It is so hard. We want to make the right decision for our kids and for our neighborhood and for our city and it's not even that the right choices are in conflict with one another, it's that there really doesn't feel like there are any right choices available. Of course our family choices aren't going to fix this. And you rightly note that schools are at the end of many funnels. And still!
When we moved to Milwaukee a realtor confidently told us not to worry: that we still had time to move to Tosa before our kids were school-aged. She couldn't fathom that we wanted to be here, yes, for the schools. That "the right choice for our kids" for us meant we didn't want our kids to grow up in a racially and socioeconomically homogenous environment. And still.
I worry about what we lose as a community, as neighbors, without the anchor of shared, neighborhood schools. And I understand why so many black and brown activists fought for a chance to not just directly inherit the inequalities baked into residential segregation. And I, too, am annoyed that this choice is on me at all, and embarrassed at how low stakes, ultimately, it is for my family. And still.
Vouchers and giving parents "choice" is hot topic around my area. Our governor promotes it fiercely, the same guy who won't do anything to improve gun violence in schools. My retort to his sound bites is "what choice are you giving me, choice of morgue??". It infuriates me.
I loved your comparison to fire departments and the quality of water to extinguish flames. I was reminded of "food deserts" that leave poor communities, often non-white, without access to fresh foods and healthy choices. Access to good food and education should be like a utility, and not a "choice" for those privileged to have the means to make one.
Every time I think about school for my kids, my head explodes. I had no choice growing up. My parents were immigrants who were grateful we had public schools and public transportation. There wasn't a system to navigate because they were unaware of the system. We live across the street from the neighborhood public high school, BUT everyone keeps reminding us that the magnet schools are SO GOOD and THE BEST, and don't we want the best for our kids? I'm so deeply skeptical. It's not just the inequality of the whole thing, but I was a career teacher and administrator for 15 years at an elite private school. It was good enough for multiple Presidential families, and yet "the best" actually was awful in so many ways. I've never taught so many kids who had so much financially and socially, but who struggled so much emotionally and mentally. I normally am the kind of parent who talks through different choices with her kids, but this school choice feels like such a terrible one to ask them to make.
Absolutely yes-- to all of this. How is this actually empowering as a parent? And as you noted from your career in the "elite" school-- what does all of this do to the souls of everybody involved, including (perhaps especially) the "winners" in the system?
"don't we want the best for our kids?" -- yes! Which is why I loved that @GarrettBucks circled back around to the teacher at the "lesser" school who fostered his sons love of trains enough that it was still alive years later for a project on light rail. THAT is the best for our kids.
I agree -- it's "choice" where maybe we don't need more choice, but instead need to come together and foster learning in the community where we are so we can all learn from each other.
Hard to know what more there is to say that hasn’t already been said. It’s insane and unjust and has been ever since school systems were set up and it breaks my heart and breaks children and breaks society, over and over. And within that, teachers and their colleagues put everything it trying to make the children’s experiences unbroken.
And that's the thing! Throughout the country, there are so many classrooms that are just absolute miracles of interconnection and belonging! And teachers are doing that! In the midst of all this!
I really appreciated the fire station analogy and I am looking forward to borrowing it for the Holidays. We're fighting deeply unpopular vouchers in Texas right now and your headline is also such a great summation of my general thoughts about all that.
And then there is your son and who he will become while he is here. Having a strong peer group that values school is a huge protective factor in middle school, a time when kids can be chameleons and hide their agony from parents, even your own child who you think you know, sinew and bone. As you already understand, being a teacher. And this is the danger if your kid is in this magnet school or a language school or a fancy suburban school or a private religious school or a pipeline to Ivy boarding school. Whose opinions will he value, what group of kids will try to convince him or bully him into deciding that trains are stupid, essentially working to pull out everything you’ve planted in him? School choice sucks but not having it (I raised my kids in an Idaho town where there were two middle schools and one high school and, well, it’s in Idaho) can also be fraught. I hope your son thrives wherever he’s planted.
What spoke to me in particular about your comment Is the core, beautiful expectation: that all children can attend schools that love them for who they are, that believe in their potential, and that invite them into the tricky but wonderful experiment of being a caring community. And you're right-- that so many schools don't offer that (interestingly, in my own growing up experience, my rural Montana elementary school did a far better job of that than the extremely well respected and "extremely impressed with itself" suburban school district we moved to in Maryland). But that 100% is the expectation we should all start with!
I loved this piece, Garrett thanks so much for writing it!
There's one benefit to school choice that I haven't really seen an alternative to, which is enabling schools to have a shared vision for what education should be, other than our vague shared sense of what "default school" looks like (I think of it as "school as you'd put it in a sitcom if you were working fast").
