Alumni in education discuss issues in public school system

The American public system is in crisis, alumni panelists saidon Friday.

Panelists included Alan Safran ’80, president and chair of the board at SAGA Innovations; Anne Herr ’85, director of school quality at Friends of Choice in Urban Schools; Dan Lips ’00, vice president for policy at the Goldwater Institute; and Matt Westmoreland ’10, a member of the Atlanta Board of Education.

The discussion was moderated by Christopher Campisano, director of the Program in Teacher Preparation at the University. Jason Kamras ’95, chief of human capital for the District of Columbia Public Schools, was listed as a participant but could not be present at the panel event.

Safran began by saying that he can feel the despair of children in American public schools. He noted that the average graduation rate in American public schools has been roughly stagnant for the last 50 years and that the poverty rate of students in American public schools is up to 21 percent.

“We shouldn’t take any time arguing about whether there is a problem with American public schools,” he said. “We should take time discussing what’s possible, and how to create the political will to get there.”

Herr discussed public education in the context of equity. Public education, she said, is supposed to be a leveling force in reducing inequality, but it is not functioning that way now. While the war on poverty is a critical issue, she said, not much is being done to solve it, and educators cannot optimistically wait for the problem to be solved.

“I can’t do much about urban poverty,” Herr said. “I can do something about what is in my purview.”

Lips described the public school crisis as a thought experiment in terms of one individual, a child starting school and the long odds that child has of making it through his education. The best solution for that child, he said, is to allow the child’s parents the ability to decide what schools their child can go to. His own idea was to give families direct funding for their child’s education, about $12,000 a year, and he noted that this idea has taken hold in several states.

Westmoreland noted that of 100 freshmen who enter an Atlanta public high school, 59 graduate in four years, 30 go on to some sort of post-secondary education, and 10 complete the third year of that postsecondary education. On his school board, he said, members talk continually about academic program, talent management, systems and operations and culture. He said that there is a huge problem with culture in Atlanta, as kids are not excited to go to school and teachers are not excited to teach.

Audience members raised questions involving such issues as charter schools, vocational schools and the effect of powerful teachers’ unions on the public school system. Both Lips and Herr said that charter schools are a bright spot on the American public school record, with Lips saying that charter schools encourage the whole public school system to improve.

Fifty percent of D.C. students are in charter schools, Lips noted. Herr added that each charter school is different and broad conclusions do not lend themselves readily.

In response to a question about vocational schools, Herr said the country needs more vocational alternatives in the school system and that college is not for everyone, but he added that people need to be careful when we decide that a given student needs vocational education rather than college education.

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“I think that’s a very important path that should be available to more students, but we have to be careful that we’re not creating a path that we funnel poor minority kids into by default just because of how they start kindergarten and how their vocabulary is,” Herr said.

The event, titled “The Crisis in American Public Education,” took place at10:30 a.m.in McCosh 10, and was organized by the Alumni Association of Princeton University as part of the Alumni-Faculty Forums.