Reflection on our most recent post on sealing Cincinnati's borders has prompted us to express ourselves with reduced sarcasm on the question of education in our fair city and its fair suburbs.
The conventional wisdom for many families has been to locate in the suburbs for the sake of their children's education. We understand such a decision and we fully support what motivates it. We would even say that in some instances, it may be the best and only option available to families who care about their children's learning. But we did something different. We would do it again. We recommend it to everyone who asks, as we are doing right now for those who didn't ask.
For those who think that the Cincinnati Public Schools offer inadequate education, we urge a meeting with the SWNID children, educated since the first day of kindergarten until the last day of high school (for the elder SWNID seed) at CPS. We suppose that we could have hoped for better than, say, Son of SWNID's National Merit Scholarship, but we try not to be that greedy. Daughter of SWNID is no slouch, either, for those who wonder, but the big trophies aren't yet awarded at her point of matriculation in the eighth grade. The system has served them well, and we have deliberately ordered our lives to keep them in it.
The SWNID children have been the beneficiaries a remarkably excellent education in the Cincinnati Public School system, specifically at Fairview German Language School and Walnut Hills High School. As to the quality of the latter, it was the highest-ranked school in Ohio in the recent Newsweek rating (for what such exercises are worth). It boasts rabidly committed alumni, an impressive history of educating some of Cincinnati's most famous citizens and former citizens, and a reputation for preparing its graduates for college far above the standard found in most public schools. As to the quality of the former, it prepared both SWNID children to ace everything in sight at Walnut, plus to speak German, play musical instruments and sports, and understand people of differing backgrounds.
For those who think the old CPS buildings perfectly adequate and rebuilding a waste, we urge a tour of the facilities that haven't yet been replaced. At Fairview, our seed were taught in a building constructed in 1880. That is not a misprint. And the 1880 building was in better shape than the 1958 building next to it. Then go to the bathroom at Walnut Hills, and hope that you can find some working plumbing in the old building (attention penny-pinchers: Walnut is only scheduled for updating, not new construction). There's a reason that three of the "Seven Ancient Wonders of Walnut Hills," as enumerated by last year's Walnut valedictorians, were "toilets." At any rate, the bond issue financing the CPS rebuilding program required a referendum, so in the best tradition of our republic, the people voted to tax themselves (property taxes will pay off the bonds, so all you suburban residents working in the city who complain about city income taxation without representation, you are not aggrieved on this point). And the district continues to downsize its plans to match current enrollments.
To those who flee the city for educational reasons (and we say again that we are not unsympathetic), we offer the warning that everyone must sooner or later come to grips with the social problems left behind in the metro core. Troubled families remain concentrated in crumbling neighborhoods after the folks with means move to the newest outer-ring subdivision. Sooner or later, those troubled family's children's social problems will affect the quality of life for suburbanites. The problems move too. Ask any school administrator in West Chester. As any policeman in Anderson Township.
What members of the suburban exodus don't always realize is that when they leave, they may leave behind educational institutions that have over generations built traditions of achievement and acquired experience in addressing problems. In exchange they get institutions with little by way of established patterns, good or bad. Booming suburban districts do well initially, but their achievement depends on their initial influx of families with economic resources and strong commitment to education. Eventually, though, that momentum slows, and the community finds itself with more families lacking that commitment, and hence a declining rate of achievement--and no experience with dealing with either.
Then there's nothing for the committed families to do but stay and make things better, as they could have done in the city, or move again to greener educational pastures in the next ring of suburban development.
Suburbs exist because of cities. Suburbanites, sooner or later, have to pay for what they derive from their metropolitan existence. That includes a share of the burden to educate children from the most dysfunctional of their community's families.
CPS has problems as a whole. Mrs. SWNID, a former substitute teacher in the system, can narrate. But the system--which has also shown remarkable improvements as a whole in the last decade--works for those who understand it and work with it. Meanwhile, a line on a map will not protect children in suburban schools from other children's social problems.
The SWNIDs are blessed to know experienced, committed teachers who stay in the city schools to make a difference. We thank them for their work, which is genuinely idealistic and self-sacrificial. To all those who couldn't fall asleep at night for thinking about the children in their CPS classes, we offer our appreciation.
We also know many families who have stayed in the city schools, and who wouldn't trade their children's education for anything available in the suburbs. They don't see themselves as more noble for staying in city schools; they stay because of informed self-interest. Plus, in the bargain they get great city services like parks, level sidewalks, and street lights, neighborhoods with mature trees, and affordable costs for homes (more than offsetting higher taxes in many instances).
That's our path less taken. We'd be glad for it to be taken more often.
