New school in Lynn is a call to arms against failures in public education
Marcela GarcÃa’s column on Lynn’s new independent school (“A new bilingual school in Lynn emerges as an alternative to public education,†Opinion, December 11) offers us both a vision of a future where families and communities that feel the need to start their own schools will do so and a sad commentary on our state’s public education sector.
It’s no small irony that school is arousing the interest of immigrants, who believed with the greatest fervor that American education was the key to their children’s future. Too often, these communities have been reluctant to name the schools guilty of not serving their young people. Not anymore, it seems. The expression that describes the genesis of the school as “an effort for. . . disrupt the traditional education system â€is a call to arms.
And it’s happening in what’s called the high performing Massachusetts of all places. It is no secret that families in our Commonwealth of Nations, who in the 1990s worried about the schools to which they had to send their children, today largely face the same daunting prospects, despite the reform of education. Still, policymakers seem complacent and so-called underachieving districts are urged to devote time and money to things like new accountability frameworks, children’s cabinets, and equity training. We have a lot of frameworks, training and conversations, but little real accountability.
Within urban school districts here and elsewhere, anxiety and inertia dominate the paradigm. Inaction seems preferable to error.
This is why the story of the Académie Jean Charles à Lynn resonates. If the idea caught on, would an exodus of students to affordable independent schools alarm budget offices and district leaders, or would the shame of dropping out prompt elected officials to change the conversation?
When the public education sector does not have the answers, our communities – especially communities of color – come up with their own answers. They are rightly ready to disrupt.
Larry myatt
Sharon
The writer is president of the Education Resources Consortium and former principal of Fenway Pilot High School in Boston.