Other Questions about Tacoma Public Schools

Do Tacoma schools focus on preparing students for employment?

This idea appears in the District documents (such as those produced in the Get Smart Tacoma process). Yet, what economy do we have in mind? The rules of the economy tend to reward the owners and financial managers, and not the workers. Average worker purchasing power has been stagnant for several decades, and the era of employer-based health care plans and defined pension benefits seems to be coming to an end. Can Tacoma schools ignore all of this and define its education goals in terms used by today’s local business leaders?

At a Board meeting (Dec. 6, 2007) a principal spoke with approval about the Heritage Foundation’s “No Excuses Schools” program. It sounds good—who doesn’t want high standards? And, the promise is this: what can make a school good is simply having leaders and teachers demand high standards. As you might guess, that position means they are supporters of “No Child Left Behind.” But beware, the attraction to the idea might feel good but relies on some dubious assumptions, which are described here. And just this year Heritage admitted that NCLB has not worked, and may have hurt education in several ways. Their answer: more privatization, get the national government out of education as much as possible.