The EdVocate West

The Importance of Adequacy

May 22, 2010 at 12:28 am arunramanathan Leave a comment

Today, we heard about the possibility that Public Advocates will file a lawsuit on behalf of the children of California to force our state to provide them with at an adequate education. The truth is that we should be focusing on providing all children with a high quality education but we have to start somewhere. And in our state that somewhere is to realize that we do not fund our schools at the levels of other states.

This divide between our state and others struck me as a young teacher in California in the 90′s. After my experience as a teacher and paraprofessional in east coast schools, I could not believe the conditions in my largely Latino and African-American school in San Francisco. There were two measurable differences. The first was resources available to the students and the teachers. The second was the quality of instruction received by the students. No amount of money will fix the second issue. But money will resolve the first issue of resources and supports for students and teachers.

My wife and I met in San Francisco where she’d been a teacher in a neighboring elementary school for the past ten years. She had the same experience as me in reverse when she came with me back to Boston – when I went to earn my doctorate. She simply could believe the difference in supports and resources available to students and teachers in her Boston school. It was an eye-opening experience and one that every policymaker in California should be forced to go through.

As a state, we do not spend the dollars we should be spending on our schools. Part of the reason is that we take the resources we have and spend them poorly, directing them towards adult salaries and benefits instead of student supports. But on the whole, we simply do not spend as much as east coast districts and you can see the impact on our schools, in the absence of counselors, nurses, administrators, interventions, etc. The list of what students miss out on here vs. what they receive in a state like Massachusetts, Texas or  New York is endless. And I wonder if some of the reason for that is the race, ethnicity and langauge spoken by the vast majority of our students?

I imagine there are few states where discussions of eliminating summer school or shortening the school year are seriously entertained, were the notion of eliminating basic support staff at the district level is constantly broached. We seem to have these conversations every year in California. And if it takes the courts to put an end to that lunatic cycle and to force our elected officials to provide our children with the quality education they deserve then we will owe a debt of gratitude to the courts.

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