Top 15 Tim DeRoche Quotes

Perhaps, one day, the public school system will launch a counter-reformation to address some of the core problems that have prevented it from fulfilling its noble purpose. But for now, the vested powers of the educational establishment, much like the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, have chosen to take a purely defensive position. Heretics who call for reform are labeled segregationists, book banners, or at the very least, "divisive."

American public schools were once explicitly Christian and even Protestant. I would argue that, until recently, they were implicitly Christian while also offering a heavy dose of moderate liberalism, the dominant American civil religion of the last century. But as our politics have fractured, this traditional approach to education has given way in many schools. What’s been sucked into the void has differed from place to place: sometimes a reactionary conservatism, and sometimes a radical progressive ideology that seeks to destroy much of what we’ve inherited from prior generations.

District bureaucrats will insist that these maps are necessary to preserve the neighborhood school. But it’s worth remembering that we all shop at neighborhood grocery stores, and we don’t need exclusionary government maps to do it.

With school access governed by government-drawn maps, families bid up the prices of homes within the coveted zone. As a result, the best schools are almost always located in the areas with the most expensive homes. A home within the zone will often cost $200,000 or more than an equivalent home just outside it. This is the real cost of a supposedly "free" public education.

Public education in our country has long relied on certain foundational myths. Many—perhaps most—of us have largely accepted these myths as articles of faith. Now, a handful of journalists and activist parents are exposing the often-troubling realities.

It’s clear that our public education system is not "available to all on equal terms." As a country, we desperately need to repair our social contract. One vital way to do that is to restore the promise of public education as a system of common schools that are truly open to all American children.

So when a charter school is found to be cherry-picking its students, there are consequences. Local ACLU chapters, including Southern California and Arizona, have published reports detailing how charter schools have either broken the law or violated its spirit…But the rest of the public schools are held to a very low legal standard of access and face very little scrutiny of their enrollment practices.

It’s commonplace for Americans of all races and income levels to use a false address to get into a school that they aren’t zoned for. School districts then sometimes hire private eyes to spy on kids and even put parents in jail for crossing the lines.

Historically, the most coveted public schools in America use government-drawn maps to discriminate against students who live in "less desirable" parts of town.

The public schools are not as inclusive as we typically assume them to be, and they often turn children away for arbitrary or discriminatory reasons, violating the foundational promise of common schools that are open to all children.

The core belief driving our work is so simple that it might sound radical. Even the best and most coveted public schools should be open and accessible to all families.

The public school system is a foundational part of our social contract. But our laws and policies ensure that the most coveted public schools are only accessible to the select few who have the resources to play the game. We have to do better to fulfill Justice Warren’s promise.

Writing in the New Yorker, Calvin Tompkins once suggested that stories by Belloc and others are not appropriate for children and are really meant for the grown-ups. To test his hypothesis, I suggest reading one of these classics aloud to a seven-year-old. In my experience, the child very quickly understands that she’s being told a sophisticated joke, and the butt of the joke is the parent who is constantly urging her toward upright behavior. I want to suggest that Gothic nonsense should be a part of every child’s upbringing.

[Cautionary verse] is a genre that has receded from view in recent years, but it’s hiding in the shadows, ready to pop out and horrify the stultified masses. Yet it will likely delight anyone who believes that children’s literature should be more than just morality tales dressed up with colorful pictures. Perhaps poems like these can help embolden the humorists of tomorrow. The way things are going, we’re likely to need them.

How are children assigned to schools? By their address. Our public schools are segregated because of the lines that are drawn, showing who gets into good public schools and who gets kept out. These lines often exclude many middle-class and lower-income families, especially immigrants and minorities.