Home School for Homeless Kids: The Genius of Rick Santorum

Wouldn't it be great if all families
home schooled their own kids?
It depends in part on the family.

If you haven't noticed, the debate about the "school crisis" in America keeps gets dumber and dumber. And just when you think it can't get any dumber some politician or "expert" steps up to the plate and we sink to some new nadir.

Speaking recently on the correct role of government in schools, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum made clear he sees no role for the federal government in U. S. education.

Mr. Santorum might have been on decent footing had he stopped there, but comments that followed were the last link in a chain that critics of public schools never follow to an end. For years we've been told, usually by conservatives, that if we give all parents vouchers, and let all parents send their children to  schools of their choice, and to do it with tax dollars, our problems in education will go away.

People didn't buy that idea. So the push for charter schools began, instead. Now we were told that if a kid had a problem in school, the solution was obvious. Just pack the child off to a different building.

Mr. Santorum now has an even better idea. He takes the school reform movement one building farther.

The federal government is out. So, too, are the states. Taxes are reduced and government gets a long-overdue shrinking. Parents take on the role of educating children. The "school crisis" is solved by eliminating the root of all evil.

We get rid of the school buildings.

If you don't know:  Mr.Santorum and his wife prefer the home-school option, themselves. They're well-to-do and Mrs. Santorum can afford to stay home and focus on educating their seven children. The parents are good, stable individuals (as far as I can tell). So it's working for them.

The problem critics like Mr. Santorum never see, either because they're naive or because it doesn't fit their agenda to see it, is that not every family is the same or even sane. First of all, many poor and lower middle class families are in no position to have mom or dad stay home to home-school the kids. Single parents are out of luck, too. And there's an even bigger hole in Senator Santorum's logic and a gaping hole in all the arguments that fault public schools for all our problems. It would be wonderful if every parent gave a damn about their children, in school, or out, like the Santorums. But the public schools have to educate every child. So they  take children from good, stable families, and children from the families where mom and dad are useless, at best, dangerous at worst.

Consider an old example, but one of my "favorites," from the Lebanon Daily News, a small Pennsylvania paper I picked up once on vacation. Reporters noted that in May 2008, a neighbor called police after spotting Elizabeth Ann Fox’s two young sons, 4 and 2, crawling out a bedroom window. A state trooper arrived to find the “kitchen floor covered with garbage and half-eaten food. The stench of rotting food and human waste forced him back outside.”

A second trooper located mom soon after, “sitting in her car and eating a sandwich at a fast food restaurant in neighboring Union Township. State police said the children had been left alone for at least two hours.” Picture mom if you will, happily stuffing her face with a Big Mac and fries, while her children remain at home amid piles of garbage. 

Then ask yourself:  Does anyone think the problems these children will have in years to come are going to be about schools?

That's the blind spot in all the bold plans being floated to fix American education. What plan out there addresses the needs of the kids who most need help, when their problems aren't in the classroom, but in the bedroom at home?

If you'd like a current example, consider a story in today's New York Times. It's about a family in Dayton, Texas. Agents of the child welfare agency raided the home one recent afternoon. Inside, they found 11 children, several tied to their beds. An 11-year-old had a black eye, finger marks on his forearms, and one front tooth had been knocked out. Eight kids were confined to a single 10 x 10 bedroom, in the dark, the window boarded over with plywood, when investigators entered the home. Two infants were removed immediately for signs of "failure to thrive" and pneumonia. None of the older children were enrolled in school; and, needless to say, these weren't the kind of parents who were going to have much aptitude for home-schooling their own kids.

That's the problem with plans to fix education with vouchers and charter schools and now Mr. Santorum's call for parents to home-school their kids. The public schools take all kids from all kinds of homes. We even take kids whose families may be good, but who have no homes, who can barely put bread on a table, if they can locate a table to put bread upon.

Senator Santorum's backward thinking on education is enough to make Charles Dickens cringe. Call his new plan: “Home School for Homeless Kids.”

If Only Vouchers Worked Like Magic Cloaks

My wife's father died when she was eight;
but she was raised by a great mother.
So she turned out great.
It works like that a lot in life
and it can work the other way.

My blog has been picking up a little traffic lately.  I figure it probably has something to do with my fluid writing style, or perhaps it boils down to my good looks.

It can't be because of brains. To hear critics speak, America's public school teachers are a bunch of Neanderthals and every problem in our education system today is a direct result of their all-encompassing stupidity.

So, to recap: I'm a retired teacher and my blog is designed, in part, to speak in defense of all good teachers.

