THE WOEFUL STATUS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION III

SCHOOL BOARDS   

We enter the conference room.   The school district superintendent and the school board president are casually seated at the end of the table.  The Superintendent is laughing at something the board president is saying.  As other board members come in and take their seats at the table the superintendent greets each by name and makes some small comment of familiarity.    I look at the Superintendent, a man with a Doctorate in Education and years experience in the classroom and as a school principal, playing the part of a snake-oil politician, obliviously grabbling in supplication to this group that will, in the future, be asked to renew his contract.  

I am sitting on the periphery of the table with two other principals.   We are there to report to the board a summary of the month’s accomplishments at our schools.     One of the school board members has a son at my school that was not eligible for a basketball trip because of his grades in language arts.  I already know that I will have to defend the teacher for maintaining her standards for achievement.  

The meeting starts and past minutes are read, old business is discussed – usually to do with money issues, or curriculum and testing issues which everyone on the board listens to intently and pretends to understand.  There is a small discussion that perhaps the teachers have too much free access to the copy machines and that they should be limited to a certain number of copies per week.  For new business it is suggested that an electronic key card could be employed to determine who uses the machine most, and controls the use.   The Superintendent immediately agrees.  

Next the principals are asked to report.   I give a watered down version of the testing preparations that the teachers and I have spent hours discussing and planning, and a brief description of a cooperative learning field trip that involves archeological research at a traditional Native fishing site on the river.    Everyone listens attentively; then I ask if there are any questions.  

Immediately my board member states that a number of parents have complained to her about a particular teacher who seems to have the goal of preventing students from engaging in extra-curricular activities.   I defend my teacher and her academic autonomy to set standards in her classroom.   The rest of the board enthusiastically joins in, unanimously convinced that students should be allowed to play basketball regardless of grades.   I stand by the policy of eligibility and come just short of telling the board member that her son is a pain in the ass in class and thinks that because his mother is a board member he doesn’t have to meet the requirements of the rest of the students.    I look over at the Superintendent and he is frowning.    The board is heated and I am aggravated but maintaining control; but refusing to capitulate.    The Superintendent steps in and says that perhaps the board should consider reviewing the standards that exist among all district schools for sports and other activity and set uniform standards.

A motion is made and passed and the principals are asked to provide an in-depth report of eligibility requirements at each of their schools for the next board meeting. 

Elected school boards are the other bane of education.   Like politicians, there is no competency test to qualify a person for the school board.  Members are mainly composed of activist mothers or fathers who readily inform you that they are qualified for the position because they are parents.   (In reality the only qualification for being a parent is the ability to fuck and conceive.)  Other members of the board will be business persons looking for local recognition, and special interest activist (usually religious) looking to insert their agenda into the school.  Occasionally there is a retired school teacher, but as a whole the board is woefully unqualified to set education policies and totally ignorant of the day to day problems involved in educating children in a classroom.

We don’t have civilian elected boards intricately controlling doctor’s protocols and emergency room or operating room procedure; nor do we have elected civilian boards manipulating law firms, psychiatric medicine, physics or chemistry labs, and other disciplines.   Yet, we feel perfectly justified in ‘electing’ non educators to regulate and control the education processes of our school districts.    

Congress mandates the curriculum through standards and testing requirements and school boards interfere with the way schools are run on a day to day basis with frivolous and uninformed edicts via their ability to hire and fire school administrators. 

We will never improve American schools unless we remove the control from politicians and local school boards and place education professionals in charge.

the Ol'Buzzard

THE WOEFUL STATUS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION

PART ONE

                         

My second career was elementary and high school teaching and elementary and high school principal.   As such, ‘I have made my bones,’ and from intimate knowledge have earned the right to evaluate the system.

                                                                                            

Politicians drone on about the deplorable state of American education and people like President Bush 41 ask the question “Is our children learning?”  

The answer is NO! At least they are not graduating with knowledge and understanding of the world we live in and a factual chain of math and scientific cause and effect; and most of all they lack the ability to apply logic and reason.

There are numerous causes for the inability of our schools to effectively educate our children to a twenty-first century adequacy.   The major problem is that our system is the product of politicians and radical (mostly religious) groups with special agendas.

The ‘whipping boy’ for this failure is always the teachers. 

As an educator, no longer serving at the pleasure of an elected school board let me give a view from inside a system designed for failure.  

Let’s first look at teachers.   Most teachers are better educated than you local bank president.   All have Bachelor Degrees and many have Masters and Doctorates.   All have passed strenuous certification tests and are required to continue their education in order to recertify at specific intervals. 

Teaching was historically a female occupation, and as such was never looked on as a ‘legitimate’ profession.    That mind set has carried over to today where teaching is still not considered as professional, but instead viewed as advanced child care.    Teachers are not paid salaries accurately reflecting their level of education and are not given the respect received by other professions with lesser requirements and less responsibilities. 

Part of this image is the fault of teachers.  How often have I heard teachers state that they teach because they love children.   What bull shit!   You might love lions and tigers but that doesn’t qualify you as an animal trainer.   Teachers should demand professional respect.   They should state that they teach because they have developed a unique ability to impart information and because they have special training and background on certain subject matter.   They should support their unions that constantly try to elevate teaching to a respected profession. 

Teachers constantly have an uphill battle.   They preside over classrooms that are overcrowded; they deal with unnecessary discipline problems from unruly students - some that are potentially dangerous; they lack support from principals who serve at the pleasure of parent and special interest school boards; they are required to teach curriculum that is scattered and loosely connected.  

Most teachers are good teachers.  There are some special teachers that can go beyond and are able to encourage logic and critical thinking skills (this of course is not valued in the south.)  There are, in fact, very few ‘bad’ teachers.   Most ineffective teachers become dissatisfied with teaching and move on to other (and often more lucrative) fields.   There are, however, struggling teachers in impossible situations.     They are basically good teachers, who lack support from their administration, and eventually burn out.   Realizing the futility of their situation they develop a survival attitude.  They are products of a system that can not succeed.  

As a retired school principal I can tell you with authority that the teacher’s main goal is the success of their students.   Our teachers morn the fact that their students are matriculating with an incomplete education.  They hate the fact that they have to teach to testing standards.  They know that if given the authority and autonomy to set their curriculum to the special demographics of their students they would be able to effectively improve understanding and knowledge retention.   They are, however, hobbled by outside influences of non-educators and a bureaucracy and a public that is not teacher friendly.   

The teachers are not the problem with the education inadequacy – they are the solution. 

The Ol’Buzzard