The Real Crisis in Education

The Buffalo News on Thursday February 11, 2016 gave us every reason to throw out the receivership law, ruling, or whatever you want to call it. While the News is in favour of receivership (and I suspect that is so that its owner, Warren Buffet, can make more money of the stocks that private charter school companies sell), they provide strong arguments against the law.

Reason #1: These schools struggle with poverty issues outside the school. Students that live in high poverty areas are less likely to do well in schools and on tests. There is nothing that educators can do about that. They can make school a safe, consistent place, but if the only food, heat, and water that a student has access to is at school, then what? I have students that get free or reduced breakfast and lunch & that is it for their food. Mom and/or dad don't make enough money to buy dinner. Or dinner is very little. And food pantries aren't always open when people have the time to get to them, so…

Reason #2: This financial insecurity can lead to transiency. Students moving around from week to week, month to month, or at whatever interval housing becomes available. There are students that from September to June have a different address every month (or more). What are these students going to learn?

Reason #3: This leads to poor attendance. Let's face it – If a student is struggling to get by and is falling behind their peers, it doesn't take long for the student to give up entirely. Especially with all the testing that goes on in Grades 3 – 8. Then the Regents Exams that start in 9^th Grade and carry on through 12^th. For a student that is struggling to learn because of reasons #1 & #2, dropping out of school is seen as a viable choice, Especially if it means money to put food on the table (as part of a short term solution). No, they don't see education as a way out of the cycle of poverty that they are in. And trying to argue that with them is not always a lost cause, but after so much failure in their lives, they see the world differently than those that are “getting it.”

Reason #4: This one is one that the rule makers have a hard time trying to justify, and if challenged, they would have to back down quickly. The non-English speaking immigrant population. One school in Buffalo is said to have somewhere in the realm of 40 different languages from around the world spoken in it. And not enough translators to support those students. (Translators cost money you see, and that's money that the privatizers want.) If a person does not speak English, and the tests do not come in all the languages that they speak, then how are they going to do on the tests?

As a rider to #4, these immigrants are coming to us from all over the world and some of them have very little education to start with. And I know this is hearsay ish, but I heard of a student that was (age wise) supposed to be in 10^th grade and was tested (in their own language) at 4^th grade or lower in all subject areas. Tell me that that student is going to perform well on a test written for 10^th graders.

All of these issues are symptoms of a problem.

And that problem is capitalism.

Issues #1-#3 could be solved with jobs that paid real salaries and benefits. If people can afford housing, food, water, etc, then these issues are gone.

Issue #4: Let's look at the countries that the immigrants came from. I'll bet that those countries are under some sort of capitalist crisis. Russia, choose any Eastern European country, Africa is a mess – if not a basket case in some places – along with the Middle East. South & Central America have been America's stomping grounds since Monroe's time and US Policy towards those countries has been nothing short of disastrous. Asia has its problem with capitalism as well.

And all those people are looking for some place to come to.

And that happens to be America,

So we now have a crisis in education because of the capitalist crisis across the world.

You can't solve one without solving the other.

And the only way to solve education's crisis is to solve the crisis of capitalism.

And that solution is socialism.

But the Buffalo News won't write about that.

Look at it's owner.