For that reason, I try to make clear that teachers are not the only problem in our schools, nor, in my opinion, the biggest problem by far.

I'm not like U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

I don't believe, like he does, that we can test ourselves to education success. Nor do I believe in vouchers and charter schools, as keys to our salvation. In my opinion there are plenty of bad parents out there and they are the very ones most likely to send children to school who have severe problems and who are, of course, least likely to have support or love or decent living conditions in the home.

If you're a fan of vouchers, however, I have a perfect voucher plan--which is probably going to make me the next U. S. Secretary of Education if Mitt or Newt or Rick or Ron or Michelle or The Donald or the Herminator or "None of the Above" can oust President Obama from his comfy seat in the Oval Office in November.

My wife was great with
raising kids.
Sadly, not all parents are alike.

Yesterday, a "fan" of my blog complained because I was using "scare tactics," citing examples of terrible parents, and chastized me for arguing that vouchers will never solve the problems of children in the very greatest need of help.

I don't believe I'm resorting to "scare tactics" when I try to point out the obvious. Take, for instance, the recent tragedy in Washington state. There, Josh Powell, already a suspect in the disappearance and likely murder of his wife, set fire to his home, killing himself and two young sons, Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5.

Maybe I am another stupid teacher. Maybe I've been getting along all these years on nothing but my looks. But had those two poor boys survived, I don't see how a voucher or a seat in a charter school was ever going to make their father a decent parent or even a decent human being. 

You can bury your head in the scholastic sand if you want to and try to make the case that more and more charter schools will fix U. S. education. But that is tatamount to saying if we built Mr. Powell a better home he'd be a better father.

I want to hear the experts outline a plan that helps kids like Charlie and Braden--who are never going to get the help at home. Just because you took your voucher and took your child away to a different school, that doesn't mean you did a damn thing to save the Powell brothers.

It's sad, really (and again, I admit, there are bad teachers out there and we need to do more to get them out of the schools). But when I "Googled" "father sets fire," intending to add "to sons," to find the story about the Powell's, I got multiple stories before I could finish. One was an old report, from 1986, about a boy named David Rothenberg, whose father dumped three gallons of kerosene in a motel room while his 6-year-old was sleeping, and set it on fire, burning the child over 90% of his body. A more recent example, from West Palm Beach, Florida, would be Jorge Barahona, found with the body of his adopted daughter, Nubia, in the back of his pickup truck and a badly battered son, Victor, 10, her twin brother, slumped across the front seat. Dad told police he was distraught over the girl's death and planned to set fire to himself and his son, but couldn't do it in the end. Remorse came much too late for the poor girl or for Victor's sake. The boy showed evidence of all kinds of prior injuries: broken collarbone, broken arm, burn scars on buttocks and abdomen, and rope marks on wrists.

Emily Rodriguez, Victor's first grade teacher, told reporters she remembers how Nubia used to visit her class at the end of every day to see how her brother had been doing.

Now:  Think about this whole story for a moment. Think like any good teacher. Is the solution to such problems really more layers of standardized tests? A school voucher for Nubia? What good would that do in the end? Stupid teachers? Really?  That's our biggest worry?

Worst of all, it doesn't take any effort to find these kinds of stories. The same paper that reported on the Barahona case included an article about Marsee Strong, 34 and Edward Bailey, 40, now in jail after their nine-year-old son was found wandering the streets, naked, bruised and starving, one recent Saturday night. He informed police he had jumped out a bedroom window to "escape his abusers." Rushed to the hospital, he begged for food, said he hadn't eaten in three days, and was found to have "permanent marks of abuse" all over his body.

A shocked judge in the case said the boy looked "like he just came out of Auschwitz."

You see, no "scare tactics" are necessary at all. Every good teacher I ever knew wanted to save every kid they ever had in school.  That doesn't mean, no matter how much they tried, or how much they cried (or cursed in my case) when they failed, that the task of saving the most needy children was ever easy.

People who believe vouchers and charter schools will save all our children must be a collection of blind, deaf and dumb people.

Or they must be fools.

A Voucher Plan for Every Child and Every School

All parents are equal.
All parents are good.
Ergo:  Only the school the child attends
really matters in the end.

I've been watching a lot of Fox News lately and tuning in to Rush on radio; and I'm a huge fan of the film Waiting for Superman.  So, even though I'm a retired public school teacher, I am finally forced to admit the truth. We need a voucher & lottery system for all kids and all schools, a Wild West competition, if you will.  That is:  we allow successful schools to thrive and unsuccessful schools to wither.

(WAIT....keep reading....I might be joking....and you won't know if you don't finish.)