I'm thinking about the charter school where I work. I think the way we do things (project-based learning with a strong focus on equitable structures) would be good for every kid, but I don't kid myself that we have any kind of shared national (or even city-wide) agreement on what "good education" looks like, so I can easily imagine a family saying "this is not for us" and doing whatever it takes to make sure their kid doesn't go there (just like I'd do whatever it took to make sure my kids didn't get enrolled in a "no excuses school."
I can imagine a school district running in a way that its schools could be fairly small, autonomous, and each able to develop its own distinctive character—I'm not sure if any large school districts have ever achieved this, but I can imagine it. But then what you'd end up with is schools with very distinct characters, and it would be reasonable for families to want to choose which school to go to. So school choice would play out either through "official" school choice, or through the real estate market.
I guess the TL;DR is that I have two wolves living in me, one of which thinks if we funded schools better we could do away with the desire for school choice, and another of which thinks the core assumptions about humans, the need to "sort", and what "learning" means that are baked into school are so screwed up that we need to radically transform everything.
I really appreciate this, Alec. I think one of the dangers in how I think about education is that I can simplify the problem, like "if every school just cares about and believes in all the kids in their building, we'll be most of the way there..." and while there's some truth in that, there's also clearly a need for innovation in education, and lots of kids do learn differently. That's to say, I'm so glad that there are folks in ed who think about that piece all the time-- as you note so well, how to let those innovative ideas grow and spread without adding to the atomization and competition of it all is a dilemma I haven't been able to square.
Due to some life circumstances (d'oh, falling in love), I've been thinking more about our school and the ones nearby (aka the burbs). According to my reliable (second-hand) source...a suburban school system nearby doesn't have lunch for kids in most of its schools. No lunch, at all. The public school has no plan to feed its kids, other than "parents had better had their shit together." It astounded me (my poor boyfriend had to listen to a 20 minute rant following him telling me this). How can a school call itself the best, so great, when they can't feed kids? The answer is because it is almost exclusively white, and relies on patriarchal and classist assumptions (that is: every family has 2 parents, and one of those parents is a stay at home mom who has time to always put together a nutritious meal; or older kids can afford to eat out at a restaurant during lunch, or get home for a lunch). To me, it cannot be a "good" school if there is no flexibility for parents having a rushed morning, or needing to work shift work that's difficult to get out of if the kid forgets their lunch, or parents who are simply not present at all times. But it's a "good" school, so the realtors push white parents there.
This was so thought-provoking and well done. I don’t have children but I do wish that no parent had to deal with our current educational system, which bakes inequity right into the pie. The fire department analogy was spot on.
Thank you for this. I teared up a little reading it - I have a train-loving kid in our neighborhood elementary school that happens to be bilingual and also has decidedly mediocre rankings. We love it. The teachers are friendly and (seem to) look out for the kids, the PTA is active without being in your face, and most families are there because they want to be (it's possible to opt out to a non-bilingual program). I try not to think about middle school.
“What a gift to have your main relationship to this process be mere annoyance.” This is a small unassuming sentence in this whole gorgeous reflection but I find it so important. Thanks you Bucks. As usual, so grateful for the ways you are able to widen and shrink the aperture on the things that matter most with such complex intelligence and deep humility.
Let's just say I have pretty good friends/mentors when it comes to this whole "widening and shrinking the aperture on the the things that matter most" thing.
Thank you for writing this. I work with public schools, but I have never been part of a community where school choice was a thing, so my thoughts & feelings about it have been really poorly informed. You have given voice to something that I wondered about, but didn't know.
Garrett - please stop hitting me right in my emotional center.
My son just started kindergarten and I cannot tell you excited/happy/guilty I feel that we have a brand new elementary school right in our neighborhood that is diverse in both staff and students. In many ways it is approaching what I would like school to be like for everyone, but it is still disconcerting in ways I truthfully have not had time to unpack.
Even when we are able to find individual school communities that buck the trends, the bigger questions remain, for sure. I AM, however, so glad that your son gets to begin his school career at a space that loves and cares for a wide swath of kids and families.
With love: STOP MICRO TARGETING ME
It is so hard. We want to make the right decision for our kids and for our neighborhood and for our city and it's not even that the right choices are in conflict with one another, it's that there really doesn't feel like there are any right choices available. Of course our family choices aren't going to fix this. And you rightly note that schools are at the end of many funnels. And still!
When we moved to Milwaukee a realtor confidently told us not to worry: that we still had time to move to Tosa before our kids were school-aged. She couldn't fathom that we wanted to be here, yes, for the schools. That "the right choice for our kids" for us meant we didn't want our kids to grow up in a racially and socioeconomically homogenous environment. And still.
