Over the past 30 years or so, a number of laws have been passed that were designed to ensure a more comprehensive, fair, and equitable education for all students.  While most of this legislation was enacted by our Federal government, it is the individual states that are actually accorded the bulk of the responsibility for its enforcement.  One key reason may be that nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is there mention anywhere of citizens' rights, nor legal obligation, to send their children to public school, nor to any school for that matter.  There is only a national philosophy regarding education that has solidified over the years regarding this country's need for an organized, comprehensive, public school system.  However, the basis for this need tends to differ from one region to the next, as well as from person to person.  The most frequently cited reasons relate to the perpetuation of knowledge, and preparing our youth for responsible citizenship and future employability.  Other reasons cited include skills acquisition, (e.g. reading and mathematics), socialization, athletics, and musical performance.  Since the mid-1960's, schools have been officially desegregated, (though, in reality, not always so), have been prevented from any longer excluding any students for disability reasons, have developed a complex system for providing specialized education to students with a broad range of limitations, have expanded required curricula and course requirements, and have raised the training and credentialing standards of its teachers.  However, despite these significant strides in public education since the birth of the one-room schoolhouse, there is a far greater outcry of dissatisfaction with America's schools than ever before.  In Illinois, alone, there are at least 50 organized groups of parents enjoined by their displeasure with their children's schools.  Most have acronymic names, including P.A.C.E., (Parents Aligned for Compliance in Education), P.R.A.I. S.E., (Parents Raising Awareness in Special Education), VOICES (for Illinois children), Parent2Parent, and my favorite, Mothers from Hell.  (This group was reportedly formed following the founding members overhearing themselves being so identified by school staff.)

Why are all these parents so angry?  Well, a good deal of their issues stem from special education compliance disputes, while almost as many are related to their schools' student discipline practices.  This is not to say that all parents of students who have no significant learning or behavioral issues are perfectly content with their children's schools.  Far from it, more and more parents are beginning to scrutinize their children's education and to take issue with matters once left to the wisdom of school administrators.  Our Federal government has now intervened with the first-ever nationally imposed standards for student academic achievement.  The "Elementary and Secondary Education Act," commonly known as "No Child Left Behind," while somewhat ill-conceived, has officially acknowledged our nation's growing dissatisfaction with the state of our schools' performance from coast to coast.  This act further acknowledges parents' right to resist sending their children to schools that fail to meet minimum performance standards.  Nevertheless, the State education agencies (SEA's) have done little to bring most schools into compliance with these prescribed standards.  On the contrary, in Illinois, for example, more schools are on the State's "watch list" today, than when the law was first enacted in 2000. 

I am one of but a very few parents of Illinois public school students who has also had the unique and highly revealing opportunity to work both within a number of public schools and also "on the inside" of Illinois' governmental educational bureaucracy.  Like many parents, I always took an active and concerned role in the education of each of my four children.  As was typical, my ex-husband and I based each of our housing decisions over the years solely on the schools in the area.  Entering the field of education from the business world, I moved quickly through the ranks from teacher, to pre-vocational coordinator, to guidance counselor, to school administrator, to district-level administrator, to State school compliance monitor.  In doing so, I had a chance to work in schools and districts in all five Chicago-area counties, as well in various school-oversight capacities statewide.  I actually began my own school experience in central Illinois, and then moved to the Chicago suburbs during my 7 th grade year.  My earliest awareness of the disparity in public school education was with this move.  I found, in 1965, that I was the only one in my new school who could diagram a sentence, while everyone else but me could already divide fractions.  I realized then and there that schools did not all adhere to the same priorities, which seemed both odd and unfair, even then. 

Further, instead of attending an impoverished high school that recently gained national notoriety for its highly publicized football game melee, I had the opportunity to complete my high school education in one of the highest-performing school districts in the country.  My parents were both intelligent, but from humble backgrounds.  Had my father not recognized the need for my siblings and myself to attend "better" schools, and so requested a transfer from his employer, I often wonder how much quality education I would have missed, and how this might have affected my future.  I know that I would have learned less, and so accomplished less, had I not moved to the "good" schools. 

Nevertheless, this way of thinking is not highly compatible with popular opinion.  Most individuals who have managed to establish residence in "good" school districts tend to perceive those residing in less-desirable school boundaries as being more the cause than the victims of their schools' substandard performance.  For too long schools and state education agencies have relied on this "socioeconomic" defense to justify the disparity in schools' achievement scores.  I know firsthand that this is simply not the case.  All one has to do is measure the academic achievement of students who have relocated from poorer performing schools to those producing higher student achievement to see this for themselves.

Still, the myth of "low (income) = slow (learners)" is perpetuated by educators again and again.  Unfortunately, there is so much bureaucracy in public education, so many layers of management, so much that is hidden in decisions related to allocation of funding and resources, that it is virtually impossible for the average parent, or even a very organized parent-activist group, to make heads or tails of what's really going on.  Even working within the system and communicating daily with top State officials on a number of school policy issues, left me unaware of a number of aspects of this very complex and secretive agency.  What I did witness was a huge disparity of "unofficial" State standards and expectations between "richer" and "poorer" schools, and witnessed significant inequality of resources and talent, that my State consistently refused to acknowledge or act upon.  Further, I was asked on numerous occasions to overlook school malpractice, particularly in the poorer schools, rather than actually compel schools to comply with unpopular, and sometimes costly laws.  It was quite clear to me that schools with largely low-income students were accorded only the "crumbs," of my state's educational "pie," as though these were handouts their students did not actually deserve.

What I also found was that my State Education Agency was clearly in collusion with the public school systems it was meant to govern.  Rather than acting to protect students from unscrupulous school practices designed to cut corners and minimize teacher effort, State officials would speak openly about how it is the school districts, and not the students or their parents, whom they considered their "clients."  This would be comparable to the American Medical Association being concerned first with the medical community instead of with upholding patients' safety.  I know Illinois is not alone in this ruse.  I researched school monitoring practices of all other states in the nation where I found even less direct State oversight of schools' performance, in most cases.  Medicine treats human bodies, but Education cultivates human minds.  Is one profession any less important, or deserving of any less scrutiny?  Until we, as a nation, recognize that both of these disciplines are equally important, requiring equal accountability, public education's scam on American society will not cease.