The Class War We Can't Afford To Lose
Keisling, Phil.
The Class War We Can't Afford To Lose by Phil. Keisling If Marx and Engels were living in today's America, they would be writing "The Education Manifesto." Millions of our citizens are being...
...Even so, at least two years of American history and government, four years of English, and at least two years of math, science, and a foreign language should be considered an absolute minimum for any high school graduate, college-bound or not...
...Beyond that, performance should determine employment...
...To actually fire the teacher may take longer...
...As our public schools fail, the victims won't be just the millions of poorly educated children relegated to lives spent on the welfare rolls and in the unemployment lines...
...Now 28, she recently took her three children out of the New Orleans public school system and enrolled them in a parochial school...
...They instead urge "compassion" and "understanding," as if poorly educated, uninspired teachers can be miraculously transformed into models of excellence...
...So few take math or science classes that a 1980 report by the National Science Foundation concluded ours is a nation fast approaching "scientific illiteracy...
...Consider the recent spate of books urging Democrats to formulate new ideas as a response to the New Right...
...A better scheme would offer contracts of increasing duration—one, three, and then five years, for example...
...page 35...
...This mentality has its parallel in the automobile assembly line, where the worker attempting to increase his productivity is chastised by his colleagues for making them look lazy...
...Few stop to think not only that the classroom isn't an assembly line or a coal mine but that the other side in this case happens to be the taxpayers...
...The unions have a legitimate grievance here: teachers must be given far more authority to rid themselves of troublesome students so they can focus on teaching those who have shown some willingness to learn...
...Public education in America's cities increasingly resembles the sinking luxury liner of old...
...In that promise lies the real urgency in making our public schools institutions that parents once more can believe in...
...It's what is—and isn't—being taught in our classrooms...
...Nor does Tom Hayden's manifesto, The American Future...
...The silence is also understandable given the fact that improving our public schools requires taking on the same institutions Democrats have long supported and helped make powerful...
...Indeed, this misguided insistence on professionalism is a major reason why the nation's best college graduates are either teaching in private schools—usually for longer hours at much less money—or choosing other professions altogether...
...ing and higher teacher salaries, for example—will be of marginal benefit, at best...
...Yet most people, especially liberals, reel in horror at this unpleasant prospect...
...For as our neglect allows the schools to fail, ours increasingly becomes a nation of too many citizens ignorant, not only of basic skills, but of each other as well...
...Bring Back Flunking...
...Fine's comments are even truer today...
...The current method of compensating teachers solely on the basis of seniority and college degrees is senseless, unfair, and one of the cruelist tricks unions play on our children...
...during most of this century they have been shabbily treated, grossly underpaid, and subject to the often petty, arbitrary actions of school administrators...
...The conspicuous silence is explained in part by the Democrats' complicity in the decline of our public schools...
...Consider the case of the National Education Association...
...But accomplishing that will mean the disappearance of hundreds, if not most, of the nation's 1,300 teachers' colleges, and a drastic curtailing of the power of the teachers' unions—if not their outright abolition...
...But neither denies it...
...Teachers' colleges have opposed such competency tests, for an obvious reason: each failure is direct proof of their ineptitude...
...Most of my classmates didn't share my enthusiasm for academics...
...Meanwhile, our children will no doubt continue to be among the world's most scientifically ignorant...
...of my best friends in high school, one is now a civil engineer, one a farmer, one a wildlife ranger, one a salesman, and one a lawyer...
...Unfortunately, what started out as a necessary protection has become such a complicated and litigious process that most school districts can't even fire blatantly incompetent teachers, not to mention less-thanmediocre ones...
...For the most part, their children are nowhere in sight in these urban schools...
...More credentials...
...Much as individual teachers may be sympathetic—and many thoughtful teachers are quite disgruntled with their unions—the teachers as a group are, to put it bluntly, the enemy...
...There may be a handful whose parents are clinging to the middle rung of the class ladder, and there may be a few whites...
