The recent debates in state legislatures and school boards around the country—and the apparent difficulty in cancelling tests that we all know are useless and given only to satisfy a law—have caused me to think, Why is it so difficult for state legislatures to do something everybody knows is right?
We often think of civil rights as being based on someone’s race, their religion, their ethnicity. But of course, civil rights apply to all US citizens. The normal democratic process should allow our elected officials to change laws they know are causing harm to certain groups of people, such as students, or depriving them of rights guaranteed by the Constitution. According to the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice:
Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
For the purpose of Section 242, acts under “color of law” include acts … done by federal, state, or local officials within their lawful authority … if the acts are done while the official is purporting to or pretending to act in the performance of his/her official duties. Persons acting under color of law within the meaning of this statute include police officers, prisons guards and other law enforcement officials, as well as … others who are acting as public officials.
Let’s talk about that “right or privilege protected by the Constitution or the laws of the United States.” One that comes to mind is education.
In Illinois, the state’s constitution promises in Article X, “The State shall provide for an efficient system of high quality public educational institutions and services. Education in public schools through the secondary level shall be free. There may be such other free education as the General Assembly provides by law.” That is, public schools in Illinois are guaranteed by the constitution to be
- efficient
- high quality
- free
In Maryland, Article VIII of the state’s constitution provides, “The General Assembly, at its First Session after the adoption of this Constitution, shall by Law establish throughout the State a thorough and efficient System of Free Public Schools; and shall provide by taxation, or otherwise, for their maintenance.” In Maryland, therefore, public schools are guaranteed by the constitution to be
- efficient
- thorough
- free
These are the rights and privileges to which our state constitutions entitle us.
We tolerate some expense, such as pay-to-play fees, charges for certain classes that require equipment, fees for special field trips and other programs, and so on. We also tolerate certain inefficiencies in terms of money, such as profits skimmed off of charter schools or standardized tests for which taxpayers are charged $30 per kid, and in terms of time, such as school years for third graders, eaten away by massive amounts of testing.
An efficient public school system is a civil right
Efficiency, in engineering terms, has to do with comparing how much energy is put into a system to how much energy is put out. For example, an engine with 10 percent efficiency means 10 times more energy is put into the engine, often as electricity or gas, than is put out, usually in the form of mechanical energy, such as turning the tires on a car. The other 90 percent is lost, usually as heat, to the surroundings of the engine.
When we give tests, like the ISAT in Illinois or the MSA in Maryland, on which the results are completely inconsequential to almost every single student who takes them, it’s like losing a whole bunch of energy as heat. We put in millions of dollars, so that’s the denominator in our efficiency calculation. We put in an immeasurable amount of schedule rerouting in our schools, their computer labs, and their staff, and this amount adds to the denominator.
But what’s the numerator of our efficiency calculation? Whatever units we measure it in, this year, that numerator is nearly zero. We aren’t even using these scores. We have historically accepted some level of inefficiency, but how low can it go before tipping the balance for people of these states?
We have administered tests under color of law, a law known as No Child Left Behind, which spells out what public schools must do. School officials have hid behind this law to administer tests they had previously declared would no longer serve their original accountability purpose. But there comes a point when someone has to ask, How inefficient can we make operations in our schools without running afoul of the stated goals of our state constitutions, without trampling on rights and privileges guaranteed to citizens of our states?
Somebody, somewhere, soon!
Some lawyer, somewhere, must be able to find a technicality that would allow school officials to take actions that increase the efficiency of our public schools rather than degrade it. Some representative in some statehouse must be able to find a way out of this, through the law, and relieve our teachers and other educators of the burden this law has placed on them by requiring actions that are clearly not in our students’ best interests.
These tests, the replacement of public schools with for-profit charters, and the closing of many public schools are making our schools inefficient, and that is a violation of Title 18, as I see it. But whatever the legal finding is, these things are killing our public schools, and we need to act before they’re dead.
