“We have to have the moral courage to do the right thing by children,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said earlier this week on NBC’s “Meet the Press” during a conversation that included American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, former D.C. City Administrator Robert Bobb and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Duncan’s comments raised the bar for D.C.’s presumptive Mayor Vincent C. Gray, who is deliberating Rhee’s future: Will he truly advance the reforms she and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty set in motion during the past three years? Will the interests of children rule?
Gray has said he wants to wait until after the November general election before making personnel decisions. Selection of some agency heads can wait. But announcing Rhee’s status shouldn’t be delayed. The future of thousands of children is at stake.
Once upon a time in America, everyone agreed a quality education was a critical ingredient in a successful life. It was considered the great equalizer in a society marked by divisions and discriminations. During the 1950s, African Americans and their friends coalesced around a series of lawsuits eventually known as Brown versus Board of Education. Those legal actions demanded the elimination of a so-called separate-but-equal system that worked to the disadvantage of black children. Many risked death demanding enforcement of the Supreme Court’s ruling in that case.
Along the way, however, some blacks abandoned that imperative of quality education at all cost. Instead, they became ensnared in petty grievances while advocating myopic policies.
They seemed more interested in a school leader’s race, not that person’s management acumen. They worried about the future of poorly performing teachers, regardless of the damage they were doing to young minds. They seemed comfortable with having children come to school without measuring their intellectual growth or evaluating the roles of adults in that development. They believed it quite acceptable to talk ad nauseum about policy while class after class of students graduated without sufficient skills to compete in a global economy. Essentially, the interests of the children were sidelined by territorial prerogatives, paychecks and politics.
The consequences for decades of those misplaced priorities have been palpable.
Gray has talked about the high rate of unemployment in predominantly African-American Wards 7 and 8. There’s a direct correlation between that situation and the failure to make tough decisions guaranteeing black students receive the education they need to advance in society.
Abolitionist Harriet Tubman used to put a pistol to the heads of slaves who, in the middle of their escapes to freedom, became frightened by the unknown future, choosing instead to return to their old lives. Residents who want real education reform must be just as blunt.
They must prevent elected officials from stepping back in time by making timid choices. They must demand Gray demonstrate the moral courage about which Duncan spoke. They must insist on an immediate decision on DCPS leadership.
They should demand from Gray the answer to this question: If not Rhee, then who?
Jonetta Rose Barras’s column appears on Monday and Wednesday. She can be reached at [email protected].
