Education Must Serve All, Part II

Above all, we must keep in mind that the intent of public education is the overall betterment of society by providing a universally well-educated citizenry. We all pay for it and we all benefit most not when results are maximized for a select few, but when those results are distributed as widely as possible. It is absolutely fine if parents, so motivated, wish to send their children to private schools. But when active selection begins to take place within public schools, we may improve the performance of the minority who take advantage of school choice, but it is almost certainly at the expense of those left behind – and at the expense of the overall academic achievement of society as a whole.

To understand how this happens, I would suggest reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers. The first chapter describes how at every level of hockey, all the way up through the NHL, fully four times as many Canadian-born players are born in January through March than are born in October through December. The reason? Because beginning around age nine or ten, select teams begin choosing the best of each eligible age group, and since the cutoff date to determine which age group one plays in is January 1, those born in January (and February and March) are too young to make the cut – so they become the oldest of the next group. Since they are the oldest, they are also the biggest and most coordinated. When it comes time for the next year’s selection, guess who the best teams take. Yes, those who are biggest and most coordinated. Those players then get better coaching, better competition, more practice and more games. Meanwhile, those born at the end of the year, who are smaller and less coordinated, end up in rec leagues, and therefore never develop their full potential.

The numbers are amazingly consistent – 40% of elite hockey players are born January-March, 30% from April-June, 20% from July-September and 10% October through December. So, while each age cohort begins with roughly the same number of players, far fewer of those born late in the year reach their full potential, meaning that for every player born October-December who makes the NHL, there are three more who had all the potential to do so, but because they were left behind by the system, they became ordinary.

Now, imagine a public education system that does essentially the same thing. Charter schools are notorious for their selectivity, leaving many worthy children behind. By segregating those whose parents are motivated to apply for charter schools and have the means and motivation to make sure their children can get to those schools, we leave a majority of students behind in schools that have lost a sizeable portion of their best students and most involved parents. Many of these kids left behind have as much potential as those who move on, but because schools without parental involvement invariably decline in quality, education suffers as teachers leave, community financial support declines and social pathologies increase. 

Just as hockey players never reach their potential, so it is with our students. And if one considers how much better the quality of pro hockey would be if every player reached their potential, just consider how much better the quality of our economy and our society would be if every student, likewise, reached their full potential. Imagine more doctors, engineers, programmers and, yes, more teachers.

Again, we are talking about public education. It does not exist to provide the best education possible to a select and lucky few, but to provide the best possible education to every child. I asked the Executive Director of Betsy Devos’s Great Lakes Education Project numerous times in the months leading up to the election if the superior performance of charter schools was measured by comparing the individual performance of each student against their previous performance at their original school, or if it simply compared the performance of charter school students against non-charter school students (that’s a significant difference that ignores the selection bias). The closest I got to a response was, “Good luck with that.” I would expect something more definitive.  

The public should not be expected to shell out hard-earned tax dollars so that they can disproportionately benefit a select few at the expense of many. Worse, we should be wary about programs that may leave a majority of students with an education inferior to what a fair and equitable public school system should deliver. We will not be well-served subsidizing the few at a great long-term expense to society – an expense that will only worsen as public education becomes less and less valued by an ever greater number of underserved, yet highly deserving parents and students. 

Education Must Serve All, Lest It Serve None

In her 60 Minutes interview Sunday night, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos stated she has not visited failing schools because she wants to study what is working at successful schools. I understand the logic behind visiting such high-performing schools and championing their innovative endeavors. However, this is where a purely free-market approach to education raises its greatest threat. That's because every successful free market endeavor must segment the general public and seek to serve a specific subset of that market. Our public schools cannot - and must not - do the same. They must serve all students, regardless of geography or demography.

Thus, it is imperative that we study not only what works in successful schools, but what is behind the failure in less successful schools. The programs that work in good schools may be successful not so much because of the program itself, but because of the audience it serves. What works in Brentwood may not work in the Bronx or in an opioid-afflicted rural community. There may be factors beyond the lack of the proper program that stunts achievement.

I understand the logic and potential merits of school choice, but we must be careful that we do not do to our students what we have done to our young athletes, which is to create a system of "select" programs that do a wonderful job of serving those with the means and motivation to participate and the parental support to enable such participation, but leave behind a larger group of children with poorer instruction, fewer peers to serve as outstanding role models and measuring sticks and the stigma of being disposable.

Our nation is already well down a troubling road of creating an insurmountable chasm between haves and have-nots. The single best way to close that gap and ensure not only a healthy generation of children, but a healthy society is through universal, quality education. Studying only what works without identifying what is wrong is akin to studying disease by ignoring the sick and studying only the healthy. We can't ignore half the population. Public education must work for all students, or it will wind up working for none of us.

Life in the NRA's USA

In 1975, Lynyrd Skynyrd released Saturday Night Special, a song about the iconic six-shot revolver that left no doubt the band questioned the value of a weapon good for nothing but to "put a man a-six feet in a hole." That same year, my high school freshman civics class held a series of debates on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I was assigned the Second Amendment.

I do not recall if I had to take the pro or con on the amendment. I do not recall if the debate centered on the individual right to possess firearms, if it centered on the intent of referencing a well-regulated militia, or if it centered on the pros and cons of adding the amendment to the Constitution in the first place.

