March 2, 2006--Public School XXX
I do not pretend to know where this story will end up; but if you want a glimpse of why our public schools are a national disgrace, I draw your attention to Passaic, New Jersey.
The NY Times reports that the NJ state agency responsible for constructing schools has chosen a site in Passaic for a new school that has on one side the Montauk Theater, which specializes in Triple X films, and on the other side the Hotel Passaic, which is in effect a whore house (see story linked below).
The original plan was to purchase both the hotel and movie theater, but because of limited funds those plans have been dropped. Not the plan to build the school there, that is still on the books, but the one to buy the other two sites and demolish the buildings so that the kids attending the new school wouldn’t have to run the gauntlet every day between Sodom and Gomorrah.
All involved agree that in a city that is just 3.1 square miles in area it is not easy to come up with places to build schools. But surely there must be better options.
One of the reasons why there is this problem in New Jersey is that NJ has more local school districts than any other state in the nation. Some quite small. And thus they face this kind of real estate problem when seeking sites for new schools. This proliferation of school districts is not the result of educational considerations (small is beautiful) but rather it exists for political reasons. Every school district, no matter its size (and in NJ some districts serve just a dozen students—yes a dozen students in total), needs a school board, a superintendent, school principals, teachers, custodians, buildings, etc. Get it?
Educators and community leaders argue that this version of decentralization assures wide parental input in the curriculum (we know what this often brings—recall Intelligent Design?) and cherished local rather than state or worse national control of local schools.
So if this theory of local control is valid we should see New Jersey schools leading the nation in student achievement. Guess what—the state ranks right at the top in per student spending (in part because of the overheard costs associated with having so many districts) but right down there with Mississippi in student achievement. If I am correct, more school districts in NJ have been taken over by the state because of poor performance or out-and-out corruption than any other state—including the three or four largest districts—Newark, Trenton, Jersey City, etc.
There are about 45 million children attending public schools in America. At least a third, fully 15 million kids, are in low-performing, dysfunctional schools. We now know that charter schools and voucher programs will not solve this problem (as I’ve blogged, evidence has accumulated that these reform models are actually having negative consequences).
So what to do to keep pace with the rest of the world which is doing a much better job of educating their children? Surely not by building P.S XXX.
The NY Times reports that the NJ state agency responsible for constructing schools has chosen a site in Passaic for a new school that has on one side the Montauk Theater, which specializes in Triple X films, and on the other side the Hotel Passaic, which is in effect a whore house (see story linked below).
The original plan was to purchase both the hotel and movie theater, but because of limited funds those plans have been dropped. Not the plan to build the school there, that is still on the books, but the one to buy the other two sites and demolish the buildings so that the kids attending the new school wouldn’t have to run the gauntlet every day between Sodom and Gomorrah.
All involved agree that in a city that is just 3.1 square miles in area it is not easy to come up with places to build schools. But surely there must be better options.
One of the reasons why there is this problem in New Jersey is that NJ has more local school districts than any other state in the nation. Some quite small. And thus they face this kind of real estate problem when seeking sites for new schools. This proliferation of school districts is not the result of educational considerations (small is beautiful) but rather it exists for political reasons. Every school district, no matter its size (and in NJ some districts serve just a dozen students—yes a dozen students in total), needs a school board, a superintendent, school principals, teachers, custodians, buildings, etc. Get it?
Educators and community leaders argue that this version of decentralization assures wide parental input in the curriculum (we know what this often brings—recall Intelligent Design?) and cherished local rather than state or worse national control of local schools.
So if this theory of local control is valid we should see New Jersey schools leading the nation in student achievement. Guess what—the state ranks right at the top in per student spending (in part because of the overheard costs associated with having so many districts) but right down there with Mississippi in student achievement. If I am correct, more school districts in NJ have been taken over by the state because of poor performance or out-and-out corruption than any other state—including the three or four largest districts—Newark, Trenton, Jersey City, etc.
There are about 45 million children attending public schools in America. At least a third, fully 15 million kids, are in low-performing, dysfunctional schools. We now know that charter schools and voucher programs will not solve this problem (as I’ve blogged, evidence has accumulated that these reform models are actually having negative consequences).
So what to do to keep pace with the rest of the world which is doing a much better job of educating their children? Surely not by building P.S XXX.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:55 AM
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