About Public Schools

Quaker schools have been quietly thriving throughout the country for a number of years, and for parents who find that traditional public and private schools do not provide the environment they want for their children, Quaker schools are an ideal choice. From six Quaker schools in California to eight in New York, and even the one in DC where President Obama's daughters attend, these campuses challenge traditional education's standard teaching methods.

While the overtly Quaker schools today are all private, there may be a future movement wherein charter schools become quietly inspired by Quaker philosophies - minus the religious components.

What is Quakerism?

A Quaker education is one that focuses on the development of the individual student, and the school environment is meant to cultivate "a strong sense of social understanding, skills to deal with adversity, tolerance and respect for others, and a strong sense of self-worth so that [students] have the power needed to succeed," according to a graduate of a Quaker school quoted by Friends Council on Education.

A Quaker education focuses on the core values of Quakerism, which are called testimonies:

• Peace
• Equality
• Simplicity
• Integrity
• Community
• Service

The first Quaker school in America, the William Penn Charter School, was originally opened in 1689 as a public school, opening its doors to all students of all socioeconomic means. In fact, Penn Charter was one of the first schools to offer financial aid for its students and teach females and students of all racial

Public school gardens have been sprouting across the country, especially in California, which is the home state of culinary pioneer and “slow food” spokeswoman Alice Waters. As a champion of local agriculture, Waters inspired one of the first school gardens in Berkeley, California, and many public school campuses have followed in these green footsteps.

However, a fierce debate over the merits of public school gardens has erupted following the Atlantic’s piece by Caitlin Flanagan that criticizes the practice of devoting class time in public schools to the cultivation of school gardens. Flanagan argues that by allowing students to spend school hours working in a garden, we do them a grave disservice. She reminds her readers that California's public school system fails to keep one out of five high school students from dropping out prior to graduating and that the achievement gap between African-American and Latino students and their white and Asian peers persists year after year. When a state's public school system is failing to meet the academic needs of its students, it should not be spending time and resources on a luxury like a school garden, argues Flanagan.

However, Flanagan's anti-garden polemic has not been taken lightly by those who count themselves as advocates of school gardens. Flanagan's piece sparked responses from those on both sides of the debate, forcing parents and teachers to clarify their positions on this now controversial topic.

This video looks at the benefits of school gardens.

For the last several decades, public school cafeterias have been exemplified by reheated chicken nuggets, French fries, hamburgers, “mystery meat,” and a bevy of unhealthy processed foods. Thankfully, some public school students are happily making the switch to fresh foods, making processed foods on campus a phenomenon of the past.

Pilot Program in Illinois Turns Children into Fans of Fruits and Vegetables

At East Elementary School in Alton, Illinois, students sample a different fruit or vegetable every day during designated snack time. The Chicago Tribune reports that thanks to a grant from the Produce for Better Health Foundation, which administers funds distributed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, East Elementary School teachers have the opportunity to offer their students a different fruit or vegetable every day.

The program has a few basic guidelines: the food of the day is announced over the school’s public address system. The food cannot be served at breakfast or lunch. Most importantly, the produce must be fresh and in its whole state, which means it cannot come cooked in a processed “cup,” or in the form of a juice or smoothie. The grant money cannot be used to buy dips or salsas to go with the produce.

In other words, the program is quite simple: elementary school students sample different fruits or vegetables, which they may not have previously tried, in pure, unadorned states.

While the practice is simple, the goals of the program are large. According to

Chicken nuggets, pizza, hamburgers, and iceberg lettuce salads: these nutritionally-questionable food choices are common fare on public school lunch menus. However, beyond the question of healthy food options is a much scarier prospect: are school lunches even safe for our children to consume?

The potential prevalence of E. Coli in school lunches has already been scrutinized, but there are more nasty shocks in store for parents and public school students. In fact, the standards governing the preparation and food content of school lunches fall short of minimums imposed upon even fast-food restaurants, such as KFC and McDonalds!

Meaty Treats: The USDA’s Low-Quality Provisions

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) oversees the school lunch program countrywide. Although there are strict guidelines in place, a significant percentage of the millions of pounds of meat consumed by children in the school cafeteria continually fail to meet quality standards imposed by fast-food outlets.

No parent would feed their child meat only fit for pet food or compost, yet meat from “old birds” is exactly what children are being served at school, as found by USA Today’s investigation. Even KFC and the Campbell Soup Company refuse to buy such meat because of quality considerations, and these corporations stopped doing so more than a decade ago – yet our children are eating this very type of questionable quality meat.

This video from The Rubin Report discusses the low quality of many public school lunches.

Students enrolled in special education programs must face many obstacles on a daily basis. Not only must they learn to manage their physical, emotional, mental, or learning disabilities, but they simultaneously overcome the academic challenges all students face.

Unfortunately, several new reports indicate that special education students may also have to deal with another problem: they are more likely than their non-special-education peers to be targets of school violence.

This video looks at what works for special needs students.

The Problem for Special Education Students in Public Schools

Higher Risk of Being Victims of Gun Violence

In Fall 2009, Chicago public school officials analyzed more than 500 cases of gun violence that had occurred within the past five years. The goal was to identify patterns that indicated which students were most likely to be victims of gun violence. The study's findings, as reported by the New York Times, showed that while special education students make up only 16% of the city's overall public school population, they comprised 24% of the victims of gun violence.

Rodney Estvan, an outreach coordinator at a Chicago-based disability rights group, told Northwestern University's Medill Reports that special education students will often "by their very nature be more confrontational. They will be more likely to be arrested. They will be more likely to be suspended from school. They will be more likely to