No more public school monopoly.  No more union teachers, sitting on their fat duffs and pillaging the State Treasury.

(Keep going...don't quit now.)

Competition, baby--kind of like McDonalds vs. Burger King vs. Burger Chef--and may the best burger and fries win.

(Patience, my liberal friends. Continue to the end.)

In fact, if you haven't seen my favorite movie, here's a Superman summary:  Five great kids enter the lottery to get into superior charter schools in the cities where they live.  They must flee the failing public schools, where teachers are pathetic losers and unionized malcontents.  Every parent is concerned about their child, of course. The movie makes that perfectly clear because there are no bad parents in the movie.  So we know bad parents do not exist.  We need more vouchers, charter schools, and free and open competition.

In fact, let's look at the famous "Parable of the Schools." (I just made it up.) First, we have Joseph R. Crappy Public School.  Until now, this school has enjoyed a monopoly.  This school even has a monoply on children with serious handicaps and hogs all the homeless children, too.  In this school they take children of all faiths, and no faith at all, and then because they have a monopoly, they can't even be bothered to read from the King James Bible--or is it the Latin Vulgate--or the Book of Mormon--or pray at the start of the school day.

Boy oh boy...those unionized teachers...they have some nerve, not even having the gumption to teach your kid good religious values any more.

Down the street we have Arne Duncan Charter School.  This school can save any child from Crappy Public School.  This school takes children whose parents are involved and sign their sons and daughters up for a special lottery, to gain admission.  If you have seen Waiting for Superman, you know every parent (or grandparent) stands behind their child and wants them to get into this school.  It is a matter of life and death, this escaping Crappy Public School.

Turn right at the next stoplight and you come to Stupendous Prep Private School.  This school comes in 57 varieties, including:  1) Christian School, where religion is taught and the King James Bible rules; 2) Hideaway School, a residential facility where tuition is prohibitive and only children of the upper classes can afford to go; 3) Elite Catholic School, where the Latin Vulgate Bible is preferred, and entry is determined by scores on entrance tests; 4) Muslim School, where the Koran is favored and few listeners of Rush dare to tred; 5 thru 57) other.

Now:  we all know that Joseph R. Crappy Public School is failing and why.  It's crappy unionized teachers.  We know good parents are demanding that their children be allowed to attend Arne Duncan Charter School, which is sure to be better, because there the crappy unionized teachers are kept at bay.  Meanwhile, the students at Stupendous Prep are happy and safe and learning religious values, of various kinds, in perfect good order. 

So:  Here's the plan that perfects the whole.  (This plan elevates me to U. S. Secretary of Education under President Newt Gingrich.) We already know that all parents are equal, that all parents are good, and that teachers in unions are minions of the Devil.  So we level the playing field for every child in America. 

First, we let Stupendous Prep receive regular state funding.

Second, we give every student at Crappy Public a voucher, so that now we have perfect school choice.

Third, since this is a business competition, we allow Crappy Public to operate by the same rules.  That is, what works for Arne Duncan Charter and Stupendous Prep, it's got to work for Crappy, too. 

I was going to say, "Suppose we take an extreme example...." But all parents are the same, as we have already mentioned.  So, imagine that we have a mom and dad who cook methamphetamines in their home.  And they get too busy running the family business to sign up for the lottery to get their child in the nearest charter school.  Well, if the child has serious problems and scores low on standardized tests, Crappy Public School does its duty for once, loosens its monopoly grip, and gives the child a voucher--actually sends them away to Arne Duncan Charter or Stupendous Prep, down the block.  These schools receive state funding, too, and we want every child to play on a level field.  So:  yes.  Stupendous Prep can no longer deny entry based on test scores or keep kids out by charging huge fees.  And Arne Duncan Charter has a civic duty to take students whose parents didn't sign them up, because charter schools exist to save kids who want to flee the failing regular schools. 

Or, now:  the kids the failing regular schools send them to save.

Homeless kids?  Yeah, break the Crappy Public School monopoly here, too.  We enter them all in a lottery and divide them up, so that Stupendous Prep gets a fair share of the pie, and next you know, these poor children are wearing monogrammed blazers and getting ready to go on to Harvard and Yale and Brown.  Handicapped kids?  BREAK that Crappy Public monopoly.  Kids with severe behavior disorders?  BREAK that monopoly. 

