Nation Needs More Thoughtful Leadership On Public Education

Recently, I attended the 90th birthday party for Richard W. “Dick” Riley, a former two-term governor of South Carolina and later the U.S. secretary of education in President Bill Clinton’s cabinet. I had the honor of working at the U.S. Department of Education under Secretary Riley, and I was delighted to be among a large recent gathering of former colleagues who also worked for Dick Riley, held in Greenville, SC, to celebrate his birthday and our collective service under the leadership of such a great man.

Dick Riley holds a remarkable legacy of leadership in South Carolina and across our nation for his statesmanship and persistence in advancing education policies that have strengthened opportunities for millions of children in our public schools.

I call attention to the education leadership of Dick Riley because of its stark contrast with today’s so-called national leadership in education. Dick Riley and other true leaders consistently demonstrated a thoughtful and comprehensive vision for improving and strengthening public education.

The serious type of leadership that Dick Riley has provided for education stands like a mountain next to today’s petty, so-called leadership that spends a great deal of their time making bitter criticisms of our public schools and agitating confrontations between parents and their local school systems. This so-called leadership is fueling hostile discourse across our country, and it prevents the development of healthy and badly needed school-and-community relationships.

Complex and sensitive issues around public schools are not new. I believe our greater success as a nation in addressing the challenging issues in public education is through competent, thoughtful, and respectful dialogue — always with recognition of the need for strong relationships among parents, students, teachers, and administrators.

Unfortunately, public education has often been ripe for exploitation by political opportunists with no long-term vision for healthy public schools. Sadly, we are currently seeing this style of so-called education leadership on full display across the nation. Political exploitation disguised as concern for parents’ interests only seeks to agitate racial fears among certain sections of the electorate.

From where I sit as the president of the Southern Education Foundation, these politically focused attacks on public schools are the most damaging to the education opportunities for Black and poor children, particularly in the southern states but also throughout the nation.

Black children attend under-resourced schools in far greater numbers than all other students in public education. These under-resourced conditions include fewer and fewer well-prepared teachers and administrators who can serve Black students. Many educators are being driven out of the profession by the stress from the ongoing assault on public schools. Black children are more likely to have their education disrupted by community burdens or social determinants such as home instability, disparity in access to technology, health disparities, and crime rates, and this misguided and destructive political exploitation of parents’ concerns is particularly harmful to the school systems that largely educate Black children.

The attacks on public schools have become an incredible distraction from far more meaningful conversations and efforts to improve public education for our students most in need.

For education leaders like Dick Riley, it was understood that the nation required specific policies and strategies to alleviate the continuing inequities in our society and upgrade the public education system. The goal was to truly prepare all young people for full participation as citizens of our great country.

Any true national leadership today on public education must include a recognition of our country’s unfinished work in fulfilling our commitment to the rule of law as set by the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The opportunity for most Black students to have full and equal access to a high-quality public education rests in a nationwide commitment to the goals of Brown nearly 70 years ago. There are still far too many vestiges of the longstanding policies of segregation and discrimination that have continuing and damaging effects today for the education of Black children in public schools — and still must be addressed.

Today’s so-called leadership in education, on the other hand, stresses the banning of books and is creating tension between parents and teachers. This so-called leadership has no recognition of or interest in addressing the continuing racial inequities in public education. This so-called education leadership thrives on fear and divisiveness built on the exploitation of parental and community interests in our public schools. It is clearly not in the interest of these so-called leaders to participate in real, thoughtful and mature dialogue on improving public schools for all children.

The political sideshows around our public schools are consuming an incredible amount of energy that could be so much better dedicated to elevated dialogue around school improvement. This elevated dialogue includes effective parental engagement, particularly at the community level.

This important component of community building is nearly impossible to achieve, however, as the assault on schools and teachers advocated by some education-leader wannabes continues. As we continue to deal with the academic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic — including the huge disparities in learning loss for Black and poor children — now is the time to reject these harmful, politically-fueled distractions and support more mature leadership on the critical matters involving our public schools.

Mr. Pierce is the president and CEO of the Southern Education Foundation, a 155-year-old nonpartisan organization based in Atlanta that works to improve education in the South, with an emphasis on students of color and students from low-income families.