The local Knight Ridder outlet today offers a platform to a laughably transparent attempt to guilt-trip incoming CMS superintendent Peter Gorman into siding with defenders of the CMS status quo. Not only should Gorman and his family choose to live in the close-in burbs where CMS has currently located its magnet programs, the over-arching message is that Gorman should not make any changes to the magnet school program as it currently exists.
You see these folks are leaders, non-magnet school people, not so much:
If you moved to one of these neighborhoods and sent your daughter to one of these schools, you would have a far greater impact than if you chose a more privileged school. It would also give you a first-hand understanding of the challenges many families and neighborhoods face.
The best leadership is leadership by example. CMS faced its last great crisis of trust in the `70s, in the wake of the Swann busing decision. The turning point came when privileged citizens realized they could no longer insulate themselves from the school system’s greatest challenges.
Back then, leadership meant putting your child on a bus, along with everyone else’s children.
Today, we believe, leadership means choosing to put your children and your energy in a school that genuinely needs your help. Charlotte does not have nearly enough of that kind of leadership.
No, that’s not leadership. That’s a rejection of the change the Task Force saw was needed to make CMS function. Right now the magnet programs do not offer an escape hatch to kids trapped in lousy schools. Parents who are currently in the program of course do not want change — they have want they want, along with tasty dollop of moral superiority on top. But it is unearned as the Task Force pointed out:
Currently, many magnet programs do not differ substantially from other schools and many do not have diverse student bodies. As one measure, the percentage of low income students enrolled in full magnets currently ranges from 3% to 53%.
As a result, the Task Force recommends nuking the current magnet program, really a “partial magnet” program, and replacing it with a Choice Program that would essentially function as a parallel school district to CMS. Moreover, this choice system would include a much broader universe of school options, ones which would actually force CMS to compete for students:
Under the direction of an Area Superintendent, diversity and choice should be addressed through a system of choice schools expanded to include schools run by external providers and schools operated with community partners.
Now the threat to the status quo becomes clear. Add in the suggestion that education dollars actually follow students to the school of their choice and you can see the mortal danger the Ed Center would find itself in in the event that students could actually walk away from bad schools and take their money with them.
Finally, a word about the loaded phrase “more privileged school.” Exactly what does that mean? What is the source of this “privilege”? Is it receiving less money from CMS to run a school? Virtually no money for supplies? Who or what is “privileged” in this formulation?
