In the News: A roundup of daily news reports on reform

The Washington Post says the Prince George's County Educators' Association (an NEA affiliate) "deserves the scorn of everyone" for ordering members to pull back any efforts beyond the bare minimum of their 7 1/2 hours a day to show the County that they're serious about their pay increase. "Urging teachers to do less than what they feel they must to give their best to the kids in the classroom is demeaning."

In North Carolina, "a third of all new teachers leave the classroom by the end of their fifth year" according the News and Record, because of the things like the demands of classroom management (read paperwork), discipline and student behavior, and lack of parental and administrative support. Poor preparation and lack of training is one reason, experts argue. Which is why there should be more of a demand for not only better teacher education, but for more autonomy for teachers in the classroom than paperwork and miscellaneous orders.

Black parents in Waco, TX are moving their children increasingly into private schools -- a sign of a growing trend of families who feel slighted by the public schools. According to the Rocky Mountain News, when Lester and Coque Gibson's son failed the state's basic skills test and asked for an accounting of all district test scores they found that seventy-five percent of the black students and 66% of the Hispanic students failed the test. Gibson's district blames poverty and poor parenting for the failure rates, but he and others who represent many private schools that serve black children aren't buying it. Church-based and private black academies have doubled in number to about 400 over the past 12 years. "It's a reaction to the needless ignoring of the African-American talents," says Joan Davis Ratteray, president of the Institute for Independent Education. "Integration for black people has been almost a cruel hoax."

Seattle Schools Chief John Stanford delivered a compelling message to convention delegates in Chicago last week, advocating for high stakes testing, strong consequences for student and teacher performance and no excuses for the social climate in which children live as an acceptable reason for failure. He said we should find teachers -- public school, private or parochial -- and give them a hug when we get back to school, because theirs is the toughest job. Yet he endorsed Bill Clinton for re-election in the same speech, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense given his message if you look at Clinton's whole-hearted endorsement of the NEA and its agenda, which certainly does not appear to be Stanford's.

And what about the fact that Bill Clinton's Catholic school upbringing is rarely raised in public during his own comments opposing school choice for other Americans? An interesting take on this -- and the progress of an inner city Catholic school to provide a safe haven for children in Chicago against all odds -- can be found in the 9/2 Newsweek commentary by Joe Klein of 'Anonymous' fame. Klein did his homework (we should know - we were one of his primary sources) and raises some critical questions that all concerned about schooling should begin to address.

Obstacles to reform are never ending. The Chicago Tribune reports that one parent, Bonnie Delaney, was paying $30 an hour to a tutor to help per 9-year old son improve his reading. She did so, "she complained, because he is not receiving adequate instruction at Stitt School. His teachers, she contended, are more worried about recess, art and music classes and hands-on group learning that about reading, writing and arithmetic." After complaining with little success, she turned to three other mothers to create a charter school, which would be guided by traditional teaching methods. Delaney has the support of over 200 parents, mainly because they are advocating for less recess, more homework and more basics. But her district, the only authority that can sponsor under state law, is so far unwilling to commit to having $7,000 per child leave the current system and go to Delaney's charter. A more pathetic response is that of the district's superintendent, Dorothy Weber, who told the Tribune, "We're not convinced that anything they want to do is vastly different from what we're trying to do." Trying is the key word, Dorothy.

Another anecdote about public school choice in Michigan: while only 23 of 83 Detroit area districts are participating, for some parents, it makes the crucial difference between sending their child to public versus private school. The Detroit News reports on parent Nikki Lennox, "the legislation came none to soon....I was going to send my son to private school in the fall, but now I can choose a better-quality public school in Armada. Education is very important to me, and I want [my son] to have the best. For us, this program was the answer." Her new superintendent is welcoming her with open arms. "We're an outstanding district, and we want to be family-friendly and customer-oriented," Elliot Burns said. Some are not so sure. Another district's school board president said he didn't like the idea, but "we made this decision [to participate] to protect ourselves from students leaving the district and none coming in."
[Editor's note: many supporters of public-private school choice find public school choice only objectionable. But the attitude of parents like Nikki Lennox should be a welcome reaction that given even the smallest bit of choice, parents feel empowered, an ability that few will be able to take away.]

First there was the insurance broker who got $875,000 to start a new school for emotionally disturbed teenagers, and failed to deliver on the goods promised to the Superintendent. Then there was the yearly fire code review of public schools which unmasked horrendous violations creating safety hazards, such that at least 6 public schools will still not be able to open on time. In response, the Superintendent and school board pointed fingers, said there was no money to fix it all (despite having it allocated but spent on other areas of administration.) And now, the (you guessed it) DC public schools may very well get "taken over" by the city's control board, who along with The Washington Post and scores of DC residents, thinks the whole situation is deplorable. The unions are remaining unusually quiet in this debate.

