The state of Kansas is closing half of its schools. Chicago is closing schools. California is raising tuition at its state universities over 30% in a single year, which means that many students will have to drop out before they finish, saddled with crushing private debt and poor prospects for decent employment. In a fit of pique, a school board in Rhode Island recently fired ALL the teachers at Central Public High School when the teacher’s union wanted to negotiate the board’s demands.

The board had asked Central High teachers to work longer hours, to spend more time outside of class tutoring individual students, and to use their lunch periods eating with students in the cafeteria instead of in the teacher’s lounge alone or with each other. The demands from the board were in response to consistently lower test scores delivered by that specific school.

The teachers had already agreed to most of the demands, but wanted to negotiate some of the details. Rather than sit down with the teachers’ union, the school board simply fired the entire staff: principal, guidance counselors, teachers, and all. Sevety-four employees. That’ll teach ‘em!

Central High is located in one of the poorest districts in Rhode Island, where the median income by household is a mere $22,000 per year. That fact is scarcely coincidental.

The U.S. public education system now ranks near the bottom of a list of education systems in all developed nations when it comes to effectiveness and accessibility. A study conducted by the United Nations in 2002 ranked Germany as the only country with a less effective public education system than the United States, but went on to qualify their findings with the following statement:

“It is clear that educational disadvantage is born not at school but in the home,” said the report. “Learning begins at birth” and is fostered by “a loving, secure, stimulating environment.”

In other words, it isn’t the lousy teachers, nor the cushy curriculum, nor inadequate testing, nor lower standards of educational achievement, but the fact that, among all the developed nations in the world, the children most likely to access public education in the U.S are also the children most likely to live in abject poverty—with parents who cannot read, write, or get a job and who may not be home or even around, ever.

In other words, (and I want to phrase this delicately so as not to offend anyone) “IT’S NOT THE TEACHERS YOU FREAKING PENNY-PINCHING BUREAUCRATS.”

It’s the lack of any sort of social safety net whatsoever for the kids and their families. If children come to school hungry, sleepless, undisciplined, unsupported, and uninterested, you could fill the schools with an army of Mr. Chips clones and the current problems would persist.

Kids need to eat. They need security and care. They need to know they matter and that they have real oppoturnities should they apply themselves. Too often, in communities all across the U.S., they have none of these things. Blaming the teachers for that won’t fix those problems.

As the situation with state funds becomes more and more critical across the U.S., states are using “No Child Left Behind” and a desire to “make someone pay” for the poor quality of U.S. schools as an excuse to fire teachers and destroy public education. Bad test results? Close the school!

Talk about throwing the baby out with bathwater!

Money is very tight. Here in Michigan (which isn’t too far behind California on a list of states most likely to fall into the ocean at any minute—-and we aren’t even ON an ocean), the goverhor just offered 29,000 Michigan teachers an early retirement buyout. If the teachers don’t take the buyout, the consequences for the state budget will be ghastly. If the teachers do take the buyout, the consequences for public education in Michigan will be ghastly.

Although no one is talking about it too openly, there is a certain latent (sic: de facto) racism in these harsh new attitudes. Which schools are most likely to be shut down for poor performance? Inner city schools.

In many parts of the U.S., public schools are funded by property taxes. This means that public schools in ‘good’ neighborhoods automatically have more money and more resources than schools in ‘bad’ neighborhoods. Schools in good neighborhoods also are more likely to have student populations that are well fed and clothed, and to have parents of students who themselves have time to read, study, and work professional jobs—thus setting an example that encourages their kids to do likewise.

In parts of Michigan, some grade school teachers start their day by feeding their students out of their own pockets, because they know the students will be hopelessly inattentive until they get some food in their bellies. For many young students, the food they get at school will the food they get. Period.

In fact, one of the most outspoken conservative proponents of No Child Left Behind has recently come out as its most vocal critic. Diane Ravitch was on NPR recently promoting her new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. In the book Ravitch explains in disturbing detail how No Child Left Behind is being used to privatize American education by giving bureaucrats a legal reason for shutting down public schools, starting with the inner city and moving outward.

The U.S. cannot reimagine itself as a national power while destroying its children and firing its teachers. Already our students are not keeping up in math and science, and this is even true of students who come from ‘good’ schools.

At the state university extension where I briefly taught part-time, MOST incoming students needed some form of remedial coursework before they could even begin to take basic freshman classes. These were not inner city kids—we had precious few of those—these were kids from the suburbs who couldn’t read well, write well, or add a column of figures.

Meanwhile, countries that educate their children well, for free, are taking the lead on the world stage.

We don’t need a new pedoagogy, and we don’t need higher testing standards. We need to truly value kids, teachers, and education, in that order, instead of just giving lip service while withholding funds and support. At this point, the social problems destroying public education are complex and huge, and the will to fix them seems woefully absent.