...Teachers who behave similarly don't deprive students of paychecks so much as their chance to ever earn one...
...In public the parents of these children may express their concern for the plight of public education...
...more professional training...
...Perhaps it's entry to Yale rather than the University of Oregon...
...rote memorization of multiplication tables and verb conjugations is no substitute for teaching students how to reason with numbers or express themselves in writing...
...What would change...
...But the disintegration of our public schools hurts far more than the nation's poorest children...
...An over-reliance on busing...
...In fact, if our urban schools continue their decline, chances are good that as a parent, I'd be forced to look elsewhere...
...To test prospective teachers' knowledge of their subjects, many states recently have instituted minimum competency exams...
...Science and math teachers are rapidly becoming an endangered species, both in our public schools and in our teachers' colleges...
...While same teachers in our schools are talented, dedicated people, far too many are like the teacher in Mobile, Alabama, who wrote a parent, "Scott want pass in his assignment at all, he had a poem to learn and he fell to do it...
...The problem is that while everyone agrees on the need for good teachers, few want to take the steps necessary to bring them into the classroom...
...While many teachers take these courses during the summer vacation, in 1976 almost half the respondents in an NEA survey reported taking advanced education courses during the school year...
...Will forcing students to pay for an extra year of education courses make teaching a more attractive profession...
...They weren't political liberals—both, in fact, are Republicans—but they believed public schools taught things private schools couldn't...
...All of us will suffer...
...Things have changed since then...
...in New York, out of 15,000 teaching graduates in 1981, only 61 were certified to teach chemistry...
...But to settle for anything less than the best teachers is to betray one of the fundamental tenets of ourdemocratic society—that every child, regardless of the circumstances of birth, deserves an equal opportunity for a quality education...
...Those women today are choosing professions in law, business, and medicine...
...Paul Tsongas's The Road from Here doesn't list education among the "eight realities" Democrats need to reconsider...
...The power of the teachers' unions to protect and reward incompetents must be broken...
...As for the real victims, they happen to be children...
...By rewarding incompetent teachers and making the good ones wonder why they even bother, this system does more to undermine excellence in the public schools than almost anything else...
...Private schools treat their teachers much differently...
...Twenty years ago, the teacher who stayed after school to tutor a student needing special help probably was singled out for praise...
...or like the Washington, D.C...
...Take the case of the Reverend Jesse Jackson...
...all unions measure their success largely by higher wages, better working conditions, and increased job security...
...More is needed than going "back to basics...
...Then there's the National Education Association official interviewed for this story who accused Reagan of trying to "destroy public education" with his proposal to give $500 tuition tax credits to parents of private school students, He, too, sends his son to private school...
...Those stuck below deck in third class are starting to tread water...
...He found students earning credits for such things as "Administering Leisure Delivery Systems" and "Administration and Supervision of Driver Education...
...The theory's adherents say it's better to pass a slow-learning student on to the next grade because the "stigma" of failure will do far more psychological damage than any loss in achievement...
...A typical program for a secondary school teacher involves just one quarter of his or her classes in the academic major...
...making teachers "more professional...
...The numbers—from SAT scores to failure rates on competency exams—speak for themselves...
...Nationwide, private school enrollments in the last decade have remained relatively stable, at around ten percent...
...But worry not...
...While the experience of the best private schools shows that on the whole you don't have to pay more money to get better teachers, there area few instances where higher salaries could make a real difference in the education our children are getting...
...More importantly, even if it meant sacrificing some academic rigor, they thought it worthwhile for me to go to school with people who might become laboratory technicians or housewives— occupations they've held for much of their own lives...
...Quarantine the Aggressors...
...But the NEA is dead set against this...
...For the last several years, assisted by about $3 million in federal funds, Jackson has been telling students of predominantly black urban schools that they must take school seriously if they want to "be somebody...
...Enrollment in parochial schools—whose students have traditionally come from the middle class—has dropped in the last decade...
...A retired teacher recalls the most dangerous place around his public school was the faculty parking lot at 3:15...
