A steady parade of candidates for the District of Columbia City Council was marched through The Examiner’s office recently, and more are coming. Listening to the candidates’ presentations has been … frustrating.
While the blame must fall heavily upon the mayor and members of the current City Council and School Board, it is disappointing that hardly any of the candidates go beyond the usual political rhetoric to offer radically different approaches to the District’s most pressing and long-standing problem — the shameful failure of the District of Columbia Public Schools. Year after year, no other public school system in America spends so much and yet produces so little for its graduates.
The paucity of courageous, fresh thinking on this issue among council candidates is especially depressing because it’s been clear for years that the usual D.C. approach — spend more money on the latest public education fads, hire more bureaucrats and kow-tow to the special interests — not only hasn’t worked but has cheated generation after generation of the District’s children of even minimally acceptable educations.
It’s not enough to promise stricter law enforcement and administrative reforms so that school facilities are safe and maintained efficiently, nor is it enough to deliver grades on time and have enough of the right textbooks available for all students. Those ought to be the givens of everyday operation.
The heart of the problem is that DCPS doesn’t teach its elementary students essential basic skills like reading, and then compounds the problem through the middle and high school years by failing to provide sufficient remedial teaching to make up the original deficit. Everything else that’s typically offered to explain the system’s chronic failure misses this basic point.
So in the hope somebody will stand up with courage to risk speaking frankly and forcefully, here are three actions to consider:
First, the city should take over the school system, then give principals the authority to hire and fire teachers and to manage school-based budgets. When the education unions resist passively or actively, announce that there will be no negotiations for new contracts when those currently in force end, and that all positions will be declared vacant. The education unions’ stranglehold on the educational welfare of the District’s children must end.
Second, guarantee every District parent a voucher equal to the current per-pupil expenditure and make it redeemable at the certified school of the parent’s choice. Yes, some parents will take their kids out of DCPS and put them in other schools within and outside the District. The city has only one educational purpose — assuring every child has an equal opportunity to get a good education. Guaranteeing jobs for education union members is not required to achieve that purpose.
Finally, taking the first two actions will bring forth a massive surge of creative new resources — human and financial — from the District’s business, nonprofit, retiree and religious communities because there will finally be tangible proof that it’s no longer business as usual for the District’s children. And the city will unite behind the cause of rescuingour children’s schools as never before.
