I am fortunate to be a teacher and a parent at the school my children attend. Recently, my colleague — a literacy specialist — stopped by my classroom to ask me how my older son was enjoying school. I proceeded to unload my concerns about his reading: He’s not careful with words, he’s not motivated, he doesn’t seem to be improving. After listening, she offered to read with him and give me some guidance. The next afternoon, I watched nervously as she held my little guy’s hand and led him into her classroom.
When they were done, she quickly went through several practical suggestions: He needed to take time to preview the story, stick his finger under tricky words and make sure the words he read made sense. The true gift, however, was that my son walked out of her room feeling important and worthwhile. What more could any parent ask for than to have her child leave school feeling such things? This is what public schools can provide for our children in Maine.
When you don’t have the opportunity to spend as much time in schools as I do, sending your children off can feel like a great leap of faith. This is particularly true if you have been following President-elect Donald Trump’s negative descriptions of American education. This narrative is inaccurate, and it is a threat to our public schools, communities and children.
In his $20 billion education platform, Trump champions school vouchers, cuts in the federal education department and opening the doors to an unregulated growth of for-profit educational enterprises, particularly charter schools. His nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, has a record of steadfastly supporting initiatives like these. The reforms she champions, however, have failed in states from Indiana, Louisiana, Texas and in her home state of Michigan.
An education platform such as this is unsound. Charter schools — one of the cornerstones of the school-choice movement — for example, close at alarming rates. Between 2010 and 2015, more than 1,200 charter schools shut their doors. Teacher turnover — a factor that limits student achievement — in charter schools continues to be significantly higher than in traditional public schools. Additionally, a study done by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University in California found that test scores among students who attend online charter schools were significantly worse than those at traditional schools. Regardless of politics, there is no evidence that a proliferation of charter schools will raise achievement for all students.
It would seem that our president-elect and his nominee for secretary of education would put our education system at risk with policies that hold no track record of student success. Furthermore, despite their lack of experience in public education, Trump and DeVos assume that business acumen can fix pedagogic problems. As a teacher of 16 years, I assure you that experience in this profession matters greatly. I would never presume to walk into a car dealership or a bakery and suggest that I know how to improve those professions simply because I have driven a car or baked a cake.
Certainly, there is an urgent need to improve schools that are not raising outcomes for kids. I have taught in a failing school. I have seen firsthand how my students there faced the complexities of poverty, the obstacles of unfunded educational mandates and the devastating fallout of inequalities that exist between ZIP codes. Yet, even in the face of these struggles, the school served as a safe and predictable place for the kids. It was a place where they could eat, stay warm and rely on the teachers who cared for them.
Here in Maine, public schools are the pillars of our communities. They are places where families gather to meet, eat, celebrate and even grieve. People come to schools to enthusiastically cheer on their sports teams, to listen to children play in the orchestra, to sing and to honor achievement. I am gravely concerned that Trump and DeVos’ plans will chip away at the vital role schools play in our beautiful small towns and communities. If this were to happen, we indeed would fail.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Reach out to your children’s schools. I am certain that you will meet teachers, like my colleague, who spark a love of reading, science, math and the arts within their students. I am even more certain that in any corner of our state you will see how vibrant and alive with learning Maine’s public schools are.
Talya Edlund is a fifth-grade teacher at Cape Elizabeth Middle School and the 2016 Maine Teacher of the Year.