Honestly, how can such a brilliant plan go wrong?  From now on, in every school of every type, all kids take State standardized tests.  If Crappy Public has the lowest scores in 2013, then we do our duty to the children and allow the lowest scoring students, say the bottom 50, to load up the yellow bus and go on down the street, where Arne Duncan Charter will save them--raise them from the educational dead, like Lazarus, so to speak.  You don't ask parents if they want their kids to go, lazy unionized teachers!  You send those lowest scoring students away.

You can't be selfish and try to keep all the kids with the worst problems to yourselves.

In fact, the State can now close all juvenile detention facilities.  We give every kid with violence issues or a criminal record a chance to escape Crappy Public and send them to Christian School to learn from the King James Bible, and sit next to Governor Kasich's children, or we send them to Hideaway School, where Davis Guggenheim, producer of my favorite film, sends his kids and then watch the business model work in education to perfection.

Family background has no bearing on what happens in schools.  Schools and teachers alone shape kids.  So let's send all the boys and girls who really need help to the very best schools.  Open those doors wide Arne Duncan Charter School. Come on Stupendous Prep! 

You've got some saving to do.

Lesson One: A Tea Partier's Guide to Teaching in America



Abby, my oldest daughter,
was a very strong student.
So what is the key variable in schools?


I've been trying to pump up my blog traffic recently; and several of my conservative friends have been kind enough to log on and read a post or two.  I'm pretty much a flaming liberal, as most of them know--out of the closet, politically, I suppose you'd say.  I still have my Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on my car from '04 and my Obama '08, too.  So, yeah, I'm coming from a different direction than the typical Tea Party supporter.

I probably ought  to scrape off Edwards' name, I admit...that cheating scumbag.

Then again...Newt...really???  But I digress.

That still doesn't mean a friend who lives across the street can't come out a couple of weeks ago and lend me his leaf-blower when he sees me using an old-fashioned rake.  He's a wonderful neighbor and a Tea Party supporter, himself; but when it comes to education issues he's probably a bit conflicted.  His daughter is a teacher in the public schools.  (I think he might even have cast his vote against Issue 2, here in Ohio.)

As far as I can tell, conservatives believe that American education is in precipitous decline, that our system sucks tax dollars out of citizens' pockets and leaves them with nothing but heartbreak, that teachers' unions exist only to protect the incompetent, that members of those unions are "thugs" and "parasites," and liberals are the minions of the devil. 

And so, only private schools and charter schools and vouchers and business control in education can save us in the end.

Another conservative gentleman I know, and a good man by every measure I can think of, told me recently he couldn't understand where I was coming from in a recent post, "U. S. Education by the Numbers."

So:  let me try to explain how teachers really feel to the Tea Party folks.  Imagine, my conservative friends, that your favorite football team (let's say the Bengals) is finally playing well.  At the end of three quarters, Andy Dalton has the boys in stripes leading 21-10.  Then the referees wave the Cincinnati players off the gridiron and the Ravens are allowed to keep throwing passes down an empty field and they score six touchdowns and the fans in the stands start booing the defenders and crying in their $8 beers.

That doesn't make a bit of sense.  Yet, it's exactly the kind of comparison critics make when denigrating American public schools, and praising, for example, the "superior" Japanese education system. Here's how a teacher in this country sees the situation:  Japanese children attend school  240 days a year.  U. S. students go to class for 180 days. 

Four quarters of football vs. three.

Or:  consider the South Korean education system--also held up as model of success, and then used to shine a glaring light on America's failing schools.  In a recent international comparison, South Korean kids finished #1 in reading, #1 in math and #3 in science, out of 65 nations.  American students were #12 in reading, #17 in science and #25 in math.

If you're a Tea Party American, at this point, you probably gnash your teeth and start to grumble about the evil unions.  But if you're a Teacher American (even a Teacher American/Union Member American) the number that grabs your attention is "14." 

That's how many hours the average South Korean student spends every day in school, completing homework, and attending after-hours tutoring sessions, a kind of mania in that nation.

If you're a public school teacher in the U. S. you think, "If I asked students to shoulder that kind of load parents would be apoplextic.  They'd be calling my principal and demanding that she lop off my head and they'd want her to spike it on the front lawn of the school to serve as a warning. 

So, you dream of saying to a conservative friend:  "Both of us are going to get paint brushes and buckets and ladders and we are going to start painting this house today, at 8 a.m.  The winner, the person who covers the most surface, before they run out of paint, is going to receive $100,000 and the loser will get nothing but a lump of coal in their stocking on payday." 

Then you add this caveat:  "I will use these fourteen buckets of paint.  You can have nine."

