A proven route to education
IN 1995 A BOLD experiment in public education was undertaken in Boston - the introduction of pilot schools. Forged by a unique collaboration between Mayor Thomas Menino, the Boston public schools, the School Committee, and the Boston Teachers Union, pilot schools were a daring innovation that allowed schools a measure of freedom from school district and union rules with an emphasis on accountability, a clear vision, and a supportive learning community.
They are now being studied by other districts around the nation and are models for the readiness schools proposed by Governor Deval Patrick. A study done last year by the Center for Collaborative Education demonstrates that students in pilot schools outperform their counterparts in district schools, "students with risk factors perform better in pilot high schools than in district schools," and pilot schools are popular with teachers, parents, and students.
Like all urban districts Boston faces daunting challenges - at least 1,600 high school students drop out of Boston's schools each year, only 53 percent of students in nonexam high schools graduate within four years, and families are leaving the public schools for private, suburban public, and charter options.
In the face of these realities, one would expect a full-steam-ahead response by all parties to this successful innovation in public education. Instead, the teachers union's leadership is obstructing the spread of this innovation. Union leaders have chosen to pressure district schools considering conversion to pilot schools to vote against conversion; they have failed to deliver on the already inadequate quota of seven new pilot schools; and they are offering an untested alternative called discovery schools.
Why they have chosen this course is unclear. What is clear is that the union leadership has chosen to deny Boston's public school children, and especially its poor students and students of color, a crucial educational opportunity.
Access to equal and effective education is a key civil rights struggle of the 21st century. Organizations like the Boston Parents Organizing Network, the Black Ministerial Alliance, and others have spent years organizing parents and community members. They have insisted that all of us take responsibility, and not just teachers. Growing numbers of business groups are focused on education, and political leaders are working for educational reform. This would seem to be the ideal time for the broad and rapid replication of a promising reform, but, for the moment, it appears that this will not be the case in Boston.
The sad irony is that yesterday the doors to educational opportunity were blocked by segregationists, operating under the doctrines of state's rights. Today the doors of opportunity are blocked by those who are not racist, but whose resistance to change is equally devastating for poor children and children of color.
Educating children is not a job that teachers should have to do alone. That means that parents, pastors, community residents, and citizens of Boston must accept responsibility to support the education of children. What cannot be accepted is the notion that anyone should be able to block the road to good jobs, decent pay, and citizen participation for the next generation of public school children. Of course the rights of unions, the rights of teachers, and the right to fair contracts should be supported. What should not be supported is the idea that children should be sacrificed on the altar of adult power politics and game-playing.
More than 40 years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in response to fellow-clergymen who felt that protests against inequality were "unwise and untimely." He responded, "For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.' We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied.' "
We can't wait for discovery schools to be tested when we already have a proven solution in pilot schools. We can't wait for another round of negotiations followed by foot-dragging and procrastination. Now is the time to create more new and converted pilot schools as quickly as possible. It's the least that the children of Boston deserve.
The Rev. Ray Hammond is pastor at the Bethel AME Church. Horace Small is executive director of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods. 