One step forward, two steps back. Throughout my career in education, both as a teacher and as an advocate for education reform, I have come to know the sense of frustration and defeat that accompanies that adage. I have seen it in the eyes of young people who desperately want a stable, nurturing learning environment, a place where they can thrive and advance and attain their fullest potential. I have seen it in the eyes of parents who want more than anything for their child to have a chance at the American dream. And I have seen it in the eyes of teachers who dreamt their whole lives of having their own classroom, of developing the minds and imaginations and talents of children, only to be broken by a failed system that has its priorities turned upside down.
And this summer, I saw a bittersweet victory. On June 11, years of fighting what seemed at times to be an uphill battle finally paid off. The Missouri Supreme Court鈥檚 unanimous decision to uphold RSMo 167.131 made law the rights of children in unaccredited Missouri school districts to transfer to neighboring accredited districts. As a result, 2,600 children in the failing Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts were finally allowed access to the quality education every Missouri child deserves. One step forward.
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Following the high court鈥檚 decision, the full implications of the Missouri State Board of Education鈥檚 2012 vote to grant 狐狸视频 Public Schools provisional accreditation were felt, like a thunderous boom. Despite the fact that 7 in 10 SLPS students were reading below grade level and fewer than 3 in 5 students were graduating from high school in four years, our state board made a decision that would adversely affect the lives of nearly 60,000 school-age children.
Not only did the state board reward SLPS for poor student outcomes, its decision also meant that students residing in the city of 狐狸视频 would no longer be eligible for the same right to transfer to a high-performing district afforded their peers in Normandy and Riverview Gardens. 狐狸视频 city children, many of whom are the region鈥檚 most vulnerable and most in need, remain trapped in a failing school district. They were 鈥渢his close鈥 to the quality education they, too, deserve. Two steps back.
Through it all, the Children鈥檚 Education Alliance of Missouri, an organization for which I proudly serve as state policy director, was the only advocacy group to publicly criticize this decision, the only one to provide a voice for the city children who frankly, got robbed, and the only one to understand the potential weight the 鈥減rovisional鈥 accreditation status would have on the children trapped in failed schools.
The culture of low expectations this state displays for the low-income and minority students who make up about 90 percent of SLPS鈥 student population was never more evident than in the state board鈥檚 decision to award a district with declining test scores and a widening achievement gap with provisional accreditation.
This past summer brought with it hope granted and hope shattered. My hope is that the students and the families who fell on the side of the latter will not lose their resolve, but that they will have a greater sense of what is possible. I hope SLPS parents will be empowered by the successes achieved by families in Normandy and Riverview. I hope members of the Missouri General Assembly will see how families in unaccredited districts jumped through hoops, sacrificed and rearranged their lives so that their children could access a high-quality education. And I hope they pass a law that will allow real choice for all Missouri students.
In the meantime, I hope the State Board of Education steps up, rights their wrong, and strips SLPS of the provisional accreditation it never earned.
And at the end of it all, I hope for and believe in the day when one step forward is followed by another step forward.
Kate Casas is state director of the Children鈥檚 Education Alliance of Missouri.