Your conservative friend is going to question the fairness of such a contest, but that's how teachers see it when they hear South Korean schools are better--or schools in Finland or Liechtenstein or Glennbeckistan--and the reason for the difference is that America's teachers are unionized crooks and fools.  If an American kid spends nine hours on academics, which is close to the average, you figure that five hours extra every day, multiplied over the years, might give South Korean kids a slight advantage, academically speaking.

I suppose, in one respect, I think like a Tea Partier, myself.  I don't believe that U. S. education can ever be fixed by pouring in more money.  In fact, my experiences in life (I was a lazy student once) and in the classroom seem to prove that if you give me 35 students, ready to work, and I am willing to work hard, too, and parents will back me up if I'm truly, truly demanding, then I can teach effectively in a barn, with all my students seated on bales of hay.

That doesn't mean that the conservative perscription for fixing the public schools is correct.  That's just my spiel for today.

Rock, Voucher, Scissors: Saving Carl Won't Be that Easy

RECENTLY, I HAD A CHANCE TO TALK to a former student, now teaching first grade in a Southeast Ohio school district. She works diligently at her craft and tries in every way she can to help her young charges.

She’s a little testy when she hears another story about “what’s wrong with America’s teachers.” She knows there are bad teachers. She’s not blind. I taught 33 years, myself. I’m not blind to that reality either. 

Still, when you hear Governor John Kasich in Ohio or some leading school reformer talking about how more vouchers and more charter schools will cure all problems in education, well, if you’re a teacher, it starts to grate on your nerves. 

Here’s a situation my former student currently faces. In her class she has a boy who doesn’t talk. To be exact:  he doesn’t talk much to peers, to adults normally not at all. One of his classmates comes up to her (we’ll call her Ms. Smith) occasionally, and says, “Miss Smith, Carl talks to me.”  

Otherwise, the six-year-old is a selective mute. He could talk but chooses not to. 

At first, Smith and various therapists assumed Carl had an anxiety disorder. If they could help him relax he might improve. Smith provides a nurturing classroom environment and has been breaking through on rare occasions. There’s a long road ahead and the journey is painful and slow.


A few days ago the boy’s great uncle stopped by to speak to her. “I don’t want to talk behind my niece’s back,” he began, “but I need to explain the situation at home. Carl was born with cocaine in his system and his mom has been an addict most of her life.” 

Miss Smith has been teaching for eight years, in a poor district, and though every suffering family suffers in its own unique way, she’s heard this kind of story before. She listens while the uncle continues:  “Mom has had one child taken away by Children’s Services. [Like Carl, his sibling was born with drugs in his system had to suffer withdrawal pains while in the crib.] We’re trying to help her keep Carl, but the drugs have damaged her thinking. She’s like a child and we have to watch her all the time. Until recently, my niece was broke and she and the boy were living out of a cheap motel.”  

“It’s been a struggle,” the uncle admitted. At that point, he began crying. 

Ms. Smith is a good teacher—the vast majority of the people who staff our classrooms are. So she’s not giving up and does everything in her power to help. 

It’s kind of disheartening, though, for her to keep reading about how vouchers and charter schools will solve all the problems in America’s schools. 


I'm ready to make
the bet.

Ms. Smith is too busy trying to help real kids to make this kind of promise. But I’m a retired teacher and willing to make a bet. I don’t believe anyone out there, not even U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, can explain how a school voucher, a single sheet of paper, allowing Carl to change schools, or a charter school, itself, is going to shield this poor boy from more of the same kind of cruel vicissitudes he has so far met with in a very short life. 

A “parent voucher” might help, instead. Carl often begs his uncle to adopt him, but his uncle is poor, and too old to start over raising a six-year-old. Even a “housing voucher” might help.

A school voucher?

If you can show me how a chance to change schools is going to solve this child’s problems, I’ll eat a school voucher and won’t even bother to wash it down with beer. 


P. S. This sort of situation is far from rare and in the end there’s not a syllable of humor in it. If you’re Ms. Smith or any other dedicated teacher you want to hear experts in education outline a plan to really help these kids.

According to the New York Times, nearly 1 in 10 babies born in Scioto County, in Southern Ohio, last year tested positive for illegal drugs in their blood. 

In 2008-2009, the U. S. Department of Education estimated that there were 954,917 homeless children in this country.  

Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg, the billionaire school reformer, says the real problem in education is that teachers are culled from the bottom 20% of college graduates, and not from the best schools. Bloomberg, a Harvard graduate himself, and therefore an expert in helping poor children, is thinking about buying a modest home in Southampton, a 22,000 square foot place nestled on 35 acres.  

Maybe the mayor could find room in his “cottage” for a couple of homeless kids.