...Among Democrats, who've traditionally prided themselves on their high-minded concern for education and "equal opportunity," the issue of public education seems to have dropped off the radar screen...
...Even if the higher salary levels attracted much better students to teachers' colleges, where would they end up...
...The bright students will not enter teachers' colleges...
...If their children aspire to professional careers, the parents often fear the competition might be too keen...
...Hundreds of thousands of high school graduates are functionally illiterate...
...No small thanks to social promotion, an estimated 13 percent of our high school graduates can't read past a sixth-grade level...
...students who aren't failed in school most certainly will fail in the real world...
...It takes only a few acts of violence and disruption to poison the whole learning atmosphere...
...In restoring the public school lies America's best hope for overcoming the divisive class antagonisms that Marx thought so inevitable— and which our democratic tradition has always sought to destroy...
...they've come up with a solution: require prospective teachers to take even more education courses...
...Public education is in mortal danger, and unless its ostensible friends act soon, its slide into oblivion will be irreversible...
...Attracting the best graduates of our top colleges for two- or three-year periods—as the Peace Corps does with its overseas teaching programs— would inject some youthful energy into the profession...
...Consequently, just a third of the nation's high school students take chemistry...
...What they're not rediscovering is the neighborhood school...
...Meanwhile, at the private Georgetown Day School, enrollment has nearly doubled in just the last ten years...
...If school districts find it difficult to jettison bad teachers, mediocre ones are impossible to get rid of...
...A few teachers' colleges already use this technique...
...Cohen's economics degree from MIT, his master's from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public Administration, and his six years' experience in the government have been unable to land him a job despite 175 applications...
...No need for teachers to worry about that last one, though...
...Two thirds of our high school seniors are so ignorant of our political system they don't know how we select a president...
...They're ultimately more interested in protecting theirjobs than making sure your children get a good education...
...as a result, many of our urban classrooms would drive away even the most dedicated of teachers...
...P.K...
...First class ticket-holders already have gotten off safely and the second-class passengers are rushing for the remaining lifeboats...
...They should apply pressure to school boards and administrators to fire incompetents...
...of those who remain in that city's school district, over a third are on welfare...
...talk to teachers who are good at what they do and they'll assure you they would never trade their jobs for ones that paid a lot more money...
...The teachers' education program at the University of California at Berkeley has so little prestige on campus that a special commission recently recommended it be abolished altogether...
...In practice, this means a school district almost has to catch a teacher selling drugs to 15year-olds or sleeping in class all day...
...As a result, their allegiance ultimately lies with the bad teacher rather than the students who've been victimized by what amounts to educational malpractice...
...Not surprisingly, most students were getting A's...
...Minnesota trained only one physics teacher last year...
...Though public school teachers often complain about low pay, salaries for private school teachers average several thousand dollars a year less...
...The class we don't know is usually imagined to be either better or worse than it really is, simply because we don't know what it really is...
...As far as many parents are concerned, it's now every child for himself...
...Like career civil servants, they can be laid off, but usually on the basis of seniority, not ability...
...In 1979, Gene Lyons of The Texas Monthly visited the campus of Southwest Texas University, where most of the state's teachers are trained...
...According to a recent survey by Catherine Ailes and Francis Rushing, over half the nation's school districts require no more than one year of math and science for graduation...
...Education Week's Jim Mullen found that in one typical state 30 percent of the chemistry teachers and 63 percent of the physics teachers had less than 20 semester hours of college credit in their subjects...
...As the SAT scores show, it's the least-gifted of our students—men and women—who are attracted to teachers' colleges today...
...True, clearing our classrooms of bad teachers won't be easy...
...The American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education is now advocating an additional year of study to supplement the normal four-year program...
...today there are none...
...Of course, the sad truth is that children aren't safe in many of our public schools—physically or intellectually...
...Some protection for teachers certainly is justifiable, particularly because teachers often have been victims of arbitrary firings...
