One thinks of the pharaohs as having been very powerful because they ruled a wealthy, literate civilization and built enormous, long-lasting structures like Karnak and the Great Pyramid of Giza. However, the buildings that house a powerful institution can outlast the institution, be it a dynasty or a school system.
Six years ago, as a newcomer to my city I attended a school board meeting for my local school district in which they discussed needing to close some elementary and middle schools due to declining enrollment. At the time, I didn't have any school-age children, but I wanted to know what was happening in our local school district. I suspect the administration was making some poor decisions at the time, for while our centrally-located school district was seeing enrollment fall, the district just to the north was experiencing a very large influx of students, some of whom were "choicing" into it from my school district. (Colorado law has a school funding system where the funds follow students to whichever school will accept them.) One elementary school I saw up north had a playground filling up with modular classrooms.
Presently, my two homeschooled children are part-time students at a charter school housed in one of those closed-down district schools. The brick-and-mortar structure still stands; indeed, it looks like it has been there since the 1950s. But the local school district has declined in numbers and importance, and a new institution, a charter school that caters to a specific niche, has moved into its space.
No matter how large or powerful an institution is, it can go into decline. Among other things, wise decisions by competent people are necessary to maintain its strength. The repeated failure by school district employees and leaders to make wise decisions that satisfy parents' varied needs and/or wants can weaken--sometimes drastically--those public school institutions.
We live in a time when technology makes personalization of many services much easier. Service tailored to an individual is often expected. Search engines customize results to take into account your friends and location, Amazon.com sells 6.8 million products just in the category "iPhone cases," Google shows you ads based on your emails' contents and search history, and, by law, schools must create Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for students with disabilities. It seems obvious that many parents will want to seek out educational services that fit their own philosophies and their kids' particular needs, but too many school districts remain too unresponsive to parents, be it for ideological or logistical reasons or just because they suffer from bureaucratic inertia. I think that is a primary reason for the current strength of charter school and homeschool movements. School districts still think they can offer a Sears* education to a society used to Amazon.com.
It seems hard to believe that the public school system could cease to be the power it was in my childhood, back when only rich people and Catholics were outside the public school system and most people watched only three TV networks and PBS. But choice is here to stay, both in entertainment and in schooling. The institution of public school as I think of it might be in irreversible decline already. (See law professor Glenn Reynold's ideas on a K-12 education implosion.) That idea is easier to accept when I consider that compulsory education became universal in the USA in 1918, the same year in which my still-living grandmother was born. If a pharaonic dynasty only tended to last a century, how can I expect the present public school system to survive much past that?
*Actually, I malign Sears. Even Sears now offers customers a chance to "Shop Your Way."
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| This post is part of the Carnival of Homeschooling. |
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