I worry about what we lose as a community, as neighbors, without the anchor of shared, neighborhood schools. And I understand why so many black and brown activists fought for a chance to not just directly inherit the inequalities baked into residential segregation. And I, too, am annoyed that this choice is on me at all, and embarrassed at how low stakes, ultimately, it is for my family. And still.
And still!
To all of this. 100%. And also, thank you for being a Milwaukeean who cares about all Milwaukeeans. Sincerely and massively.
Vouchers and giving parents "choice" is hot topic around my area. Our governor promotes it fiercely, the same guy who won't do anything to improve gun violence in schools. My retort to his sound bites is "what choice are you giving me, choice of morgue??". It infuriates me.
I loved your comparison to fire departments and the quality of water to extinguish flames. I was reminded of "food deserts" that leave poor communities, often non-white, without access to fresh foods and healthy choices. Access to good food and education should be like a utility, and not a "choice" for those privileged to have the means to make one.
It feels really awful to be pandered to by politicians in such a limited, myopic way, doesn't it?
Yes, a combination of hopelessness and insult.
Every time I think about school for my kids, my head explodes. I had no choice growing up. My parents were immigrants who were grateful we had public schools and public transportation. There wasn't a system to navigate because they were unaware of the system. We live across the street from the neighborhood public high school, BUT everyone keeps reminding us that the magnet schools are SO GOOD and THE BEST, and don't we want the best for our kids? I'm so deeply skeptical. It's not just the inequality of the whole thing, but I was a career teacher and administrator for 15 years at an elite private school. It was good enough for multiple Presidential families, and yet "the best" actually was awful in so many ways. I've never taught so many kids who had so much financially and socially, but who struggled so much emotionally and mentally. I normally am the kind of parent who talks through different choices with her kids, but this school choice feels like such a terrible one to ask them to make.
Absolutely yes-- to all of this. How is this actually empowering as a parent? And as you noted from your career in the "elite" school-- what does all of this do to the souls of everybody involved, including (perhaps especially) the "winners" in the system?
"don't we want the best for our kids?" -- yes! Which is why I loved that @GarrettBucks circled back around to the teacher at the "lesser" school who fostered his sons love of trains enough that it was still alive years later for a project on light rail. THAT is the best for our kids.
I agree -- it's "choice" where maybe we don't need more choice, but instead need to come together and foster learning in the community where we are so we can all learn from each other.
Thank you for teaching and caring for our kiddos.
Hard to know what more there is to say that hasn’t already been said. It’s insane and unjust and has been ever since school systems were set up and it breaks my heart and breaks children and breaks society, over and over. And within that, teachers and their colleagues put everything it trying to make the children’s experiences unbroken.
And that's the thing! Throughout the country, there are so many classrooms that are just absolute miracles of interconnection and belonging! And teachers are doing that! In the midst of all this!
I really appreciated the fire station analogy and I am looking forward to borrowing it for the Holidays. We're fighting deeply unpopular vouchers in Texas right now and your headline is also such a great summation of my general thoughts about all that.
Sending love and energy to all y'all fighting the good fight in Texas right now!
I'm with ya, Betsy! <3
And then there is your son and who he will become while he is here. Having a strong peer group that values school is a huge protective factor in middle school, a time when kids can be chameleons and hide their agony from parents, even your own child who you think you know, sinew and bone. As you already understand, being a teacher. And this is the danger if your kid is in this magnet school or a language school or a fancy suburban school or a private religious school or a pipeline to Ivy boarding school. Whose opinions will he value, what group of kids will try to convince him or bully him into deciding that trains are stupid, essentially working to pull out everything you’ve planted in him? School choice sucks but not having it (I raised my kids in an Idaho town where there were two middle schools and one high school and, well, it’s in Idaho) can also be fraught. I hope your son thrives wherever he’s planted.
What spoke to me in particular about your comment Is the core, beautiful expectation: that all children can attend schools that love them for who they are, that believe in their potential, and that invite them into the tricky but wonderful experiment of being a caring community. And you're right-- that so many schools don't offer that (interestingly, in my own growing up experience, my rural Montana elementary school did a far better job of that than the extremely well respected and "extremely impressed with itself" suburban school district we moved to in Maryland). But that 100% is the expectation we should all start with!
I loved this piece, Garrett thanks so much for writing it!
There's one benefit to school choice that I haven't really seen an alternative to, which is enabling schools to have a shared vision for what education should be, other than our vague shared sense of what "default school" looks like (I think of it as "school as you'd put it in a sitcom if you were working fast").