...These efforts to wrap themselves up in proletarian garb have proven remarkably successful among Democrats, for whom the mere mention of the word "union" often is enough to conjure up strains of "Solidarity Forever" and images of defenseless autoworkers being attacked by hired goons...
...Most people hope instead that public education can be saved simply by adding on to what already exists—much like adding expensive options to a car that no longer runs...
...As the schools fail, more parents leave, not just those who are wealthy or white, but middle-class parents of all races...
...Rather than boycott the schools they should try to take them over...
...J. Myron Atkin, an education professor at Stanford, has concluded, "It is doubtful if as many as two dozen of the 1,300 institutions that prepare teachers are maintaining programs that a bright youngster would find demanding...
...A recent nationwide survey of the people hired in the last two years to teach high school math and science found over half were "unqualified...
...The policy is a cruel hoax...
...And I'd be disingenuous to suggest I would automatically choose a public school under any circumstances...
...I just couldn't stand humiliating myself that way," observes one private school instructor...
...By contrast, a Japanese highschool student must take four years each of math and science...
...Perhaps it's a master's degree...
...Today, that same teacher risks being accused of "union busting" for disobeying a contract provision that requires all teachers to leave by a certain time...
...Such fears are reinforced by cases such as that of Richard I. Cohen, the subject of a recent front-page article in The Washington Post...
...Twice as many private school students have more than an hour of homework a night, and almost three times as many are taking a third-year language course...
...If current pay schedules don't reward merit or individual initiative, what do they reward...
...the growth of teachers' unions—these are developments most Democrats have either acquiesced in or endorsed...
...Both the NEA and the AFT obviously downplay the problem of bad teachers...
...But Coleman's most significant finding is indisputable: both teachers and students in private schools work harder than their public counterparts...
...I did not attend an inner-city public school, but a suburban one outside of Portland, Oregon...
...teacher one parent describes who interrupts class each day to watch her favorite soap opera...
...Public school teachers enjoy the same thing most civil service employees do: perpetual job security...
...Though it failed to reelect Jimmy Carter in 1980 (in part because 40 percent of its own membership defected to Reagan), it remains one of the most potent lobbying forces in the nation's state legislatures, where most of the laws regulating such things as collective bargaining, tenure, and school finance are written...
...the graduates of Cambridge, Massachusetts's Lesley College, for example, are some of the most highly prized teachers in the profession...
...But if people continue to abandon the public schools, either by taking their own children out of them or refusing to acknowledge what must be done to save them, we should stop kidding ourselves—and admit it was a promise we never really meant to keep...
...Education degrees are not required and teachers who perform well are rewarded with extra pay...
...They claim it's not only impossible to determine who's a better teacher, but that merit pay would "demoralize" those who don't get any...
...In 1979-80, for example, college students planning to become teachers scored an average of 339 on the verbal portion of the SAT80 points below the already dismal national average...
...But at its best, the public school remains one of the few institutions in American life that has the capacity to force us out of our familiar orbits of job, family, and social class...
...Albans, an exclusive private school in Washington, D.C...
...For more on these and other suggestions, see "What Is to Be Done...
...They've either migrated to the suburbs or bailed out of the public school system altogether...
...A nation of citizens ignorant of basic skills cannot hope to prosper economically in an increasingly competitive world...
...Teachers should be required to have a bachelor's degree in the subject they wish to teach...
...As Nicholas Lemann has observed, this is the first generation in American history deeply anxious about downward mobility...
...What's worst about proposals for more busing and bilingual education is that they allow people to ignore the more fundamental changes required to bring excellence to the public schools...
...Remember, this- isn't some baseball manager explaining to reporters, "I had to take Fingers out in the seventh because his slider wasn't working the way it should have...
...This gives far too many of them jobs for as long as they want them, protecting those who have no business being in the classroom...
...But while there's been no mass exodus from the public schools, these statistics mask some disturbing trends...
...If anything, I'd prefer that my children be exposed to an even wider range of people than I was in my suburban school...
...True, far too many of our public schools are failing in this much larger purpose...
