NSBA Official: ‘We’re Under Attack’
Ed Massey, member of the National School Boards Association's board of directors, delivered brief remarks at the 2nd General Session on Friday.
Massey, who serves on the school board in Boone County, Ky., filled in for NSBA Executive Director Anne Bryant, who was stuck in the Washington, D.C., by heavy snowfall earlier in the week.
Here is the prepared text of Massey’s remarks:
It’s wonderful to see all of you here today in Phoenix. I’m very pleased and grateful to have this opportunity to speak with you.
This is an exciting time for those of us in education. President Obama and Secretary Duncan have made prekindergarten through college a top priority in their budget proposal. We know that Congress will be taking up the ESEA reauthorization soon—and not a moment too soon. There is a renewed focus on making our schools the best they can be to educate all students for the 21st century.
But we’re under attack. Our school systems are under attack. The pundits want someone to blame for some of the data that rolls around on our TV screens and internet pages and Blackberries. There are many who think they have the answers to “fix” our schools, even though they have not set foot in a public school in years, perhaps decades. Those of you who spend your days on the front line know they have not a clue about the complexities of running a school system and the ever-increasing challenges public schools face.
We must resist these voices by leading the school systems we have. And we run systems, we are not a country where we have a system of schools.
Charter schools are the new panacea—and although good charter schools, chartered by the board and superintendent provide promise, because we could learn good lessons from these schools and then transfer those sound strategies to other schools around our district—we also know that charters as a whole are resegregating education.
Another study, this one done by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA and released on February 4th, says that charter schools’ political success is “a civil rights failure.” It states that far too many of our minority students are in racially isolated schools, and that it’s impossible to gauge the learning of low-income students and English language learners because of data gaps.
We know when charter schools are bad they are horrid, and, by the way, we also know that overall student academic achievement is not increased among charter schools.
We know--you and I—know what works: a strong academic program taught by well-qualified instructors, good leadership at the local level, and the flexibility to fix the inadequacies.
We have excellent schools and school districts across the country. But even these systems are challenged by the current fiscal conditions in our states.