I’d guess only the white people even want the 1950s back, and many white people would opt out, given the choice. June will not be helping the Beaver with his homework after vacuuming in her heels and pearls. Ward won’t be pontificating at the dinner table before firmly telling Beaver that his schoolwork comes before having fun in the park.

Why this time travel post? Because teachers — once again, you have been set up. Parents, once again, you have been set up. And we are all getting so used to these set-ups that we just keep going… and going… and going. More laptops! More shields! More sanitizer! More ventilation! Not yet? Then when? What do you mean you can’t …?!?”

“What do you mean you can’t …?!?”

“Well, at least I can open the windows…” teachers say, as they throw up their hands. Those who can open the windows anyway. They go online and find plans like this: https://thrivedirectcare.com/thesimplepathtohealth/2020/8/1/covid-care-diy-home-negative-pressure-room-for-under-25. Others toss up their hands and try to figure out how to duck and cover when there’s no place to duck and nothing to use for cover.

“What do you mean you can’t …?!?”

Parents demand that teachers make the unworkable work — or worse, don’t demand anything because they can see their kids are falling behind and they have given up any sense that the playing field ought to be fair. Not enough experience with laptops and internet connectivity problems? No way to stay home because the job pays the rent and the job can’t be done from a nice, quiet bedroom? No way to explain problems to a boss, nothing anyway that won’t end with another version of unemployment, or at least a sharp rebuke:

“What do you mean you can’t …?!?”

Desperate parents are pointing fingers at teachers for policies they did not make and cannot change, watching as their children fall behind. Desperate teachers are pointing fingers at parents, as they face evaluations based on the behavior and learning — IN SOME PLACES, THE STANDARDIZED TEST RESULTS — of children who are sometimes not even logging in to hybrid or online classes.

Is anyone in authority stepping in to own the fact that we have been operating with a discriminatory system of education for — not merely for decades — but forever? Yes, certain principals and school boards have been absolutely stellar in their support of parents and teachers during 2020. I don’t want to diminish the extraordinary support efforts by those administrators.

But let’s step back from this picture. Why are we getting such disparate results from online and hybrid learning?

Because the differences are huge — and they are growing. Online learning IS working for many students. But I know from social media posts that online learning works better for some students than others. It works for kids with parents who can stay home to help manage assignments and devices, especially when those kids are comfortable with their devices. It works for families who can easily afford to pay for sitters during this time. It works for students who are determined to go to college — when those students have the connectivity and support they need. Peer pressure helps to make online learning work. The more kids managing to meet expectations, the more kids believe they ought to be meeting expectations. It works in districts that can afford to hire new staff and pay for full-time substitutes in a crisis — since part-time subs have become thin on the ground. Especially for hybrid learning, extra staff can make or break how well this option works for students with special needs and language challenges. The alternative may be one teacher trying to teach 30 students online and in person all at once while entirely on his/her own.

I want to put our PROPERTY-TAX-BASED SCHOOL FUNDING out front and center today. Somehow, the big school funding cheat IS STILL GETTING IGNORED. Government grants are used to even out the funding picture, but those grants are capricious and come with strings attached and time limits. My one experience with a SIG grant led to the mandatory loss of the best principal I ever knew.

The U.S. school funding system ensures a wide disparity in funding per student — one favoring kids in areas where the homes have manicured lawns and oodles of expensive decorations displayed during the holidays, some put up by companies that climb the ladders for people who are busy or afraid of heights. In those neighborhoods, a modern June who can afford a nanny may be working at home on her MacBook Pro, cashmere cardigan draped over her shoulders as she takes a coffee break to help the kids.

Here are numbers worth chewing on in these tumultuous times:

Percent of workers with the ability to work from home by income percentile

Income percentile	Percent
Bottom 25	6.6%
25-50	15.5%
50-75	31.7%
Top 25	55.5%

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/15/business/economy/coronavirus-worker-risk.html — See this chart for more details to explain the above chart.

The family of the fifties may be gone. But those moms and dads at home are an immense advantage for online and hybrid learners — and socioeconomic status has a great deal to do with who is at home and who cannot be at home. This game’s fixed. Damn, that fix has been in for as long as I remember. It’s why my long ago childhood high school in South Tacoma had no calculus class. It’s why the district I retired from has no calculus class. But if you want calculus — and other advanced high school mathematics — come to where I now live.

From the Glenbrook North website under the Honors category:

AP Calculus AB 183 or AP Calculus BC 183 and/or AP Statistics 183 and/or AP Computer Science or AP Computer Science Principles

AP Statistics 183 and/or Advanced Topics 173 (must have completed BC Calculus) and/or AP Computer Science or AP Computer Science Principles

Eduhonesty: Bits and pieces of the issues splashed across the internet — teachers, parents, schools, tech budgets, PPE demands, ventilation problems that keep schools closed, Zoom and Google rooms — factor into the evolving chapter of 2020, a year of learning haves and have-nots.

But the REAL problem is and always has been a staggering ability to ignore THE SHEER POWER of financial funding differences — even in 2020. It’s the $$$. It has always been the money. And we won’t manage to make any serious dent in the achievement gap until we acknowledge this truth. That income in the chart above? It opens doorways. It allows people to buy expensive homes in districts with ample funding for schools, homes often filled with laptops, software, books, and other pricey educational advantages.

For the moment, I am going to ignore the racial schism that is part of the funding picture — other than to say that I believe property-tax-based school funding is being used with great success to bypass Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. That’s too nuclear an issue to come at sideways in a sound bite, though. Funding’s contribution to de facto segregation deserves its own post.

This post is a plea not to point fingers at one another as we struggle to make schooling work this year. Finger pointing allows the people responsible for the UNFAIR system of U.S. property-tax-based school funding to continue distracting us all. I have gotten lost more than once as I wrote this post, wanting to attack the lack of technology in academically-disadvantaged districts. But why is that tech broken or missing?

IT’S THE MONEY. Money may not be the root of all evil, but money is certainly the source of all goods and services in a classroom. Money HEAVILY influences the fact that over 95% of the kids where I live go on to college, while almost half the kids in that district from which I retired drop out of high school.

As long as we continue to distribute funds as we always have, ignoring socioeconomic forces and giving the haves MORE money than the have-nots, not much can be expected to change. I’d call the achievement gap indestructible with a set-up like that. My girlfriend and I laughed when our children’s school district asked the PTO to stop raising money because they had enough money and they didn’t know how to spend more. It seemed funny at the time. I had just begun teaching back then.

It doesn’t seem even a little bit funny now.

Step back, reader. Step back and think about this picture. Follow the money. Parent, teacher, taxpayer, it doesn’t matter. You have been set-up. We have all been set up.

This system, was never intended to be fair. Politicians moved into America’s best school districts or sent their children to private schools. They had no incentive to change a system that favored them. Our schools are like the electoral college: Winners don’t tamper with systems that reward them. Politicians never seem to make substantive changes to the U.S. educational funding system — which just “incidentally” tends to put the best schools exactly where they live.