Mar 28, 2016 12:00:00 AM
by Laura Waters
I’m not cutting services, but I’m cutting spending. But I may cut Department of Education. I believe Common Core is a very bad thing. I believe that we should be—you know, educating our children from Iowa, from New Hampshire, from South Carolina, from California, from New York. I think that it should be local education.His perspective—shared by, apparently, millions of Americans on both sides of the aisle—is worth unpacking because March is Disability Awareness Month. First, full disclosure. My husband Dennis and I are the parents of Jonah, a handsome, funny and delightful 20-year-old with multiple disabilities. Jonah has a genetic mutation called Fragile X Syndrome which can cause a constellation of impairments, particularly in males (who, unlike females, don’t have a compensatory backup X chromosome.) Hence, my sweet son is “cognitively impaired” or “developmentally disabled” or whatever politically-correct descriptor you prefer. Nowadays you don’t say “retarded” because someone would call the language police and that word, when not used as a slur, means “slow” and connotes that one day you’ll catch up. Jonah never will catch up with his neuro-typical peers and, barring some miracle, never will live independently. As one of our other children says, both wryly and fondly, “Jonah is the gift that keeps on taking.” Sometimes people wonder why I’m so consumed with issues around educational equity, school choice, standards, accountability and the need for a strong federal role in education. Jonah’s not the complete answer to that question, but he’s part of it. Given this month’s designation, let’s look at what Jonah’s educational trajectory would look like without the heft of what Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and other champions of local control (which doesn’t exclude Democratic contenders) would so blithely eliminate.
Standardized tests, as "high stakes tests," have been misused over time to deny opportunity and undermine the educational purpose of schools, actions we have never supported and will never condone. But the anti-testing efforts that appear to be growing in states across the nation, like in Colorado and New York, would sabotage important data and rob us of the right to know how our students are faring. When parents "opt out" of tests—even when out of protest for legitimate concerns—they’re not only making a choice for their own child, they’re inadvertently making a choice to undermine efforts to improve schools for every child.This is one reason among many why I respond so viscerally to demands by not only Trump and Cruz, but, sadly even the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, to weaken federal oversight and rely on local control to secure rights for historically disenfranchised children like those of color, those in poverty, and those with disabilities. That’s why I’m so enraged by the “opt-out” movement, which does indeed “undermine efforts to improve schools for every child.” Without the threat of federal intervention, Jonah’s educational rights would be relegated to local political whims. Without federal requirements for objective annual data collection, our son’s once-latent abilities would be subjugated to prejudicial subjectivity. So, as Annual Disability Month draws to a close, I wonder whether die-hard local control advocates would reevaluate their antipathy towards federal oversight and their embrace of local control if they were parents of a child like Jonah. If politics is even partially personal, I’d think that they would.
Laura Waters is the founder and managing editor of New Jersey Education Report, formerly a senior writer/editor with brightbeam. Laura writes about New Jersey and New York education policy and politics. As the daughter of New York City educators and parent of a son with special needs, she writes frequently about the need to listen to families and ensure access to good public school options for all. She is based in New Jersey, where she and her husband have raised four children. She recently finished serving 12 years on her local school board in Lawrence, New Jersey, where she was president for nine of those years. Early in her career, she taught writing to low-income students of color at SUNY Binghamton through an Educational Opportunity Program.
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