What I do recall, however, was that as a public high school student, school shootings were not part of the conversation. The thought never even entered our minds. Why would they? Such events, if they took place at all, were so rare as to be neither part of the public discourse nor public consciousness. We didn't think about them because they didn't happen. What was in the public consciousness - and what was a central part of the overall discussion on crime and violence - were those Saturday Night Specials, so-called because they were the weapon of choice for burglars, drug dealers and spurned lovers who often found reason to use said weapons to resolve a drug deal gone bad or mete out justice on an unfaithful partner, often on a Saturday night.

The results of our high school debate are irrelevant. But what is relevant is where that larger societal debate on Saturday Night Specials took us, because suggestions to register those weapons began the NRA's shift from an advocate of gun safety to one vociferously defending and arguing for the individual right to own a gun. The NRA warned us those early suggestions of registration were the beginning of a dreaded slippery slope.

Time covers show the evolution of US firearms from 1968-2012

It was a slippery slope, alright, but not the one of ever tighter registration, restriction and eventual gun confiscation that the NRA warned about. Instead, it was the slippery slope of ever increasing exploitation of fear to justify the right and need to possess guns. The gradual but steady portrayal of our government as an evil threat to arm ourselves against using the guns protected in the Second Amendment, rather than to engage via the rights enshrined in the First. The NRA raised funds warning of jack-booted government thugs coming to take away guns. They lobbied for lax Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms enforcement of existing laws. They fought restrictions on the sale and firepower of guns. They enabled and encouraged the growth of gun shows where background checks often pay mere lip service to the concept and the gun trade became the equivalent of model trains - a hobby with an insatiable thirst for cooler, more realistic accessories that leaves a small, but significant subset living in an unhealthy fantasy world where they are defenders of truth, justice and the American Way.

Gun shows have turned the American arms race into a hobby - or vice versa

Meanwhile, we adapted to the new publicly-held firepower. We installed security cameras and metal detectors at airports, courthouses, football stadia and more. We began inspecting purses and backpacks when entering concerts and ballgames. We are witnessing the militarization of our local police forces. And now, the NRA is using those examples to argue that our schools are "deserving" of the same protections. That our schools deserve metal detectors, surveillance cameras, inspections, armed guards, armed teachers. That to do any less is neglect and a dereliction of our duty to our children. Their term of choice for what they envision is "harden."

There is another term that describes the NRA's vision of America.

Police state.

Bottom line, we are allowing those with the weapons to dictate how we are to live our lives. Therein lies the sad irony of the NRA's forty-plus year fight for gun rights in the name of preserving liberty. In pursuing those rights, they have created a society that is less free, less secure. The NRA's world is Orwellian in the purest sense, where words mean the opposite. Guns mean safety. Surveillance ensures liberty. Inspections deliver freedom.

Some liken what we are witnessing to the proverbial frog in the slowly warming pot, where bit by bit, we cede our real freedom - the freedom to move about without worry of harm or the scrutiny of unseen watchful eyes, the freedom to send our kids to school without fear - until one day we realize the world we've created is precisely the dangerous dystopia from which those guns promised to protect us.

A 2017 NRA ad warns of evil forces in and outside of government

In some ways, however, what we are witnessing is more like a pressure cooker. The growing concentration of guns in the hands of fewer people, fueled by NRA warnings against dark forces inside and outside of government risks not just our safety, but society itself. In the NRA's world, not only is the government something to be viewed as sinister, but so are any who question the motives of the self-proclaimed righteous. The media, Hollywood, protesters and liberals are all presented as enemies of liberty. It is the classic "us versus them" construct, whereby the NRA is not only encouraging the development of a heavily armed, unregulated civilian army, but is also creating an enemy against which they must prepare to do battle. With a complicit conservative media fueling the flame, anger simmers and pressure builds. It is doubtful those weapons will remain forever sheathed. People looking for a fight are rarely disappointed. What the triggering event might be is a mystery, but just as pilots are warned of the "moth effect," whereby they fly towards objects they fixate upon, so should we beware that those fixated upon a righteous battle with evil adversaries will find those adversaries and be drawn towards - and into - just such a battle.

God help us if they do. The thought of an angry, disorganized mob of self-styled patriots who fancy themselves modern-day Minutemen, but lacking modern-day Washingtons, Jeffersons and Madisons to back their fervor with intellect and principle, leading a revolution against the United States of America does not lend itself to images of desirable outcomes. It could end quickly in a more serious, though no less decisive, Apache helicopter/A10 Warthog version of Indiana Jones and the guy with the sword. It could end with large parts of like-minded military units joining in to take on our government. Or, it just might never end. It's impossible to predict what life, politics or our system of government would look like on the other side of such an uprising, but it is hard to believe it would be an improvement upon the greatest experiment in liberty and democracy the world has ever seen.

Which all begs the question - is this the path upon which we wish to continue? Do we want the NRA and the most heavily armed among us dictating that we must accept intrusion in our personal lives, inconveniences in our public places and occasional mass death so they can continue to arm themselves against our own government? Because that is what five decades of NRA advocacy and activism has delivered.  And their answer - their only answer - is more of the same. The word for that is insanity. It is time to stop. More guns are not the answer. In a civil society, they never are.

Our founding fathers gave us all the tools we need to protect us from an overbearing government with rights enshrined in the Constitution that do not require taking up arms. With a free press to keep us informed, the freedom to speak out as we see fit, the right to hold our government accountable through peaceable assembly and petition, all backed up by the might of the ballot box, we have all the power we need. But in our zeal for guns, fueled by a fear-mongering NRA, we've lost sight of that.  The first step is to end the fascination with guns and the fantasy that they are the tool of choice in defending us from ourselves, for we may wake up one day only to find those guns have done nothing but place us in an armed prison of our own making. That is hardly freedom's safest place.