Guest Commentary by Jonathan Narcisse and Douglas Burns
No child should be left behind, alone
By Jonathan Narcisse
On Jan. 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law “The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001” which enjoyed overwhelming bi-partisan support. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts championed the legislation in Congress. On May 23, 2001, the House of Representatives voted 384-45 in favor and on June 14, 2001, the Senate voted 91-8 in favor. The Iowa delegation also supported the measure unanimously.
At the beginning of this decade, the hope was to create a standard of excellence for public education in the United States. Nearly a decade later, we find anything but a standard of excellence or authentic measurements for excellence in our public schools.
Over the Labor Day weekend, the Culver Administration released “The State Report Card for No Child Left Behind” for 2008-09. Of Iowa’s 1,442 public schools, 293 or 20.3 percent were identified as schools in need of assistance. Of Iowa’s 362 public school districts, 24 or 6.6 percent were identified as districts in need of assistance.
Of the schools in need of assistance or failing schools in Iowa, 140 are located in Iowa’s 10 largest cities — Ames, Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, Dubuque, Iowa City, Sioux City, Waterloo and West Des Moines. Only 25 are located in school districts with enrollments less than 1,000. Of the school districts serving Iowa’s 10 largest cities, the only district not officially failing is the Ames School District. Not a single one of the 257 districts in Iowa with fewer than 1,000 students is officially failing.
Of the 33 high schools serving Iowa’s ten largest cities, only one — Dubuque Hemsted — isn’t officially failing. The other 96.97 percent are officially failing. Of the 40 intermediate/junior/middle schools serving Iowa’s ten largest cities, only three — Davenport Walcott Int., Dubuque Roosevelt MS, and Iowa City North Central JHS — aren’t officially failing. The other 92.50 percent are officially failing.
As an education advocate, I don’t get to determine what the term “officially” means. I didn’t release these findings. The Culver Administration did over the Labor Day weekend and with even less fanfare than his Nov. 20 near secret proclamation of a “Transgender Day of Remembrance.” His administration absolutely sought to submerge his September education news.
So again, I don’t get to determine what “officially” means. However, I can ask if the criteria that determines official is relevant? Are 96.97 percent of our urban high schools really failing? Are 100 percent of our 257 school districts with fewer than 1,000 students really succeeding? Or is the real problem the lack of true academic leadership that should have initiated meaningful standards to determine excellence, success, and progress for our students.
The absence of true leadership from politicians in Washington in general and Iowa specifically has led to the perpetuation of a system that truly fails to serve the long-term interests of our students.
The legislative focus is on small districts consolidating, yet this “official” standard suggests it is our largest districts that need fixing. Why isn’t there a correlation between the conversation to improve education in Iowa and the primary measurement we use to judge our schools? And if we are not going to use this measure, what purpose does its existence serve?
With the legislative session convening, we know education is a hot topic. It always is, especially education funding. At what point, however, do we address standards — statewide standards? And not just in the minimal way we’ve typically done, but in a way that truly serves our students?
In 1991 The Fisher Commission was convened to undertake the task of restoring fiscal integrity to state government. Leaders of both parties enthusiastically embraced the report and implemented many of the findings.
In 2010 the Culver Administration and the legislature should convene a similar commission tasked with creating meaningful statewide standards and measurements, tasked with establishing meaningful data and research driven strategies to improve education including an in-depth examination of best practices, ways to create true parent and community support and engagement in schools, strategies to create a pre-K through 16 education system, teacher education and training, administrator education and training, and strategies to best utilize Iowa’s state and local tax resources to fund education and not chase funding from the federal government that will continue to perpetuate a system of meritocracy.
This process should be inclusive, but most of all it should be based in one outcome — what’s best for students. CV
Jonathan Narcisse most recently served as a member of the Des Moines School Board.
PoliticalMercury
By Douglas Burns
At home and real everywhere in America
Since our nation is more idea than geography, a collection of principles above anything else, this intellectually secessionist notion of two Americas, one with good people, and another peopled by those who Gov. Sarah Palin and others believe should be dispatched, is more than just dangerous thinking.
It flies in the face of everything I have sensed as an American, for I have felt strong patriotic surges, bursts of pride in country, and tears for its heroes and defenders in places large and small, famous and forlorn.
I am a rural Iowan, born in the eastern part of the state and adopted by family with deep roots in the west.
After being in places with screaming optics, in-your-face sights, New York City or Mt. Rainier or Churchill Downs trackside on the first Saturday in May, I am always again on my way home, on the open road from, say, the Omaha airport. This State of Iowa, I think to myself after being outside of it, has under-appreciated scenery.
The vastness of Iowa, its openness, leaves one feeling simultaneously secure and free. It’s a wonderful sensation — and an American one.
As I interviewed Ar-We-Va High School football coach Phil Snyder on a glorious fall afternoon in Westside, I thought there just can’t be a better way to be a kid than in a setting like this.
I’ve known the advantages of growing up in rural Iowa, with our schools, and going out and competing in the broader world.
“Part of it is just as simple as you learn how to work,” Ron Olson, a successful Los Angeles lawyer from Manilla told me recently about the advantages of coming of age in the small towns of the Hawkeye State. “That’s an important aspect of anyone’s career. You learn how to work, and you learn how to respect people.”
Growing up as he and I did, you really didn’t have a sense of anyone being rich or poor. You didn’t have to have someone validated by some fancy credential. It’s a place of very few excesses. I think that’s wonderful.
All of this makes small towns a crucial part of the American fabric.
But to dismiss anything outside of our way of life as something less than America (a la Palin) is to miss the full American experience.
The breathtaking sight of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, the feel of a run across it is with me still. It’s an American experience to stand on the bridge.
Interestingly, I never felt more American than I did those mornings on the Brooklyn Bridge.
I’m an Iowan, a Midwesterner through and through who finds enormous pleasure and comfort in those quiet drives from Carroll to Des Moines or Omaha, Neb. But spend some time on the Brooklyn Bridge. You’ll find there’s truth in the American belief that anything is possible.
For its part, the Statue of Liberty is disappointing. It came from the French, should belong to New Jersey and is so small in relation to what you’ve imagined since childhood. As a symbol it serves its purpose.
But then there is the Brooklyn Bridge, a 6,016-foot long marvel of utility and beauty spanning the East River and connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Stand at the apex of Brooklyn Bridge’s boardwalk in the morning, listening to the hum of the heart of capitalism, and then find yourself back in Iowa later that night, alone with your thoughts in the comfortable silence of a drive on U.S. 71, slicing through the world’s most productive farmland, headed home to Carroll, Iowa.
That, more than a politician’s opportunistic words, will give you the real sense of America. CV
Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa newspaperman who writes for The Carroll Daily Times Herald and offers columns for Cityview.
