By Richard Franklin and Vi Parramore
StudentsFirst Founder and CEO Michelle Rhee will hold a town hall meeting in Birmingham on Thursday.Nothing is more important for the future of our children and, frankly, our democracy, than getting public education right.
Since the 1983 release of the National Commission on Excellence in Education’s “A Nation at Risk” report, there has been a sense of urgency to improve our public schools and reduce the achievement gap.
Urgency is good if it leads us down the path to great public schools for all children. But sadly, the urgency has been used to fixate on testing, starve public schools with austerity budgets and privatize public schools through vouchers and charters.
None of these so-called reforms has moved the needle in a positive direction. It’s outrageous that outside lobbyists peddle this long-expired brand of education to communities with the message that it will be the elixir for what ails their public schools. We want what works for Alabama students, not what works for the lobbyists and the corporations promoting these “reforms.”
We need to reclaim the promise of public education, which is under attack by those who think the answer revolves around more testing and less teaching; ideology over evidence; privatizing, not fixing, public schools; and sanctions based on test scores, instead of supports and help.
Alabama is undergoing a hostile takeover by outsiders led by Michelle Rhee. She is headlining a town hall meeting in Birmingham Thursday to spread the gospel of privatization. She says she invited teachers union leaders, but given the extraordinary disdain and animus that she—and the others joining her on stage—have for public school teachers and teachers unions, the invitation is wholly disingenuous and, frankly, a gimmick.
Rhee is making Alabama her latest playground, with her full-court press for passage of the Alabama Accountability Act, now the subject of two lawsuits challenging its legality for diverting public school dollars for tax credit and scholarship (voucher) programs for private school tuition. The plaintiffs include the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the nation’s foremost civil rights organizations. It would be unconscionable for Rhee or her partners to make a civil rights argument in favor of vouchers, when vouchers do not ensure that all children receive a first-class education.
Alabama teachers and community members are working together on efforts to improve Alabama’s public schools. Too bad Rhee didn’t throw her support—financial or otherwise—into our efforts, which include the Extreme Classroom Makeover project, the comprehensive grief counseling program for tornado victims, and extensive professional development training that helps ensure teachers are well-prepared for the classroom.
Our schools need a laser-like focus on a well-rounded, engaging curriculum; tools and resources so teachers are well-prepared and supported; wraparound services to meet children’s emotional, social and health needs; and safe and welcoming schools.
None of that is included in Rhee’s brand of education reform.
Frankly, it is insulting that Rhee is coming to our city to tell us how to improve our public schools. She is living in an evidence-free zone that refuses to acknowledge the results of research—conducted from 1990, when the nation’s first publicly funded voucher program began in Milwaukee, to the present—that conclusively shows that vouchers do not improve student achievement.
Likewise, Rhee refuses to acknowledge the results of reforms that are working in school districts from coast to coast, such as in New Haven, Conn.; Cincinnati; and the ABC Unified School District in southern Los Angeles. The thread running through these districts is a concerted effort to work with educators to develop and implement reforms that work. These districts are seeing real improvement because they are committed to reclaiming the promise of public education by fighting for safe, strong neighborhood public schools that are places where teachers want to teach, parents want to send their children, and students get a robust education and the services they need to help prepare them for the 21st-century economy.
We will fight to reclaim the promise of public education in Alabama that will help every child, not just some, dream their dreams and achieve them.
Richard Franklin is president of the American Federation of Teachers in Birmingham. Vi Parramore is president of the American Federation of Teachers in Jefferson County.