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Jewish World Review May 17, 2005 / 8 Iyar, 5765 Best, brightest pushed into private schools By Peter A. Brown
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
PC types unhappy with Harvard President Larry Summers' candor about women in science may not like any better his thoughtful analysis of a swept-under-the-rug problem with the nation's public schools.
That is unfortunate, because Summers is on to something in his concern that public educators, in rightly focusing on helping lower-achieving kids, are dumbing down the curriculum for top courses.
In the process, they may be pushing many of the best and the brightest into private schools.
Summers did not suggest that such was happening on a widespread scale. Yet the exodus from public schools by many high-achievers whose parents can manage the financial burden makes that point.
And the long-term implications of such policies are troubling in their effect on top students.
Summers got into hot water by suggesting discrimination might not be the reason women are underrepresented in science and math fields. As a result, he seems wary of making his point about schools too strongly.
Summers spoke about schools at a reunion of Neiman Fellows, alumni of a Harvard program that selects 12 American and 12 non-American midcareer journalists for a paid year of study.
In his remarks, Summers explained why the national interest requires that more attention and resources be poured into public schools to improve learning, especially among historically lower-achieving groups.
Hooding Carter III, State Department spokesman during the Iranian hostage crisis, asked Summers to square that notion with the reality that most of those in the room, and a majority of Harvard faculty, send their kids to private schools.
Summers paused, then talked about how parents must do what is best for their children, which is both obvious and beside the point.
In fact, increasing numbers of parents are sending their children to private schools, according to a U.S. Department of Education study. A number choose home-schooling for reasons of finances or faith.
However, many top students attend academically rigorous private schools out of parental concerns that the public schools do not sufficiently challenge them, because of the attention rightly focused on poor learners.
Summers, a public-school product, is one of those parents. While Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, he sent his three children, two of whom are now in high school and the third in middle school, to a public school in D.C.'s suburbs. After he became president of Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., in 2001, however, he put them in a private school.
Summers said that when he used to attend meetings of senior Clinton aides, he was one of only two sending their kids to public schools. Clinton, you may remember, disappointed many supporters, who see private education as somehow un-American, when he chose to send his daughter, Chelsea, to a private school.
Summers said he recently talked to the other official, whom he did not identify, who had been sending his kids to public school. Summers said that man was reconsidering his decision, because the reading requirement in his son's honors English course had been cut in half to make it possible to triple the number of students able to take the course.
Some may wonder why the country should care if those with the financial means to afford private education do so.
Obviously, any child attending private school is one fewer to be educated on the taxpayer's dime.
Yet it is not just the wealthy who are sending their children to such private schools. I am among the many middle/upper-middle-class parents, some receiving financial aid, who are investing in their children, even though they would rather spend the money on a new car or nice vacation.
At Harvard, private-school graduates make up a third of the student body — not unusual for a prestigious college — but roughly three times their share of high-school students.
If the public-school exodus of top young minds continues, it will undermine future support for public education among those better able to pay the necessary taxes.
And, if in an effort to make sure no child is left behind, public schools find themselves making their curriculum for high achievers less challenging, that will likely create an ever-widening learning gap that will only increase class differences.
Although we necessarily worry about those at the bottom of the educational ladder, we ignore the needs of those at the top at our society's peril.
They are the 21st century's leaders of government, business and the military. We need every student to get the best education possible.
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Peter A. Brown is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
