Compulsory education laws have been around since 1852, when Massachusetts became the first state to pass a bill that required public school attendance. These laws were originally put in place to improve literacy rates but also to discourage widespread child labor practices of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
I think it’s time to get rid of compulsory education laws, as they read today, especially as they apply to black, brown, and poor kids who attend under-performing schools at a much greater rate than their white counterparts. I wonder how many of those kids would choose another path to learning, if given the opportunity. The sad part of this story is that parents are often hunted down by truancy officers and threatened with legal action if they don’t promise to send their kids to these types of schools. This type of action is frightening to parents, especially to those undocumented. In a way, it’s a form of 21st century slavery, where primarily white legislators and white school boards enact laws to force kids who look different than them to attend schools they wouldn’t send their own kids to. Or, worse yet, black and brown legislators and school board members vote to keep bad schools open while forcing kids who look just like them, mainly poor kids, to attend these schools. What sense does it make to force kids and their families to tolerate attending a toxic school, just because the state says they must attend?
Maybe we should give those families the option of not sending their kids to sucky campuses. Maybe we should give this option to all young learners and their families, not just those assigned to low-performing schools. And then let’s see how the chips fall. How many campuses would close because kids and families just wouldn’t attend them? How many teachers would lose their jobs because kids and families knew they were bad instructors? How much money would shift to run learning programs that helped kids and families meet their learning goals, instead of sending money to bad campuses year after year?
The new compulsory education laws could expect every learner to have their own learning plan, and that learning plan would provide evidence that the learner would meet certain reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development goals. These plans could include places called school, but maybe not. The expectation would be that every kid and family had to be responsible for their own learning, with support of course, but where that learning occurred was totally up to the young learner and their support system.
Maybe money would flow better based on these individual learning plans, instead of depending on these units called schools as the building blocks to district budgets. Maybe better decisions would be made when it came to deciding whether black, brown, and poor kids were on track to build their reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development skills if learning plans became the lawmakers’ expectation of equity and excellence when it came to children’s’ learning.
When I was a region superintendent in Houston, Texas, we used to visit classrooms daily. The principal, the executive principal (who was the principal’s boss,) and I would visit three classrooms per school and rate the setting on alignment (was what was being taught as part of the district curriculum?), rigor (was what was being taught at a high learning level?), and engagement (were the learners part of the learning or were they just bystanders doing nothing more than watching the teacher?). We compiled evidence to share with the principal and their teachers about how their school demonstrated excellence or not. What that data showed was that in all schools at least 33% of visited classrooms failed to present the proper alignment, rigor, and engagement necessary for quality learning to occur. Another 33% of the classrooms failed in at least one of the three categories inspected. And this data was across 60 schools, not just our under-performing campuses.
When I was walking into these classrooms, I saw heads on the desk and other types of off-task behavior. I saw teachers teaching, but students not learning. I would guess between 40-50% of all classroom students were not receiving aligned instruction or rigorous and engaged learning. Too many students’ eyes pleaded with me “Please take me with you.” But I went ahead and walked out the door, anxious to attend my next appointment. Most teachers and principals kept their jobs. And most, if not all, of these schools remained open and continue to be open today.
It’s time for a new compulsory education law. Maybe we rename it a compulsory learning law, so everyone understands what the end game is when it comes to our kids and their families.
A Better Path to Learning 
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