This Is The One Thing I Swore I'd Never Do As A Parent
An ambivalent essay about eating my words
Hello friends.
This is the funny thing about having a weekly newsletter. Sometimes I’m grappling with what to say. And sometimes I’m struggling NOT to say the one thing that’s entirely on my mind and crowding out everything else. But I’ve made this compact with myself, and with you, to write about what’s most heavy on my heart in this wild world, so I have to do it.
This is one of the latter times. So here it is:
We’re sending our fourth grader to private school next year.
Now. Considering last week I wrote about the impending runaway destruction of civilization and the ecosystem, considering the United States is still dropping bombs on Iran and people in Lebanon are displaced from their homes and Israelis are hiding in bomb shelters and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have no bomb shelters to hide in and gas stations are closed in Hanoi and Bangladesh has shuttered its universities and 23 people have died in ICE custody since October…
Yeah, it’s not the BIGGEST deal in the world.
But for our family it is! Well, for ME it is.
Public Schools Are Crucial To Democracy
You see, I’ve spent more than two decades and several books writing about education as it intersects with power and privilege. I’ve been a passionate exponent of public education and its vital role in our society, even as I’ve been clear-eyed about its flaws.
“Our democracy sprouts in the nursery of public schools — where students grapple together with our messy history and learn to negotiate differences of race, class, gender and sexual orientation.” — that was me spouting off in the New York Times in 2022.
“Without public education delivered as a public good, the asylum seeker in detention, the teenager in jail, not to mention millions of children growing up in poverty, will have no realistic way to get the instruction they need to participate in democracy or support themselves.
And students of privilege will stay confined in their bubbles. Americans will lose the most powerful social innovation that helps us construct a common reality and try, imperfectly, to understand one another.”
I still believe those words! And this vision has never been so at risk. Not only is Trump seeking to dismantle the federal Department of Education but he’s passed a federal school voucher program, designed to direct tax dollars to private schools and homeschooling families. This layers on top of 30 states which have at least one private school choice program, which subsidize private schools with public dollars.
Throughout the country, nine out of ten students still attend public schools. But that percentage is trending down in certain states and cities (like here in NYC—it’s 4 in 5). And public schools are also dealing with a downturn in enrollment since the pandemic, on top of a demographic shift that’s only just begun, and may be accelerated by this administration’s war on immigrants. Rising inequality, in turn, means that more public schools are struggling to serve students in poverty.
How can I justify personally bailing out of this system that so needs engaged, committed parents with resources to champion it and keep it going?
It’s not about me. It’s about my kid
I mean, the answer’s simple in the end. It’s not about me, my moral purity or my record of public statements. It’s about my kid and trying to do what's best for her. She’s clearly academically gifted, like her big sibling. And she’s been telling us that she’s bored.
The public school on our corner has a language immersion program. From K through 3rd, students alternate full days in English and in French. That has been an amazing way to keep her intellectually engaged and expose her to other cultures. (I wrote about the other benefits of bilingual education long ago).
But in fourth the school starts worrying more about test scores, or perhaps it’s a staff and class size issue, or both; they drop down to one short period of French a day. So here we are.
She’s begging us to do real science in a real lab. She is reading during class time. She loves her teacher, who is sweet and friendly; we’ve talked to her about giving E. extra work, but it hasn’t happened, whether because of lack of resources, time or support.
Middle school is when children’s engagement in school typically starts to drop. Social problems and risky behaviors grow. I am so lucky to have a kid who loves to learn and would do fine anywhere she goes, but she deserves to be challenged too, and to have an experience that’s more than fine.
I faced a similar dilemma with our older kid entering 5th grade, and we made an out-of-the-box choice: a charter school that promised differentiation and academic rigor and was 98% students of color. It was rigorous, with thoughtful, multicultural curricula, and passionate if green teachers who took responsibility for each child’s growth, including my high-scoring kid. Socially-emotionally, not so great. In fairness I think it would have been a tough time no matter what coming out of the pandemic. But in any case, in the middle of our second year there, that campus abruptly announced its closure.
L. soon after tested into one of the city’s competitive public schools, and it’s been a great fit. We’re thrilled. It’s like winning the lottery. I definitely want my younger kid to try to get in as well, but that’s still a couple of years away and there’s no guarantees.
The scarcity of options for academically adept middle school students in New York City is well known. There was an accelerated program introduced recently at a local K-8 public school, which we went to visit, but it’s being ended just as quickly as it started. The mayor has talked about phasing out gifted programs altogether in the early grades. I understand why; L. was in one from first through third and it was both underwhelming and also extremely segregated.
What finally gave me the permission structure to give private school a look was a comment by a good friend of mine who is brilliant and identifies as neurodivergent and whose son is autistic. They told me, “You know, being gifted is also a kind of neurodivergence.” I have been doing a lot of reporting recently on kids in special education. So many struggle mightily to get their needs met. As much as I believe in public school as a bulwark of democracy, I also believe every child deserves an individualized education plan, and our system isn’t currently set up for that.
Nor is the dilemma of privilege and raising my kids in a bubble necessarily solved by staying in public. What I’ve found over two decades of living in the city is that there are no easy answers or shortcuts here. Most New York City public schools are as segregated as New York City neighborhoods, which is to say, very. As it turns out, the private school we are considering boasts of 41% students of color. The neighborhood public school we are leaving is 35% students of color.
Meanwhile, the few public schools that draw students from all over the city, with high-quality programs and exemplary inclusion, take finagling and luck to get into. Integration is an exception to the norm. This is a policy choice and it could be rectified with design and intention. In fact, bilingual education programs are known for producing more integrated schools. So are magnet programs where students can pursue their learning interests.
It’s not that I don’t support public school—I do. I’ve had two kids in public schools for a combined 15 years at this point, and I anticipate more great years to come.
It’s that I’m not determined to make my kid a martyr to my ideals. When push comes to shove, I'd rather be a hypocrite than keep her stuck in a situation when I know we could at least try to do something different. The categorical imperative is breaking down at the level of my individual family, as it so often does.
After the paywall, some more vulnerable thoughts about class, privilege, and what we’re giving up to choose private school—plus how much it costs and how we’re paying for it.
Links
Loved talking with my old colleague Elise Hu for her new parenting podcast “Raising Us” . Wish I’d known it was video so I didn’t sign on with wet hair and no makeup.