...a reduction of academic requirements in the name of "free choice...
...Where are such people today...
...Last year, for example, fewer than 100 Florida teachers had charges brought against them for incompetence...
...Most teachers now get tenure after only three years...
...unfortunately, our schools haven't found people of comparable quality to replace them...
...But I don't want to have to do that...
...But just as the reluctance to rid the classroom of a few disruptive students can ruin the learning process for everyone, the refusal to make the necessary judgments about the abilities of our teachers will doom our public schools to continued deterioration, and ultimate failure...
...Whether it's in casual party conversation or in respected journals of opinion, the glut of horror stories about our public schools is often matched by the paucity of remedies...
...One prospective teacher's assignment was to "cut out magazine pictures that referred to child care...
...only six percent take a year of calculus...
...Private schools not only expect more of their students, they get more—and at the behest of teachers who often lack the credentials public schools would require...
...In the District of Columbia parents cajole, plead, wheedle, and pull strings, not to get their children into Harvard, Yale, or even a prep school, but into private elementary schools that cost almost $5,000 a year...
...The real problem isn't the lack of money...
...The list of U.S...
...In the few cases where firings do take place, they usually have nothing to do with teaching ability...
...Most of the classes taken by prospective teachers have nothing to do with what the teacher will have to teach...
...Their children need an edge...
...Some of them prefer teaching private school students, but others say they would teach in public school were it not for the education courses they'd be forced to take...
...automakers so uncompetitive...
...Math graduates, for example, can either start teaching for about $12,000 a year or earn $20,000 from a computer firm...
...Since 1965, spending for primary and secondary public education has almost doubled, after inflation, to $113 billion...
...That would foster "elitism" among teachers, the union says...
...While proclaiming their support for public education, members of the nation's ruling class, many of them political liberals, act to insure that the children of the masses remain in relative ignorance...
...In many states the union's political action committee dispenses more campaign contributions than any other special interest group...
...Busing, for instance, has antagonized parents, both black and white, while diverting attention from what's really wrong with the schools...
...Jackson's not alone...
...Only the wholesale dismissal of incompetent teachers will give our public schools a reasonable chance for survival...
...Such stories help convince parents it's not as important for their children to be well-educated (in the broadest sense of the word) as it is for them to get an education that seems impressive...
...Meanwhile, more than twice that number lost their jobs, according to the Florida School Boards Association, for acts of "moral turpitude...
...I don't have children yet, but when I do I'll want them to have a good education...
...Yet today, such people are everywhere except the classroom...
...Now stop just a minute and think about that last phrase—"wasn't learning the way he should have...
...No single effort will pull public education out of its nosedive as surely as a bold, concerted program to upgrade the quality of the nation's teachers...
...Twenty years ago there were four elementary schools in the fashionable neighborhood of Georgetown...
...Smash Credentialism...
...The results have been disheartening to say the least...
...In one suburban Virginia school district recently, it took two years and $6,000 in outside legal fees just to put a teacher on probation...
...in some districts experiencing layoffs, English teachers are replacing math teachers...
...Much as they may lament illiteracy among high school graduates, colleges have been a major culprit in this development by lowering their own admission standards to attract more students...
...Bumping," the process that allows a senior employee who loses his job to take that of a younger employee, also applies to teaching...
...After awhile it looks like there's a conspiracy to drive away the best people...
...That means teaching them English as quickly and as thoroughly as possible...
...Walk into a typical urban classroom, and you're likely to find it as homogeneous as Harvard's class of 1928—only instead of being rich, most of the students are pcpr...
...Probably in another profession, since there wouldn't be any room for them in teaching...
...With the death of the democratic draft and the decline of the public school, ours is a society that's increasingly stratified, not so much by race as by social and economic class...
...And some will continue to be destructive...
...That brings us back to having to raise teachers' salaries...
...But as a parent, Jackson isn't taking any chances with the public schools these children are stuck in...
