It's all about charter schools....

When something is "public," we always seem to think that it will be taken care of. We don't tread lightly on the NYC Public Parks bball courts. We figure we can jump in dirty at the public pool. Whereas we'd probably tiptoe around the country club, and take showers before swimming, because somehow we feel that we are having a personal impact on someone. At the public facility, we figure that there will be someone to clean up after us, someone to repaint or repair. Maybe it's the Tragedy of the Commons.
My parents both knew better. My mom saw that the public schools system only can function and thrive if individual people pour their heart and energy into making it great. Passionate teachers, dedicated volunteers, and loving parents have to join the administration and lead for success in the schools. She was absolutely right. Why are so many public schools failing? Because we assume that like the courts and the pools, there is always money and people that will come after us, so we can just kindof shit on the place.
The hardest thing to change is culture, and perhaps this issue is indicative of a deep-seated cultural phenomena that will not be changed. Perhaps the best course of action is to accept the cultural truth, that people will only care about something when it feels personal, individual, exclusive to some sort of community or group. Therefore, we should support charter schools, and support the shift to making all schools in the nation charters, so that people can feel this sense of inclusion, community, and pertinence.
There are some huge problems with this. One, charter schools can be selective in admissions, so immediately the public schools are left with a disproportionate educational burden, as it takes more time and resources to teach the "difficult" students. Two, not everyone can afford to commute to a different part of town, so the richer kids or more organized families will end up at the charter schools, leaving the public schools with a more challenging demographic. Basically, we are taking the smart, rich, and privileged out of the public schools and along with them taking away the per-pupil funding, and leaving the public schools to rot with the already nationally marginalized demographic.
Yes, our public schools are having trouble all over. But ditching them, and running away to the suburbs with the lunch money is not a good solution. We must support our public schools, in fact all of our public institutions, and think of them as ours, as personal, and as something that we have to work for and fight for.