Organization Supported
Oakland Public Education Fund
The Ed Fund is the primary organization that raises money for all Oakland schools: for urgent school and district needs, teacher training, community engagement and advocacy, grants, after school programs, STEM initiatives, literacy programs, and more....
“Our public-education system is about much more than personal achievement; it is about preparing people to work together to advance not just themselves but society”
Public Schools: Pillar of Democracy?
“White flight.”
Anyone who has enrolled their child in public K-12 school knows that the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v Board of Education has done nothing to further the cause of equal access to high quality education for all children. If anything, our school districts are more segregated, and more unequal than ever before.
“Students of different races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds tend to end up at very different schools, ones with disparate resources, including those most crucial to student success — for example, high quality teachers, effective early education programs, and meaningful forms of college and career counseling. "
The Education Trust, Funding Gaps report, 2018
In short, the crisis in our public schools, K-12 and higher education alike, is largely a political one. An unfortunate expression of values. An achievement gap, a teacher shortage albatross, and long term government underfunding have sacrificed the hope and opportunity for too many innocent children born with the wrong skin color, or in the wrong place and time.
Much polling data has revealed that Republicans have low confidence in, and believe colleges and universities are harmful to US propects for the future. This has translated directly into the underfunding of public education since the Great Recession more than a decade ago.
At issue is a central myth of American democracy: is the right to quality public education an inalienable right, and a public service for all? Or yet another artifact of white privilege?
Facts resoundingly answer that question: student debt > $1.3 Trillion, failing grades on state academic achievement, ballooning class size, irresponsibly high student-counselor ratios, teacher pay at levels creating real financial hardship and attacks on teacher tenure and pensions leading to a crisis in qualified teacher availability, increasing privatization and charter school enrollment, school voucher campaigns, flight of affluent families leaving behind a large % of kids from challenging home environments, and widespread school closures.
Source: CBPP.org
The result? Innocent black and brown children facing severe disadvantage, from birth. Q: should government invest in schools or prisons?
The consequences of enduring this institutional racism extend far beyond any one individual or family— this is a deep wound to all of society, and our ability to care for people and planet.
We've come a long way from 19th century values, when college education was offered for free in the US. College was considered a public good, since many graduates went on to work in the social sector. Public perception shifted in the 1920's when John Rockefeller led the campaign to regard higher education as a private benefit, and therefore private expense. States continued to subsidize higher education, by paying roughly 50% or more of state university expenses through President Johnson's “Great Society” legislation in the 60's.
From the Great Society, to the 1980's, there was relative stability and access to quality public education. But President Reagan's damning report, “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, opened the doors to “reform.” And when the Great Recession of 2007-08 eviscerated state budgets, state legislatures, largely Republican controlled, seized the moment to enact long fermenting public policy aspirations—“austerity.”
“De-funding of public education was quick and severe. A perfect storm of budget cutbacks, “white flight,” teacher shortages, charter school and voucher poaching, tuition hikes and massive student debt seen in higher education, led to crisis.”
There is Hope:
Courageous teacher strikes in Chicago ('12) and Philadelphia ('13) led directly to current unprecedented wave of strikes in 2018-'19 (WV, OK, CA). Recent strikes have been effective, with increases in education funding and/or teacher salaries being seen as a result of direct action, but also in more than 20 states where no strike has taken place.
In addition, there is growing appetite to return to and honor our nation's noble ideal and fund free and accessible Preschool-for-All, and free college education.
People and planet are in crisis. The solutions to these seemingly intractable problems will clearly Not come from the same demographics and systems thinking that caused these immense problems to begin with. This is the moment for public education to shine once again as a public service for the benefit of All. We Are: out of time.
Students and teachers are ready. But they need your public and vocal support.
Please join us.