...Meanwhile, where are the sons and daughters of what Marx and Engels would call the ruling class, those who not only hold high government posts but are leading lawyers, doctors, businessmen, accountants, journalists, and teachers...
...These jobs not only contribute little or nothing to the nation's prosperity, they are stultifying to the spirit and deadening to the intellect...
...The young, upwardly mobile couple is rediscovering the remodeled Victorians of oncedeclining inner-city neighborhoods...
...The other major obstacle to improving public education lies in the teachers' unions—specifically the National Education Association, which has 1.7 million members, and the American Federation of Teachers, with about 500,000 members...
...Fine happened to write these words in 1947 in a book entitled Our Children Are Cheated...
...Though the widespread sexism of Fine's era was deplorable, one happy result was that the nation's brightest and most talented women often went into teaching...
...congressmen, senators, and sociologists who've enthusiastically endorsed mandatory busing while sending their own children to private schools could start with Senator Edward Kennedy and go on to fill several pages of this magazine...
...Union contracts often require administrators to give advance notice before evaluating a teacher's performance in the classroom...
...More likely than not, they're getting the kind of education that guarantees they'll never catch up...
...Citizens will have to fight a lot of little battles, but once the facade begins to crack, it could crumble quickly...
...Not doing so only insures that most of their students remain ignorant of subjects they can't afford to remain ignorant of, especially in an age of electronics and high technology...
...Tenure is much rarer...
...Teaching is one of the most important professions in America, worthy not only of respect but of the talents of the nation's brightest, most dedicated citizens...
...More importantly, we can ill afford to become a nation in which most of us lack a basic understanding of how our fellow citizens live...
...And though 100,000 students tested last year by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed increases in test scores, the report noted that "hardly any of the students showed evidence of having and using a systematic approach to the analytic tasks...
...The dolorous statistics should be well known by now: SAT scores have been declining for over 15 years...
...As a first symbolic act, parents should withdraw from their local parent-teacher association chapters...
...Double Trouble The conventional prescription for rescuing our schools is "more"—more money for teachers' salaries...
...Many districts pay several thousand dollars a year more for a master's degree, an arrangement that teachers' colleges certainly like since it brings in extra tuition revenue...
...While there's certainly no shortage of ways to improve our public schools, here are some places to start: — Parents Unite...
...But schools are not factories where the work is routine and the main issue is how to divide the company's profits...
...We're getting what we pay for," observes one NEA official, leafing through a book that compares teachers' salaries (unfavorably) with those of accountants, lawyers, and engineers...
...They're right, at least according to a massive report last year by University of Chicago sociologist James Coleman that examined 60,000 high school students in public and private schools...
...In the last decade and a half the cry of "academic freedom" has led to a wholesale elimination of secondary school requirements, not just in math and science but in English, history, and other subjects...
...A teacher with tenure—something most of them get after just three years—can be fired, but only for "just cause...
...Most of these additions—more inservice train...
...The teachers' unions have transferred some of the worst aspects of unionism to an enterprise whose major purpose is incompatible with the time clock...
...If the suit prevails, the sad truth is that such teachers will be further victimizing a new generation of children, most of them of their own race...
...One can become a history teacher in Maryland with only six semester hours of American history...
...Even worse, the good teachers can't be rewarded...
...About the only recent book to mention the subject is Paul Simon's The Once and Future Democrats, which warns of the poor quality of our teachers but treads lightly on the subject of teachers' colleges and unions...
...No, this is a parent, talking about the education of her son...
...Phil Keisling is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...It's naive to suggest that every child in public school can be transformed into an attentive student by even the best of teachers...
...Abolish Existing Tenure Laws...
...useful methodology courses should be taken during the school year or over summer vacation...
...more course offerings...
...Unpalatable as firings may be, we simply have no other choice...
...for example, urging school districts to hire as teachers able and exciting people who don't happen to have teaching certificates...
...As a result, private schools from the most prestigious preparatory institutions to inner-city parochial schools have little difficulty attracting excellent teachers—many of them from the nation's top colleges—who haven't taken the education courses necessary to teach in a public school...
