Last week the lefties staged a protest against millionaires in New York City.? Tomorrow, a group called the District Parent Coordinating Council is asking kids in Buffalo to stay home from school to protest the terrible education students in the Empire State's second largest city are getting ? and have been receiving for some time. ?With a student population of 47,000, the Queen City also has the state's second largest school district (though far smaller than New York City's 1.2 million student system) and has an $800 million budget, money worth fighting for.
Unfortunately, according to the district's most recent state report card, the money (some $17,000 per student) doesn't seem to be resulting in much education for the largely poor students: 70% qualify for free and reduced lunch,? 25% get suspended every year, less than 60% graduates, 73% of its eighth-graders are ?below proficient? in English and 74% of them below proficient in math.? Is it any wonder that 18% of its teachers leave every year?
State Deputy Commissioner of Education John King*, who had been managing director of Uncommon Schools before being tapped for New York's number 2 education job (perhaps soon to be #1 ? see here), had visited the district a couple weeks earlier and told its leaders to lock themselves in a room and not come out until they had some solutions.
Well, the leaders came to a public meeting on May 3, but not only didn't they lock any doors, they didn't stay very long. And when they left, the citizens that were still there, jaws dropped, decided they'd had enough and voted to boycott.? Ironically, the group is modeling its protest on a strike by Buffalo teachers in 1947, when schools were shut for three days, until teachers got their raises. Said parent leader Samuel L. Radford III about tomorrow's boycott,
We see something that worked. It worked for the teachers?? We're not anti-teacher. We're pro-teacher. We love good teachers. But they're not more powerful than us. So we have to come to terms with the fact that we are equally powerful, but right now, nobody believes that. On May 16 we are going to show all the stakeholders we are unified.
It will no doubt be tough for a largely poor group of parents to match the power that the city's current teachers and educators must have, but they'll give it a try.? As parent leader Radford says, they're tired of waiting: "We need to hold [public officials'] feet to the fire. The boycott keeps the fire burning."
And last Friday they got support from another group, Buffalo ReformEd, which called a press conference to encourage parents to keep their kids home on Monday. Said ReformEd director Hannya Boulos:
Parents are the only stakeholders that will always put the needs of students first; and a students-first mentality is a necessary part of the change that needs to happen. We support this boycott because it represents the parents and students who are consistently overlooked in this district.
Adding that it is...
...shockingly clear as to why the parents are so disappointed in the education their children receive: lack of creativity, innovation and enthusiasm in teaching and learning; teachers who don't engage students in the teaching and learning process; unchallenging work; inconsistent expectations and grading; untrained leadership; no real professional development plans; ineffective data assessment; "taught" curriculum not aligned with "written" curriculum. The list of deficiencies continues, and yet these schools have been failing Buffalo's students for years, and will continue to fail them unless parents are given the chance to participate in the reform process.
Good luck, Buffalo.**
--Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
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*Appointed Commissioner on May 16. (See here.)
**The Buffalo News reports that official attendance today was 53%.