I'm thinking about the charter school where I work. I think the way we do things (project-based learning with a strong focus on equitable structures) would be good for every kid, but I don't kid myself that we have any kind of shared national (or even city-wide) agreement on what "good education" looks like, so I can easily imagine a family saying "this is not for us" and doing whatever it takes to make sure their kid doesn't go there (just like I'd do whatever it took to make sure my kids didn't get enrolled in a "no excuses school."
I can imagine a school district running in a way that its schools could be fairly small, autonomous, and each able to develop its own distinctive character—I'm not sure if any large school districts have ever achieved this, but I can imagine it. But then what you'd end up with is schools with very distinct characters, and it would be reasonable for families to want to choose which school to go to. So school choice would play out either through "official" school choice, or through the real estate market.
I guess the TL;DR is that I have two wolves living in me, one of which thinks if we funded schools better we could do away with the desire for school choice, and another of which thinks the core assumptions about humans, the need to "sort", and what "learning" means that are baked into school are so screwed up that we need to radically transform everything.
I really appreciate this, Alec. I think one of the dangers in how I think about education is that I can simplify the problem, like "if every school just cares about and believes in all the kids in their building, we'll be most of the way there..." and while there's some truth in that, there's also clearly a need for innovation in education, and lots of kids do learn differently. That's to say, I'm so glad that there are folks in ed who think about that piece all the time-- as you note so well, how to let those innovative ideas grow and spread without adding to the atomization and competition of it all is a dilemma I haven't been able to square.
Due to some life circumstances (d'oh, falling in love), I've been thinking more about our school and the ones nearby (aka the burbs). According to my reliable (second-hand) source...a suburban school system nearby doesn't have lunch for kids in most of its schools. No lunch, at all. The public school has no plan to feed its kids, other than "parents had better had their shit together." It astounded me (my poor boyfriend had to listen to a 20 minute rant following him telling me this). How can a school call itself the best, so great, when they can't feed kids? The answer is because it is almost exclusively white, and relies on patriarchal and classist assumptions (that is: every family has 2 parents, and one of those parents is a stay at home mom who has time to always put together a nutritious meal; or older kids can afford to eat out at a restaurant during lunch, or get home for a lunch). To me, it cannot be a "good" school if there is no flexibility for parents having a rushed morning, or needing to work shift work that's difficult to get out of if the kid forgets their lunch, or parents who are simply not present at all times. But it's a "good" school, so the realtors push white parents there.
The lesson here, of course, is don't fall in love lol....
BUT ALSO... yes... what goes unsaid, unquestioned and unexamined when we talk about "good schools" and "good districts!"
This was so thought-provoking and well done. I don’t have children but I do wish that no parent had to deal with our current educational system, which bakes inequity right into the pie. The fire department analogy was spot on.
I’m excited to get my copy of your book 🤓
So well put! "Inequity baked right into the pie!" Thanks so much, Amy!
Take this but make it a spring 2020 inner monologues about kindergarten admission; that was me.
Ugh. Sending cross-grade solidarity
Wow, I love this reflection so much. This is such an important conversation for white parents to have!
Thank you for this. I teared up a little reading it - I have a train-loving kid in our neighborhood elementary school that happens to be bilingual and also has decidedly mediocre rankings. We love it. The teachers are friendly and (seem to) look out for the kids, the PTA is active without being in your face, and most families are there because they want to be (it's possible to opt out to a non-bilingual program). I try not to think about middle school.
Sending love to your bilingual train aficionado too!
Garrett I don’t have anything to say here except that I am furious and in-tears-devastated after reading this.
Then we get to share those feelings together!
“What a gift to have your main relationship to this process be mere annoyance.” This is a small unassuming sentence in this whole gorgeous reflection but I find it so important. Thanks you Bucks. As usual, so grateful for the ways you are able to widen and shrink the aperture on the things that matter most with such complex intelligence and deep humility.
Let's just say I have pretty good friends/mentors when it comes to this whole "widening and shrinking the aperture on the the things that matter most" thing.
Thank you for writing this. I work with public schools, but I have never been part of a community where school choice was a thing, so my thoughts & feelings about it have been really poorly informed. You have given voice to something that I wondered about, but didn't know.
I wish I had better news to report from the world of school choice then, lol! But thank you Emily!
Garrett - please stop hitting me right in my emotional center.
My son just started kindergarten and I cannot tell you excited/happy/guilty I feel that we have a brand new elementary school right in our neighborhood that is diverse in both staff and students. In many ways it is approaching what I would like school to be like for everyone, but it is still disconcerting in ways I truthfully have not had time to unpack.
Even when we are able to find individual school communities that buck the trends, the bigger questions remain, for sure. I AM, however, so glad that your son gets to begin his school career at a space that loves and cares for a wide swath of kids and families.