Asked to solve students' social, psychological and health needs, schools are neglecting their academic mission, writes Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at Parents Defending Education, in RealClearEducation. "Too many schools have become one-stop social services hubs that also teach a little reading and math on the side."
She wonders if we should use the word “school” to describe "institutions that are also expected (or required!) to provide breakfast, lunch and snack, host immunization clinics, offer wrap-around health services, provide counseling, address declining mental health, disrupt the 'school to prison pipeline,' supervise toothbrushing, teach financial literacy and host drag queen story hour."
More students are "below basic" in math and and reading than 30 years ago, Sanzi notes. Maybe schools need to focus on teaching academic subjects.
Sanzi wants a debate on whether school funds and teachers' time should be spent on "social emotional learning" programs, identifying students' "trauma" and celebrating LGBTQ identities.
School officials increasingly have decided to teach students the “correct” perspectives on politics and social issues, she writes. "It is not uncommon to see elementary-aged children marching around outside of their school holding signs they made about climate change, Black Lives Matter, and immigration."
Public school students are a "captive audience," she writes. However, with the help of expanding choice options, more parents are choosing to try alternatives that better match their values and priorities. If pubic schools are going to retain students and the funding that comes with them, they'll have to offer families more than free food and flu shots.
Schools are operated on what Edward L. Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer found for politics in their model of "The Curley Effect", ----["in which inefficient redistributive policies are sought not by interest groups protecting their rents, but by incumbent politicians trying to shape the electorate through emigration of their opponents or reinforcement of class identities. The model sheds light on ethnic politics in the United States and abroad, as well as on class politics in many countries including Britain."]
Those parents who see value of real learning will emigrate out, while still paying school tax, while those supposedly helped by the school as social services hub will remain trapped in the system.