It was November, and the people who run things in Mississippi, including those not working out of the offices of ALEC in D.C., were breathing a collective sigh of relief. Voters had narrowly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have forced the Legislature to fund K-12 public education in Mississippi according to its own law, passed in 1997 but achieved just twice since.
Chastened by narrow “victory,” leadership promised to make a better effort to provide our schools with the money necessary to provide all Mississippi kids with the opportunity for a decent education.
“We will do something!” they opaquely declared.
It is now February, and we are getting a much clearer understanding of what that “something” will be.
Based on Gov. Phil Bryant’s state of the state address, ideas embraced by the legislative leadership, I am reminded of a story:
A man with a withered hand goes into a church, takes a seat and begins to pray. “Dear Lord,” he whispers, “make both my hands the same.”
Suddenly, he begins to feel a strange sensation in his hand.
A minute later, he leaves the church … with two withered hands.
That seems to be what our state leadership has in mind when it comes to K-12 public education.
Those who wield the power in our state have suggested everything under the sun – everything but proper funding, which we now recognize as an idle promise made in the immediate aftermath of the November election.
In his state of the state address, Bryant almost got teary-eyed over his “School Choice” proposal, which would allow parents to use tax money set aside for students enrolled in the state’s public schools to pay for private school tuition. You get the idea: Rob Peter, pay Paul.
Bryant’s attitude toward education is nothing new. For years, we’ve heard that education is a personal responsibility of the parent. If the parent doesn’t value education, doesn’t create a home environment where children are exposed to books, doesn’t make sure homework is done, doesn’t invest time in their children’s education, no amount of school funding will make a difference.
But there is another truth some choose to ignore.
All children want to learn and will learn if they have the support and encouragement they need. If that support doesn’t exist in the home, there are things we can do help fill that void, including establishing a properly-funded universal Pre-K system, providing no-cost after-school programs, increasing school funding to reduce classroom sizes and providing more resources for more guidance counselors, remedial instruction and special education.
We may be prepared to harshly judge the irresponsible parent, but at what age do we write off an innocent child, whose primary sin is an accident of birth? Do we have no obligation to that child?
The governor clearly doesn’t think so.
He believes the solution is competition. Make public schools, which cannot pick and choose students, compete with private schools, which can pick and choose — and do — for scarce funding.
What sort of competition is that, though? It’s like entering a half-starved horse in a race under the theory that competition will make it run faster. It is a ludicrous premise, a rigged game where the outcome will only confirm their biases — a hideous version of “The Hunger Games,” inflicted on the children of Mississippi, especially the poor children in poor communities for whom state funding is of critical importance.
We love the idea of capitalism and there is a strong sentiment among the state leadership that free-market strategies are a cure for what ails our educational system.
What no one can dispute is that in a free-market system there are winners and losers. Do we really want put so many of our children in so precarious a position?
Are we not morally obligated to ensure that every child has the opportunity to be a winner? The free market does not allow for that. It was never designed for that.
So which kids are our state leaders prepared to allow the free market educational system to crush?
We know the answer to that, don’t we?
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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