"Test scores at four suburban back-to-basics charter schools released this week show higher averages in reading and math than many regular schools in their district." This from the Rocky Mountain News on July 20, which reported on four of the five Core Knowledge schools that opened in Colorado since its law was passed in 1993. All have long waiting lists, and one in particular Cherry Creek Academy, showed students averaging 41% gains in reading, a 55% gain in language arts, and a 47% gain in math. "Second and third graders showed the most improvement, with averages of 78% and 97% respectively."

A study by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute on charters in Massachusetts found that the "schools are reaching a population that is often dismissed as difficult to teach," according to the Boston Globe. "Despite fears that the state's new charter schools would steal the brightest and wealthiest students, the first major study of such schools shows they are serving a higher percentage of low-income, bilingual and minority children than traditional public school. More than half of those...were average or below average students in public school, and scored poorly on standardized tests." (Pioneer can be reached at (617) 723-2277.)

A former NFL player in Florida wants to start a charter school that aims to help troubled black males, saying "we've sat round too long as minorities waiting for other people to make it happen.... We've got to come together as one," says Joe Green, profiled recently in the Sun Sentinel. Green hopes to call his school The Deion Sanders Academy, if he can convince the star to lend his name. While enrollment would be open to everyone, Green's school would be geared to at-risk students, providing a curriculum focused on academics, but strong on black history, sports and music. Girls would be welcome.

A press release from the National PTA lashes out at Republican candidate Bob Dole for his opportunity scholarship proposal. "Parents are not phantoms in the public school reform debate, nor are parents merely the passive consumers of a product," said PTA president Joan Dykstra. "To suggest teachers are to blame for problems in the system, and that parents are not aware of or part of the debate misses the point...Mr. Dole asks who speaks for the parents, I respond that the National PTA speaks for 6.5 million of them. And we don't want vouchers, we want a vital public school system supported by public dollars." Wow! Pretty potent stuff. But Dykstra is obviously not reading the polling data correctly. The Education Policy Institute recently polled PTA members, and found that 80% of parents with kids in school are solidly unaware of the active lobbying and issue positions espoused by the PTA. More than half (51%) of parents say they would be less likely to join the PTA knowing that the nation's most prominent parent-teacher organiz- ation opposes a school voucher proposal. Charlene Harr, EPI's director, said that 75% of parents who don't attend PTA meetings would do so if the meetings dealt with critical educational issues.

And speaking of the PTA, the Indiana group has experienced a 3,000 member decline this year. An April Washington Times article suggests why this may be happening in many states. It highlights several parents who have attempted to voice concerns to their local PTA about its policies or practices, only to be told that they could not differ from positions taken nationally (and weren't particularly interested in doing so anyway).

The Fort-Wayne Journal-Gazette, as reported by the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, recently argued in retort to the U.S. News and World report coverage of unions, that any decline in the quality of public school teaching is the responsibility of the individual school boards and not the union.

One of 10 federally-funded educational laboratories, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, designed to research and assist schools with the big questions of learning, republished the following excerpt from something called the Oregon Girls Advocate in its quarterly magazine...HOMOPHOBIA: Discrimination and Violence Can Make "Coming Out' a Dangerous Choice. One wonders why this, and other teen-social behavior related articles are more important funding priorities than, let's say, helping children directly learn to read. We estimate that this quarterly costs roughly $2.00 each to print, with a probable circulation of 25,000, not to mention staff time and research costs. A modest estimate of $100,000 could buy a couple of teachers for the mid-west or help open a charter school, and that's only a tiny fraction of their multi-million dollar budget. Geez.

Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas has been inundated with offers of help since he announced that he was turning to the Catholic Schools for a model in re-shaping his city's curriculum for next year. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Dennis Byrne says "one public school's curriculum...showed that students have a selection of 319 courses, ranging from the basics to....beginning mixed chorus, exploring Chicago, and hotel-restaurant management...Catholic schools offer about a third of those courses, and are heavily weighted toward" the basics. Vallas says students are allowed to cherry-pick their way out of the basics, something he did as a child and suffered for. His schools wouldn't get rid of electives, but pare them down substantially. He picked the Catholic schools as a model because while "I'm the first to admit that they don't have all the special ed...bilingual or as many kids from at-risk communities...., to say they have none or few of those kids is basically not a statement of reality." Consensus is strong for the basics. "Children who are denied the ability to read and comprehend and reason logically (from math teaching) ...aren't simply denied an education. They're denied a life," says Byrne.

Back-to-School 1996 Monthly Letter to Friends