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What we talk about when we talk about Arlene Ackerman

I found some of the anti-Ackerman outrage disturbing — especially from the critics who said that these revelations might be the tipping point, that maybe Ackerman "would finally leave." Did any of her offenses, real or imagined, justify her ouster? Hardly.

AS THE SCANDAL involving PHA head Carl Greene unfolded over the last few weeks, the happiest person in Philadelphia had to be School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman. Before Greene's career imploded amid sexual-harassment charges, the school chief was being criticized for her salary, her bonuses, her vacation pay, the turnover at the school district, the high salaries of district staff, and a litany of other complaints, ranging from her imperious manner to her lack of public-relations savvy in dealing with various school crises.

Some of that criticism came from this newspaper. Recently, for example, we published a column by Phil Goldsmith that highlighted the high salaries the district was paying its staff.

Much of the ensuing outrage was justified. And yet, I found some of this outrage disturbing — especially from the critics who said that these revelations might be the tipping point, that maybe Ackerman "would finally leave."

Did any of her offenses, real or imagined, justify her ouster? Hardly. For me, the real question was: What would happen if she did leave?

Immediately, her departure would destabilize the district and its leadership. It would do so at a time when the state Legislature, rarely cooperative, is at its most obstructionist, with a governor in his last days in office. A turnover at the top could provide a great excuse for punishing the city by cutting school funding — just at the point when the latest test scores, released just weeks ago, show promising gains.

If the latest controversy forced Ackerman out, finding a successor would be that much harder. And that doesn't even begin to address the fact that the universe of contenders — big city superintendents with proven track records — is limited. There isn't a city in this country that has produced the ultimate education messiah. Exactly for whom would we be trading Ackerman?

This city seems to enjoy our reputation for running its school chiefs out of town. In case you've forgotten, let me remind you of two words: David Hornbeck. And here are two more: Paul Vallas.

The fact is, there are few if any cities in this country where the school superintendent isn't beleaguered and criticized. (Google "school superintendent & criticism" and you'll have to wade through more than a million hits.)

I can't help wondering: What is it that makes us always want to kill our school superintendents?

I believe some of the answer lies more in how we feel about public education than about the people we hire to administer it. And that much of it has nothing to do with education at all.

"The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people."

That quote is taken from "A Nation at Risk," a landmark report calling for education reform released nearly 30 years ago. The report was not the first of its kind, by a long shot. The erosion of public education and standards has been part of the national dialogue for centuries. In fact, the history of education reform is as old as the country itself. Our first public school, Boston Latin School, opened its doors in 1635, and ever since, we've been reforming, remaking, rethinking education. Not once in the history of our country has there ever been a belief that we've gotten it right, that public education is working quite nicely.

There is a single exception: Ask most adults the point they think public education started declining, and I can bet that the date they mention will be somewhere around the time that they themselves graduated. The same nostalgic ether that so many people inhale to evoke a "real America" that still held dear to "traditional small-town values" also envelops education: It was better when we were growing up. But even as we were getting our own superior educations, the adults around us were wringing their hands, fretting over its quality.

There is a paradox here. Because the reality is, few us can look back at the first 12 years of our own schooling, public or private, as the pinnacle of happiness. In fact, spend enough time dredging up your actual memories of school, and the experience is probably more a mix of social terror, intellectual humiliation, and compulsory conformity.

The authority that teachers and school administrators hold over our young lives — and later, the lives of our own children — can be intimidating at best, devastating at worst.

School is a foreign country to which we are forced by law to send our children each day. It's a country with absolute power. And we are forced to pay for it, with no say in how it's run, little input in how our money is spent, and run by "experts" whose source of expertise may seem, especially to those who the system has failed, as mysterious and secretive.

With the deck stacked against us, who can blame us for criticizing the institution and all the people in it?

There's another important question to ask in trying to figure out motivations for school superintendent-bashing. Who benefits from criticizing the management of our schools in general, and Ackerman in particular? To name just a few: the teachers' unions. The longtime staff at the district, who know that superintendents will continue to come and go, are always upsetting the status quo. And let's not forget the many individuals and corporations who are interested in running their own schools, and so have a vested interest in reminding us how broken the system is.

It could be worse: We could ignore education and simply never talk about it at all. Our ongoing and raging debates about education underscores its centrality to our society. And in the U.S., education has been central to our notion of democracy. Access to education is the foundation of our notion of equality.

And so when we talk about education, we talk about democracy. Education is central to our debates about race, class, religion, immigration, labor, equality, standards, governance, competition, our standing as a nation, and our failures as a nation. In other words, education is freighted with far more than the academic accomplishments of children. It carries our anxieties and hopes about ourselves and our future.

And if schools are a stand-in for our anxieties and fears about our society and our future, then we should acknowledge that its leaders are symbols for those anxieties. And often, when we talk about David Hornbeck, or Paul Vallas, or Arlene Ackerman, we're talking about our own anxieties.

And if that's true, maybe $338,000 isn't too much to pay them. *

Sandra Shea is editor of the editorial page.