...What Is to Be Done...
...It's this belief that public school has value beyond academics that is eroding today, even among those who consider themselves supporters of public education...
...In the first year of its test, Louisiana flunked half its graduates...
...Teachers should be paid according to how well they perform, as measured not only by tests and administrators, but by fellow teachers, parents, and students...
...The Last Best Hope Were Marx analyzing the situation, he'd no doubt find an insidious conspiracy at work...
...To Each According to His Ability...
...More to the point, the education her son wasn't getting...
...The explanation for these shortages is as simple as the free marketplace...
...Likely as not, they're hunched over a convoluted legal brief, checking obscure contractual references, or writing a report for a consulting firm on "bimodal transportation variables...
...They suffered through the many education courses because they had so few other career choices...
...Perhaps I can best explain this by providing an explanation of my own educational background...
...They may celebrate the role of the public school as a key foundation in our democratic society, a place where the barriers of class are broken and children from every walk of life are afforded equal opportunity to develop their natural abilities...
...In cities like Philadelphia the mayor and most civic leaders now send their children to private schools...
...Very little, except that the incompetent and mediocre teachers already in our schools would get a lot more money...
...If our public schools fail in this role, all of us will lose...
...If you envision American life as a foot race, these are the children beginning well behind the starting line...
...Some concerned parents simply have no choice but to turn to private schools...
...He's sending his son to St...
...That's not true with teaching...
...Likewise, the enthusiasm for bilingual education has hurt the very people it's presumed to help by ignoring a basic reality of American life...
...Still, as I went through school, I knew people from many different backgrounds, whose parents included small businessmen, insurance salesmen, single mothers, doctors, bookkeepers...
...Parents should visit classrooms and observe teachers...
...In the heart of many a professional lurks the secret terror that a son or daughter might become an auto mechanic, a waitress, or an assembly-line worker...
...For teachers with badly needed skills in math and science, school districts should pay what's necessary to attract qualified people...
...Take the case of Ruby Bridges, who in 1960, as a child of six, braved the taunts and violent epithets of white racists to become the first black to enroll in New Orleans's segregated school system...
...Nothing else will improve our public schools as much as putting the nation's brightest, most talented people into the classrooms as teachers...
...These parents do so in the belief that private schools, usually with less money and lower-paid teachers, do a better job of educating their children...
...A new teacher should be intensively supervised by a senior teacher the first year...
...Preoccupation with salaries isn't surprising...
...Many of these same people, who would make excellent teachers because of their knowledge of their subjects, are now driven away from the profession by the education course requirements...
...The result is credentialed teachers who often can't teach...
...Because of the strength of the teachers' unions, teaching is basically a closed profession...
...Assume we raised salaries immediately—doubled them overnight, for example...
...So the nation's private schools have many valuable lessons to offer...
...Abolishing tenure not only would give .schools far more flexibility in upgrading their teaching staffs, but would encourage people to enter the profession for short stints...
...Many nice, likable people will have to be fired...
...And perhaps it's going to that affluent public school in the suburbs, or the private school across town...
...If a school district elected not to renew a contract upon its expiration, teachers could not appeal the decision...
...That's less than a semester and a half out of eight...
...Its solution, if you haven't guessed yet, is to raise salaries for all teachers...
...Welcome to one of the great circular arguments of public education...
...One college president has said, 'By and large, the country over, teachers' colleges are the weak sisters of the educational profession...
...Meanwhile, enrollment in unaffiliated private schools—where the sons and daughters of the wealthy usually go— has doubled...
...That's a problem," admits David Imig, AACTE's executive director...
...Those Who Can't Teach, Do Indeed...
...Two institutions are working hard to insure that things stay this way—and they count among their traditional allies many who think of themselves as strong supporters of public schools...
...Tens of thousands of workers are now unemployed because this attitude has helped make U.S...
...But in private—well, it's getting to be a matter of watch what I say, not what I do...
