By Gemma Abels
The Santa Clara County Board of Education is about to decide an appeal for the creation of more charter schools, this time in Morgan Hill. The Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Education took a brave stand against charter management organizations in favor of preserving, improving, and re-defining our neighborhood schools. This decision has the backing of educators, community members, and parents in the district. This is a decision about how to define quality public education.
We can choose to view education as a business or we can choose to believe that education is a profession with human goals. When education is a business it will market itself to a small population and maintain that self-segregation brings increased status. When education is a profession, teachers and students use the diversity of opinions, cultures, and values to create learning, understanding, respect and community.
As a business, a school will have students sign a binding behavioral contract that is meant to eliminate discipline problems. As professional educators we know that building community and class-developed student norms teaches personal accountability.
When corporations run education, they want to have constant quality control by assessing students and implementing just-in-time, technology-based, whole brain interventions. True educators know that we must assess not just the whole brain, but the whole child. We inform our teaching with knowledge about our students' academic, developmental and emotional needs, as well as their natural aptitudes, and we use this information to advocate for them and empower them to explore all of their opportunities. Teachers also know that technology is just a tool - and not a teacher!
As a business, charter schools must find some way to assess their profits and losses. They do that with test scores; proficient students increase their API and non-proficient students decrease it. For professional educators, test scores are a measure of knowledge and skills on a specific day, they do not indicate intelligence, hard work, talent, and most especially they do not show the amount of truth, understanding and learning that occurred in a year.
As educators in Morgan Hill we measure success by our students’ ability to think critically, accept diversity, fight for justice, and continue learning. Our ability as teachers, is measured by the opportunities we offer them to achieve this greatness.
As a sixteen year veteran teacher in the Morgan Hill Unified School District, I am proud to be a part of a community that defines quality public education by the deeds and learning of our students and not by the test scores they produce. I hope that the Santa Clara County Board of Education will affirm that education is much deeper than a score. I hope that they listen to the voices of educators, parents, and community members. I truly hope that they respect the decision of a Board of Education that has
a deep commitment to their community and the students of the Morgan Hill Unified School District.
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