to me to be deliberately misleading. The subheading, still in large, bold print, which is reprinted on page 4, where the article continues, reads "Urban, Suburban classrooms share common challenges." The body of the article describes two fourth-grade classrooms, one at the Lincoln School in Lowell and one at the Heath Brook Elementary School in Tewksbury. In both classrooms, the teachers face the higher standards of the era of MCAS and No Child Left Behind and must teach the "crucial English and math skills students need to earn their high-school diplomas". In that respect, it could be said that the classrooms share common goals. To say that they share common challenges is ludicrous. A look at the statistics accompanying the article tells the real story: Tewksbury has 5.7% low-income students, Lowell 67.7% and even more telling, Tewksbury has zero limited English proficient students, while Lowell has 23.5%. Those differences alone more than outweigh the $1,000 more per pupil that Lowell spends. In addition, as the article points out, only 5% of Heath Brook's fourth-graders failed MCAS in English and 10% in math; at the Lincoln School, the failure rate for last year was 29% in English and 31% in math. The numbers tell the story, not the headlines.

Hancock vs. Driscoll

"Money Isn't the Answer", is the Sun’s editorial claim when decrying the Hancock v Driscoll lawsuit. Lowell and 19 other school districts want the state to spend more on education, and so far one State Supreme Court Judge has ruled for the plaintiffs. The Sun insists that “wads of cash” won’t solve the problem that some students “aren’t receiving a public education equal to that of every other Massachusetts student.” They cite social and family problems that cause student failure, including hunger, alcoholism, drug addictions, and homelessness, but there is no push from the newspaper to use resources to try to solve these problems. Instead, the Sun has endorsed an incumbent who has cut social programs while giving tax cuts to the rich, leaving us with the high-minded, but uniquely cynical, sentiment that “family and societal problems must be solved…. before every child can receive an equitable public education.” This is cold comfort to families in crisis and to urban teachers daily facing students who are living the very lives the Sun describes. In the meantime, the public schools are expected to perform at a higher level than ever before, meet unrealistic targets under ‘No Child Left Behind’ and face sanctions and further drain of resources when they fail. Reasoning such as this truly puts our schools, and children, between a rock and a hard place.

Upcoming CPC Meeting

Mark Monday, October 18 on your calendar. That’s the next Citywide Parent Council meeting at 7:00 p.m. at the Butler Middle School. This meeting will feature Superintendent Karla Brooks Baehr’s annual State of the Schools address which will be broadcast live on Lowell Education Television (Channel 22). An added feature will be a live email link that will allow viewers at home to ask the Superintendent questions via email (lowellcpc@comcast.net).

More on School Funding

Earlier this week, the justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in Hancock v. Driscoll, a case in which students from several urban school districts sued the state department of education, alleging that the existing state funding formula deprives students in those schools of a full and equal education in violation of the state constitution. The court will probably issue its opinion in January. With this case pending, it was ironic to read in today’s Boston Globe that a national research group, The Education Trust found that Massachusetts was providing “substantially more resources to their highest-poverty districts” than most other states. But this report did not address the adequacy of the funding, it just compared it to similar funding in other states. If this is the best in the country, no wonder our education system is in such tough shape.