“Destiny” by Address

Form: On presentation alone, Ira Glass’s podcast seems to be made in a more professional matter. The sound is clearer and crisper than the “Exposing the Mythology of Education Reform” podcast we listened to last week. The quality of the product, including the incorporation of sound-effects and background music contribute to its credibility. The use of music makes the podcast sound a bit commercial- it is used to mirror the tone of the speaker or even the content of what is being said. On the show, Glass also includes a guest speaker-with a first person perspective- who shares her views on the issue. She sounds well-versed, or otherwise comfortable with sharing a bit of her personal experience. Overall, a difference that I immediately noted was the consistency in the quality of the show. While some shorts or breaks in the “home-made” podcast would sometimes distract from the content, the overall good sound quality of this podcast makes it seem like a more cohesive piece and easier to follow along with the conversation.
Content: In “House Rules”, Glass and Jada talk about a few differences between the Akron public school and the “better” Copley-Fairlawn school. I think that the two major differences are the schools’ populations and their access to educational resources. According to Glass, the suburban school in the Copley-Fairlawn district has about a tenth of the inner-city school’s population. As Jada explained her experiences as a student, it seems like class-size affected the behavior of her peers as well as the efficiency of her teachers. In the lesser-populated school, Jada experienced better peer-relationships and was assigned to teachers with a more “educational” agenda.
Jada also mentions how her Copley-Fairlawn school had so many other resources. Facilities like a green-house allowed for environmental-labs, stocked library and new computer labs were very memorable to her. These educational tools were being used to enhance the learning experience in the suburban school, yet, they were completely missing from the Akron school. This could have considerable effects on the performance of these schools. According to data shared by Glass, out of twenty-five education goals set by the state, the Akron school meets only five. The Copley-Fairlawn school meets all of them.
Perhaps both of these major issues could be addressed when challenging the concept of “destiny by address”. This problem encompasses Glass’s entire podcast. “Home-owners pay high property taxes to live a place with good schools and lots of them feel that it’s bad for anybody to freeload” (Glass). I propose that a kind of reform to help address this problem is to re-assess the funding of our public schools. The current system where property taxes fund the area’s public school creates discrepancies in the quality of education. As we learn from Jada, this affects every aspect of a student’s experience. It influences the climate of a school, the resources it can maintain and its overall efficiency.
An alternative method where a student receives the same monetary funding across a national grid (because they are equally worthy) would help ensure that every school has the financial potential to provide an equal education. The concern over equal quality in resources could be addressed in this way. With schools at the end of the spending spectrum receiving more funding, we can expect programming to improve. This could, in turn, help with the distribution of student population in schools. If schools are seen as equally “good” schools, in time, the need of having one’s children attend the ‘better’ school would decrease. The popularization of celebrity-like schools would lessen if schools were given the opportunity to perform similarly to their neighboring school.