Tuesday, January 02, 2024

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Don't Let the Politicians Dumb Down Our Schools

The future of our businesses depends on the quality of the current K-12 generation. We can't afford to lower standards, as Chicago is trying to do. 

 

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@HOWARDTULLMAN1

 

Say what you will about the promises of new technologies, in our abundant optimism and eager enthusiasm for the new, we often become so focused on the future that we forget the fundamentals and the most important lessons of the past. Now's a good time to take stock and make sure that we're putting first things first as we start the new year. Nothing is more crucial than educating the next several generations of our children -- and we're doing a fairly poor job of it.

Given the crush and concerns of other problems, it's too easy to lose sight of longer-term needs. We have to continue to deliver on the basic promises on which we've built our country and our companies. Every major city suffers from continuing crime and drug problems. Murders may be down statistically, but the day-to-day robberies, muggings, and carjackings which deprive the citizenry of any feeling of security and comfort continue to rise. In addition, we have some Northern cities' resources being overwhelmed by the unanticipated influx of huge numbers of migrants with little available housing or medical support for them. Finally, and most critically, we see overloaded and underfunded K-12 education systems in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Philadelphia that are consistently failing to prepare students for college and viable future employment. Adding tens of thousands of immigrants to the mix only stands to make conditions at these schools much more difficult.

But if you think education is hard and expensive, it's nothing compared with the ignorance we're seeing every day in a growing portion - young and old - of the population. We can blame Trump for the fraud and rotten messaging, but we own the problem of the ignorance of the masses, which provides a welcoming home for the MAGA lies.

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Millions of kids - the backbone of the workforces of the next decade or two - aren't getting the kind and quality of education that is essential to setting them up for success, both in their careers and in their lives.  And to be honest and selfish as well, it's our businesses and institutions that will suffer alongside them as they fail. All the tech in the world won't substitute for the well-trained, passionate, and committed people that it takes to create and build new businesses. Just as we need to aggressively support and promote the arts in our cities, we can't lose sight of the other essential drivers of growth which will determine our country's future success. And proper education tops the list for an informed electorate. Remember: if horses could vote, there would never have been cars.

Colleges have reported for years (even pre-pandemic) that incoming students were grossly unprepared for the rigorous academic demands and that they required a year or more of remediation before they could successfully manage their college experience. Employers report that, in many cases, these education deficiencies largely persist through the college years and result in socially promoted "graduates" who can barely read or write basic business communications.

The only schools that seem to be getting the job done are the private, charter, magnet, and selective enrollment academies, which unfortunately haven't scaled. But they have provided parents and their kids with a vision, a path, and the tools to get a jump start on what it's going to take to compete in the global economy. These are the experiments and the wins that we need to continue to build on and expand in order to make sure the pipeline continues to turn out the talent we need.

But in Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson has made another foul and foolish concession to his masters at the Chicago Teachers' Union and set a horrid example for so many other cities like New York, Detroit and Cleveland suffering from similar problems. He proudly announced that he had set his minions at the Board of Education on a new mission and directed them (before they are likely to be replaced next year) to rapidly map a multi-year path toward ending of the city's charter, magnet, and selective enrollment schools.

In a grossly miscalculated and foolish attempt at achieving some fantasy of citywide "equity," Johnson said he planned to emphasize the resurrection, rehabilitation, and renewal of the city's shrinking and decrepit neighborhood schools instead of building on the dramatic and documented record of consistent academic achievement the selective enrollment schools have demonstrated over the last several decades. The only true equity isn't killing the schools that are doing a great job, it's providing even broader and more robust choices to all the students and parents in any given city.

Johnson's plan is apparently to lower the bar by getting rid of the best schools so that all the students in Chicago can be equally ill-served and punished by the long-broken public school system, which has been mismanaged and manipulated for years by the teachers' union. This mope's foolish idea is to take steps to drag every Chicago student down to the lowest common local denominator rather than working to encourage the underperforming schools (and their staffs) to aspire to and model the behaviors of the best performers. Aspirations, visions, and dreams are just about the only things that are likely to motivate today's distracted and disinterested students and pull their attention away from their devices.

Those extraordinary schools like Walter Payton College Prep, Jones College Prep and Northside College Prep in Chicago - many of which top the annual lists of the state's best educational institutions -- offer ladders, incentives, encouragement, and open-ended upside opportunities for students from underserved neighborhoods. They are beloved by and sought out by thousands of conscientious parents who were obviously not consulted about the abrupt decision to abandon these centers of excellence along with the hopes of thousands of students and their parents for a chance to secure a solid education for their kids and a path forward to college.   

When challenged about previously promised opportunities for parental input, the arrogant newbie mayor (who was a "teacher" for about four months before becoming a CTU lobbyist) said that there was no need to consult with the parents because he "knew" what they wanted. The fact that he knows little or nothing about almost everything hasn't deterred him from screwing up every city program he's attempted to change or revise. Most recently, millions of dollars were squandered attempting to construct a tent city for migrants on property so demonstrably toxic that Illinois's governor had to step in and shut the knee-jerk program down before hundreds of parents and children were poisoned on the site.  

It's our job, and every business builder and parent's obligation in whichever city they're located, to stand up for excellence in our kids' education and demand parental choice in the schools they attend rather than caving in and settling for mediocrity across the board. Every school from the smallest neighborhood building to the mega-academies in every city should move toward the best they can be and put the kids' futures first. When I founded my first college, I stated then that education is a business that's too important and too valuable to be left in the hands of educators or politicians. That's still the case today.  

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