Public School Values
By Frosty Troy

[Frosty Troy is Editor of The Oklahoma Observer. He is a highly decorated journalist, a nationally sought-after speaker, a tireless champion of public education, and a frequent contributor to Christian Ethics Today. This article on “Public School Values” and the two following brief pieces on “Charter Blues” and “It’s Money” are his lead articles in the August 25 issue of his award-winning “Independent Journal of Commentary?’ available for $25 per year at 500 N.E. 39 Terrace, P.O. Box 53371, Oklahoma City, OK 73 152-3371.]

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
Philosopher Blaise Pascal

Of all the groundless, hurtful attacks on public educators, none is more painful than the charge that public schools are “godless” institutions of secular humanism.

From Phyllis Schlafly and William Bennett to Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy, James Dobson and Pat McGuigan, the staccato drumbeat against public education includes religious defamation.

The Constitution requires that public education be neutral in the arena of sectarian religion, but that’s a far cry from the debasement heaped upon public educators.

A torrent of abuse has flooded the airwaves since the shootings in Littleton—if only the Ten Commandments had been posted. If only prayer had been permitted. If only school teachers were not void of values.

It is ironic that the religious and political critics bring no facts to the table. Columbine High School was rife with religion—the kind permitted under the Constitution. There were Bible clubs, a religious organization for athletes, prayer at the Pole, and a largely Christian faculty.

The crescendo of calumny heaped on public education by the likes of Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Dan Quayle and other rightwing politicians is a partisan attack—they promote vouchers and charter schools so children cannot only be educated but indoctrinated.

Who is for spiritual values for kids and who is just kidding? Can you name one other institution in America that comes nearest biblical injunctions?

Feeding the hungry? Last year for nearly 30% of public school children, it was the only hot meal they got.

Clothing the naked? There’s hardly an elementary school in a poor neighborhood in America that does not have a clothing closet stuffed with underwear, socks and other necessities for have-not children.

The widow’s mite? The average teacher spent more than $400 of personal funds for such things as workbooks and pencils for poor children.

Visiting the prisoners? Those are public educators manning the vo-Tech, literacy and skill centers behind the walls—redeeming tens of thousands of otherwise lost lives. Those are public educators teaching in alternative schools—rescuing troubled youth being given a second chance.

No greater love? The Littleton teacher who herded children into a room for safety, then shielded them with his own body, lay shot and dying in front of the praying students he had saved.

Role models? No other profession provides a higher percentage of Sunday school teachers.

Suffer the little ones? Who takes the little ones who are retarded, developmentally disabled or mentally handicapped? Who redeems the dispossessed and the delinquent in alternative education programs?

If you’re looking for values, consider the majority of teachers who spend their own time and money mentoring students, sponsoring non-academic class activities, all the while attempting to deal with the most undisciplined generation ever to enter public education.

Because teachers can’t pin on a church label and baptize the students doesn’t make public education any less spiritual. It isn’t the babbling critics who wrap themselves in religious intolerance who are making a difference for all of God’s children. They preach to the saved in the rear echelon while public school teachers staff the front line.

Public educators don’t have the time or the inclination to bash Christian, parochial or private schools, or the home schoolers who so bitterly denounce public education.

Look who comes to public school among the 46.5 million enrolled this year, then consider who truly does God’s work:

• Six million for whom English is a second language.
• Six million special education children.
• More than two million abused children.
• Nearly 500,000 from no permanent address—the homeless ones.
• One out of four comes from extreme poverty, are often born out of wedlock and many are abused, neglected, unwashed, unwanted and unloved.

You won’t find these kids on the 700 Club or at D. James Kennedy’s Florida church or playing in the backyards of William Bennett or Tamar Alexander. They won’t profit from $114 million that poured in Focus on the Family last year, and they won’t be adopted by the childless Pat Buchanans.

The teachers who minister to them are scorned on editorial pages and maligned from ignorant pulpits, but they keep on keeping on—and only God knows why.

They earn the poorest salaries among all industrial nations, yet a new study shows they are among the brightest college students and nearly half hold master’s degrees. More than 61% call themselves “conservative”, and they are church-related in excess of the national population.

With all its warts, public education produces more math and science brains than all of private education combined. From astronauts to Pulitzer prize winners, from Nobel laureates to the clergy, they are in the front rank.

America has the highest percentage of church-goers in the western world—the overwhelming majority from public schools.

The public school day may not start with a Hail Mary or an Our Father, a mantra or a blood sacrifice, but public education does more of God’s work every day than any other institution in America—and that includes the churches.

Charter Blues

While right wingers continue to push for charter school legislation across America, report after report highlights problems in states that were among the first to authorize charter schools.

The first charter state, Minnesota, which approved charter school legislation in 1991, is taking a long, hard look at its charter schools following a stinging report by the Minnesota Office of Education Accountability (OEA).

A multi-year study conducted by OEA reveals that many charter schools in Minnesota are plagued with “low achievement scores, low attendance rates.. .and low graduation rates.

Serious problems plague California charter schools:

• Only 40% of charter school students met the state’s graduation requirements for math, compared with 71% statewide.
• Only 43% of charter school students met state achievement goals, compared to 68% statewide.
• Attendance rate in charter schools is 79%, compared with 92% in traditional public schools.
• The charter high school dropout rate is 36%, compared with 11% statewide.

The Minnesota study comes on the heels of three other reports that cast doubts on charter schools:

• A study conducted by researchers at the University of California at public-funded quasi-private schools found that charter schools were selecting students they want and rejecting those they don’t.
• A Boston College study found that charter schools in Massachusetts operated by-for-profit companies have engaged in a pattern of disregard and often blatant hostility toward students with disabilities. Researchers suspect its because special education students tend to lower cumulative test score averages. (These companies need high test scores to market their services.)
• A report prepared for the state Board of Education in North Carolina notes that half of the 235 teachers employed by charter schools in that state are not certified to teach.
• Michigan public school students out-scored charter school students in statewide exams last spring, leading to a reevaluation of the movement there.

This list could go on, but you catch the drift. America is being sold a bill of goods about using public school money for charters and vouchers. And the only people suffering the con-sequences are the kids.

It’s Money

Bewildered educators are puzzled by the power grab of so many businesses for a piece of the education pie via privatization. That’s because they haven’t done their homework.

The sharpies have their eyes on public schools for reasons unrelated to helping kids learn. They’re following the money.

• “Education is a $600 billion market, and at 8.6% of U.S. GDP, ranks second only to health care in terms of national expenditures.”
• The K-12 market is a $318 billion market, or 48% of total education expenditures. Itis projected to grow 38%, to $440 billion, by 2007.
• Higher Education is a $200 billion market, projected to grow to $267 billion by 2008. Record numbers of high school graduates and college enrollments are expected to fuel this strong growth.
• Corporate Education and Training is a booming $60.7 billion market, driven by firms seeking lower costs, higher productivity, and more skilled employees.
• Education stocks have performed extremely well in the last two years. The combined index of education companies has returned a compound annual growth rate of 20.6% since October 1996.

One of those investment forums published this item to lure investors: “As growth in the education industry continues to spiral, investors are beginning to take notice of what used to be an industry dominated by public and private not-for-profit service and product providers.” The name: “Evaluating the K-12 Market: Capitalizing on Dissatisfaction with the Public System.”

Wall Street badmouths public education in order to cannibalize it for the greater glory of the profit motive. Some of their investments—from Baltimore to Cleveland—have been educational disasters, but they still got their money.

Updated Tuesday, January 01, 2002