...That's education-speak for saying students know how to take standardized tests, but they can't think...
...Once in the classroom some may decide to make teaching a career...
...Black teachers say they should be held to lower standards because they are the victims of a legacy of segregated schools...
...In fact, the unions will often point to the low quality of their own members in arguing for higher salaries...
...Both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers vehemently oppose any system of merit pay for teachers...
...Fellow sociologists have severely criticized Coleman's methodology in reaching this conclusion, and some of the criticisms may be valid...
...The equivalent student in the Soviet Union will take five years of physics, four years of chemistry, and two years of calculus...
...Most important, it's who's doing the teaching...
...The schools' primary function is not to keep children's cultural heritages intact but to teach the skills necessary for them to enjoy the full benefits of citizenship to which they're entitled...
...The obvious solution is to pay math and science teachers what's necessary to attract enough of them to the profession...
...Nor is it "charity" or "noblesse oblige" that should motivate us to save our public schools, but self-interest...
...In other words, employ the same strategy that has dominated educational thinking in the last 15 years—years in which our public schools have steadily deteriorated...
...Millions of our citizens are being oppressed, not by the evils of the capitalist system, but by a public school system that is bad and getting worse...
...Yet as unions, these organizations are dedicated to protecting all their members, particularly the mediocre and downright incompetent ones...
...Talking to a reporter about her young son, she explained ,"I don't like to put down public schools, but he wasn't really learning the way he should have...
...Let's not kid ourselves...
...That teachers have formed these unions is perfectly understandable...
...In many school districts a phenomenon known as "social promotion" has made flunked students nearly obsolete...
...The result has been a decade-and-a-half-long decline in educational quality, purchased at ever-escalating prices...
...If nothing else, Bridges's decision to leave the same school district she'd suffered so much to integrate should drive home the desperate condition of so many of our public schools...
...In Alabama, things have worked their way around full circle: the NAACP is suing the state, alleging that its test is discriminatory because a far higher percentage of blacks flunk than whites...
...Bring Back Requirements...
...But there's one more major change that's required to rescue our public schools, and it's by far the most important: — Fire incompetent teachers...
...Such a system would also encourage people in the middle of careers elsewhere to try teaching, thus giving students valuable insights into the workings of the outside world...
...In major cities, twice that percentage of children attend private schools...
...In lobbying for legislation to make itself more powerful, the NEA has been quite shrewd in portraying its members as if they were as downtrodden and oppressed as the factory workers and coal miners of another generation...
...They should seek ways to undermine credentialism...
...As each of us grows more unaware of how those who are different from us live and think, our ignorance leads to both an excess of public sentimentality and private fear...
...In taking on the teachers, parents and concerned citizens need to be bold...
...The first obstacle is a type of school itself—the nation's 1,300 teachers' colleges, whose existence and survival are predicated on the dubious premise that public school teachers must endure a battery of often mind-numbing "professional education courses" before they can receive their credentials...
...Malignant Neglect However selfish their motives, teachers' colleges and unions are unerringly right about one thing...
...To get some perspective on the nation's 1,300 teachers' colleges, consider these comments by Benjamin Fine of The New York Times: "In some institutions for training teachers, an undue proportion of the students' time is taken up with courses in 'education.' The teacher may know how to teach history but he does not know enough history to teach the subject adequately...
...If my parents had had the money and believed a private school would prepare me better academically, I'm sure they still wouldn't have sent me to one...
...America certainly has never succeeded in fulfilling the promise of the public schools...
...Mark Green's Winning Back America has nary a word about public schools...
...These solutions are seldom heard amidst the hand-wringing and displays of public concern that attend most discussions of the "plight of the public schools...
...The model for most of these changes, if you haven't guessed by now, is the institution liberals often denigrate in public but turn to as parents: the private schools...
...Talk to teachers about the education courses they were forced to take and the thoughtful ones invariably will describe the various "mickey mouse" courses that would tax the patience of even the dullest of students...
Vol. 14 • June 1982 • No. 4