3 comments:
Let's get the facts straight, please. No one has camped out for Fairview since the early 1990s. As we lived through the end of the camp-outs, we can speak to that definitively, as can our many friends who have enrolled since then. You just show up at the school and enroll--no lines, no waiting. Nary a soul fails to get her or his first-choice school.
Your definition of a public school is highly rarefied and idiosyncratic. "Public" means financed by tax dollars, period. If it had to mean "like the public schools of an earlier generation," then one-room schoolhouses ending at the 8th grade would be all that would qualify.
Fairview, BTW, has a share of the troubled youth of Cincinnati (it is disproportionately populated with students from the immediate neighborhood, as are all magnet schools in CPS), and has done some remarkable and interesting things to address their problems with some tangible success.
Walnut is mildly selective (the entrance test is hardly the high fence that some think it). However, which is better for the student: to live in a school district where everyone goes to the same high school with little variation in programming, or to live in a school district that allows for choices among schools to fit the needs of the student and the preferences of the parents? Each CPS high school, successes and failures, offers distinct educational programming, and anyone in the district can attend any school, with mildly selective standards at a couple.
Everything you say of a factual nature, however, about the differences between certain CPS schools and the bulk of the district is true--though, as we have already expressed these points in our post, redundant. It's the judgment you make that's invalid. Can you name an urban district with universal success educating the underclass? Parents remain the most important part of the educational equation (as you admit), and without their positive participation, it's hit or miss for any district.
Still some have some success. And CPS can be credited with limited success, about all that anyone can claim in this arena.
So the point is that the choice to move to the suburbs for education is not a necessary choice, though for some an understandable one. And the choice can prove to give less than we suspect, as the suburbs don't offer the absolute haven that some expect.
Let's imagine another scenario: every parent who cares about his or her child's education moves out of the district. The good schools become bad schools. What happens to the children who remain? Those who might overcome the disadvantages of their parents' indifference and dysfunction have no way out, even if they desire it and strive for it. There's the pity.
To claim that CPS wasted money wholesale is mostly to say that the cause of educating the underclass is hopeless and should be abandoned. To do that is deliberately to consign to ignorance that fraction of such communities who will respond to educational initiatives despite their disadvantages. Again, there's the pity.
Here's an excerpt from an email, edited to remove any information traceable to the emailer:
I was just reading your post about public schools, more specifically the Cincinnati Public School system, and needed to let you know that I really appreciated all you had to say.
It's become a personal issue with me as we relocated back to the city. . . . You have no idea how many times, after telling people of our "reverse sprawl plan," that I was immediately asked, "where will your kids go to school?" And when I'd reply CPS, I would've done better to admit that I was going to beat them with sticks. It was like I was crazy.
There's no way our city schools can improve if we take all the kids with values and move 'em to the 'burbs or private schools. . . . Until Christians are integrating into established systems nothing will change. It's a blessing to hear some success stories of kids making it work. Thanks for sharing.
We thank the gentle reader right back. Again, this is nothing noble. It's enlightened self-interest, with the potential for positive social side-effects.
Fiona:
Please do not comment on that which you do not know. Fairview is very close to "troubled families." Perhaps you would like to meet the Fairview kindergartener and older brother who were both named after the marijuana plants and came to school every day hungry (truly nearly starving)and dirty, after having been beaten with curtain rods. Perhaps you would like to meet my Fairview third grader who, like her several siblings, was divided among relatives, because mom was found walking down the street without clothes when she was high on crack. This young girl was eventually reunited with her mother after she got out of jail only to have a similar incident repeated.
Please do not tell me that Fairview has only elite families. Fairview is certainly blessed to have more than its share of caring parents, but neither are they blind to the needs of poor and struggling students. Many of these parents volunteer substantial hours at Fairview to regularly work one-on-one with students whose parents do not or cannot help them--often because they are children themselves.
Perhaps you would like to meet my job-share partner who after a tenure at Fairview hopes to one day return to one of Cincinnati's worst elementary schools, where she taught for the first eight years of her public school experience so she can continue to make a difference. She is one of the most fantastic teachers I know, and there are others like her in the district. I cannot tell you how much I resent your saying that the faculty as a whole is poor. Certainly there are poor teachers in the district. There are poor teachers in every district, but I would say the majority stay because they are passionate about these students.
As SWNID has said, people have good reasons for moving to the suburbs for education, and I do not fault them for that, but people also have good reasons for staying. BTW, even Walnut has some students who are in need, and while that would not be true for the majority, they do exist.
SWNID has already addressed the public school issue so there is no need to comment further, but if we have a public school fetish, so be it.
Mrs. SWNID
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