My Child Won't Be Left Behind

I have been thinking this week about an interview I recently heard with Barack Obama. When asked why his daughters didn't go to a DC public school, and in fact, go to a very elite private school, he was unapologetic. The DC public schools are deplorable and he doesn't want his children there. He also made it clear that they are not ok for any child and he would support changes to improve the schools for all children, but for his children, the solution was clear. They're not going there.

Anna changed high schools this fall and although I supported it personally, I struggled with it politically. I worried that I was giving up on my idea of diversity and exposure and also giving up on the assurance that my strong base of parenting - the countless hours reading picture books and baking and going to the park and the museum - could shepard my child through a less than perfect school environment.

I still agree with that idea. But what I have found for my child at the emotional state that she was in, is that it was harmful for her. And I needed to find her a safer place and did.

Yesterday I visited the new high school to bring her some allergy medicine and as I sat in the nurse's office I observed the kids in the hall outside the office and nurse's station. And the thought came to my head that, these are children who went to the zoo with their parents, not with their daycare or school with its carefully designed curriculum to enrich them in ways that their parents cannot do.

I work with impoverished parents every day and I do not mean this as a criticism at all. I know that there are issues much bigger to survival and that trips to the zoo are not at the top of the list when you are homeless or nearly homeless, when you are addicted to drugs, or have mental health problems. I recently met with a woman not dissimilar from me really except that she had found herself homeless and in charge of her daughter with no money or job. As I sat with her I became aware that her purse was stuffed full of framed family photos. She must have taken them off the wall of the house and put them in her purse. I nearly wept.

I am grateful that we have policy makers and educators who know enough about child development to know that they need enriching experiences, but there is a difference between being read to by a volunteer at your school and being read to by your mom. There just is.

I do think it is possible to remain nonjudgmental and loving and support humanity as a whole while at the same time not sacrificing my kid for the cause. I can't say it as well as President Obama, but in my head it sounds like, I want my kids to be with kids who haven't just been to the zoo, but their parents took them to the zoo.