I was chatting with an acquaintance from out of town about weather, sports teams, and kids when talk turned to my occupation. “You’re a teacher!” he said. “Well, I’m glad we have some good people educating our children.” I was taken aback and stumbled for a response, saying, “I do my best.” I was troubled by his perception of public educators, an attitude that feels more common since the tumultuous days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before, when I told people I was a high school teacher, they would ask how I dealt with teenagers’ unpredictable attitudes; now, they ask about bizarre curricula, banned books, and strange trends they’ve heard about through the news or TikTok. The public schools they imagine don’t sound much like the one I inhabit every day.
The teachers I know aren’t operatives in an indoctrination machine. They are dedicated professionals who worry about the mental health of our teenagers and struggle to engage them in sustained thought in an age of distraction. When I show up and welcome kids into my classroom, propaganda is the last thing on my mind. I’m worried about everything else: Are their phones turned off and put away? Do they know how to use a coordinating conjunction? Can they write a specific, defensible, insightful thesis? Why do they look like they’ve been crying? How is their mom recovering from surgery?
Public schools, of course, have challenges to address, and any institution the size of our national educational system is bound to have blind spots, loopholes, and gaps in service. There are real inequities in how schools are funded and resourced. Yet there is also a promise in our public education system that is often overlooked: every child in America is required to show up at school, and every school is required to educate the children who show up at their door. This radical idea is now taken for granted.
In a 2022 essay in the New York Times, author Anya Kamenetz notes that universal compulsory education was a revolutionary concept when it took hold in the mid-nineteenth century. It spread thanks in large part to one person: Horace Mann. Kamenetz writes about how Mann “crossed the state on horseback to visit every schoolhouse, finding mostly neglected, drafty old wrecks.” His passion for public education stemmed from a commitment to educating children so they could positively participate in a democratic society. Kamenetz writes, “An essential part of Mann’s vision was that public schools should be for everyone and that children of different class backgrounds should learn together.” That’s one of the beautiful things about public schools—no matter who you are, or what strengths or challenges you have, you’ll have a spot in a classroom with a teacher who is obligated to do their best to help you develop intellectually, emotionally, and socially. Every kid, every day.
Every morning on my drive to work, I pass a private Christian school that touts the classical education it offers. I’m glad we have options for folks who want an alternative to public education, and it’s wonderful that some people, who have the financial capacity to send their kids there, are able to do so, but the model isn’t scalable for everyone. Homeschooling, too, is a terrific option for those with the time and ability to curate their children’s lives, but this model doesn’t work for the myriad families who lack such resources.
In my own hallways, I have the privilege of watching students mature over four years, transforming from squirrelly ninth graders to self-assured seniors. I see them build skills and find their passions while moving through milestones like driving themselves to work and choosing the college they hope to attend. On most Thursdays, I sit in a circle with students from an Advanced Placement English course who have spent significant time analyzing a short story, dissecting its themes, symbolism, and characterization. They’ve crafted thoughtful questions to engage others, and when the discussion begins, I scribble notes and listen attentively. One student poses a question and it bounces around; one offers textual support, another poses a follow-up; comments, quotes, and further ideas build for an hour. It’s a beautiful process to watch: a group of motivated, skilled adolescents puzzling over a rich text.
When the bell rings, my seniors file out and a group of energized ninth graders mills in. The boys shove, prod, poke, and banter with bathroom humor. Today we’re reading “Fifteen” by William Stafford, and most students struggle to identify a theme. Someone throws out an interpretation that appears to miss the point: “The poem is about how it’s wrong to steal a motorcycle.” I have my work cut out for me—how to get this group of fifteen-year-olds to notice the subtleties of imagery, refrain, metaphor, and the poet’s purpose. In this single classroom, some students have the skills and maturity required for grade ten, while others struggle to decode words fluently. This is the beauty and challenge of public education. My task is to join with their families, learning specialists, educational assistants, and other teachers to help each student make strides with their reading, writing, and speaking skills. This experience, I fear, often gets lost in the noise surrounding public education.
In 2021, billboards started cropping up around my community before the May school board election proclaiming “Save Our Schools” in bold red, white, and blue color schemes. Four candidates’ names were splashed across the signs along every road in our small Willamette Valley town. COVID had altered the landscape of education, and people were fuming over vaccine restrictions, book challenges, and cultural issues. In prior years, the school board had received minimal attention, and mostly carried on with the relatively tedious and unglamorous job of approving calendars and adopting budgets. But these four candidates weren’t interested in quiet administration. When they won, they fired our superintendent without cause, destabilizing the entire system: educators and administrators left, followed by students. Some seventy teachers departed the district in a span of three years, leaving knowledge gaps and job vacancies. The school board’s actions during this time were eventually ruled unconstitutional by a Yamhill County circuit judge, and the board members were required to pay for violating meeting rules during their tenure.
New board members were elected in 2023, and the focus returned to helping students and educators succeed. The school district seemed to be stabilizing until a shocking revelation at a May school board meeting: we were millions of dollars in debt. The district had just a few weeks to adopt a budget with $12 million in cuts. Today, the superintendent is on medical leave, and a former superintendent is working—for free—to stabilize the district and chart a course forward. At best, the district will need to cut significant numbers of teachers and staff, and teachers will be asked to take furlough days—when schools are shuttered and paychecks shrink. For a school district that has experienced massive upheaval, this is one more jarring disruption for students and staff.
After the pandemic, our challenges are stark: Children continue to display prominent learning gaps, and the number of chronically absent students has doubled. In April 2024,
Natalie Pate reported in a story for Oregon Public Broadcasting that 38 percent of students in Oregon were identified as chronically absent during the 2022–23 school year, meaning they missed eighteen or more days of school—12 percentage points higher than the national average. Additionally, adolescents are experiencing mental health issues at an alarming rate. These challenges need immediate and sustained attention from policy-makers, administrators, and educators. We need to focus on the legitimate challenges in front of students, instead of getting distracted by politicized, perceived problems.
When folks who are not embedded or engaged in the public school’s mission take over and make decisions, it can be problematic for kids, educators, and families. The solution to the problems our schools face is not to burn down the system, but to provide rich opportunities for kids to learn, and to support teachers who are doing the complex work of educating children: every kid, every day.
Mark Putney is an educator. His writing has appeared in Oregon Humanities, Sport Literate, Alternating Current, Fatherly, the Oregon English Journal, and the Ruminate blog. He lives in the Willamette Valley with his wife and two sons.
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