After going to a private school from Pre-K through 5th
grade, our youngest daughter is finishing her first year in public school this
week. And I have to tell you that we’re all very pleased with her experience.
This may seem a little odd to you for two reasons. The first
is that for 19 years I taught at the same private school that she attended. The
second is that she’s not in some fancy-schmancy, well-off, suburban school
district; she’s attending school in the Syracuse City School District.
As a private school teacher, I had heard all the
propaganda about how bad public schools were, especially in the city. I had
heard about how bad the teachers were, because of how low the test scores were
when compared to other suburban school districts. I had heard how violent city
schools were compared to suburban school districts. I have to tell you that
this has not been our experience.
Even when I was a private school teacher, I'd always
maintained that the school test scores were a terrible way to judge a how well
a school was actually doing, because it didn’t take into account the number of
students in the district for whom English is a second language, or the number
of students coming from homes where there is poverty or where education isn’t
highly valued. I figured that if you took the same students and put them into
Fayetteville-Manlius or Jamesville-DeWitt, you’d see their scores go down and
ours go up. Furthermore, I believe that if you take those very same students
into account, then the “poor test scores” that we see in those schools
represent something of a miracle for those students, and the teachers should be
given due credit for how far along they’ve helped to bring those kids.
In addition, even my eleven-year-old daughter was smart
enough to say, “It’s not like their low scores are contagious. I’m a good
student anyway. I’ll do just fine.” She also met people of many more different
socioeconomic backgrounds than she did at her old school; and this is a very
good thing.
I’ve met the teachers at her school, and they seem to be
every bit as dedicated to their students as the teachers who I once counted as
my colleagues. And the principal goes out of her way to make sure that every
parent feels welcome in what is their school. Huntington may be much
larger than the school we came from, but it is every bit the caring academic
community that we grew to expect over the past 21 years.
Is there violence in the city schools? I’ve heard from
people who grew up in the city that this was always said about our schools by
people in the suburbs. For some reason they thought that there were knife
fights in every school every day, and bars on all the windows…and this was 30
years ago. Of course there are some knuckleheads who can’t seem to go a day
without getting into an altercation with someone, but isn’t that true
everywhere?
Now don’t get me wrong, there was much that was good about
our old school, and it was a wonderful place. But once you get past the
propaganda and the fear, you’ll find that the city schools can be wonderful places
too.
That’s what we found, and we’re looking forward to our next
six years in the system.
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