Viewpoint Fixing non-magnet schools should be first
priority
By BERNARD McGHEE Special
to the National Catholic Reporter New Orleans
Here as elsewhere, magnet schools are a hot button
issue among parents, students, teachers and school administrators. Biggest
issue: admissions policies.
Thats wrong. The bigger issue is the question of what we
should do about the non-magnet schools.
When the New Orleans Times Picayune ran a magnet school
debate editorial, it talked about making admissions policies more inclusive but
nowhere asked the larger question of why so many people seem to see magnet
schools as the last hope of the damned.
During several weeks last fall, as one of eight students from a
news reporting class at Xavier University here, I spent time in New Orleans
public high schools where I witnessed the stark differences between the
districts prestigious magnet schools and the pathetic non-magnet
schools.
Fortier High School, a non-magnet school, doesnt even have
enough textbooks to provide its students with their own copies. In hot and
humid New Orleans, classrooms arent air-conditioned. The restrooms and
cafeteria suffer from a serious lack of attention to basic cleanliness.
Meanwhile, Ben Franklin High School, a magnet school acclaimed for
its architecture, has computers galore, a state-of-the-art television studio,
and 100 percent of its graduates go to college.
These types of inequities go far beyond a simple matter of one
school being a little better than another. This is an out and out injustice
being committed against students who arent fortunate enough to get into
the right schools. Under such a system, its inevitable that
those who have will get while the have nots will slip
through the cracks. Their high schools leave them so unprepared to go out into
the world that they wont even begin to be able to compete.
Little wonder recent studies indicate that fewer and fewer
African-American teenagers are going on to college. That trend will continue,
because public school systems continue to provide horribly inadequate education
in those schools that serve so many minority students.
Sad as it sounds, many people have just plain given up on regular
public schools, and they shouldnt. Just as with anything else, a school
is only going to be as good as the time, energy and money people put into
it.
Everyone says non-magnet schools dont provide a quality
education, but if they dont even have enough money to get books for all
their students, what can we expect?
Clearly, the real problem isnt the schools themselves, but
school boards that are content to save a few passengers while the rest of the
ship goes down.
Bernard McGhee is editor-in-chief of the Xavier Herald.
National Catholic Reporter, January 22,
1999
|