In order to gain a full education, students need to be exposed to a variety of viewpoints and educational ideas, not just those of their erudite parents! Case closed! If you are convinced homeschooling is best, check out the following: ActiveParenting.com, Common Sense Parenting at BoysTownPress.org, HomeSchoolingParent.com, The Hurried Child by David Elkind, and Allow Your Children to Fail If You Want Them to Succeed by Avril Beckford.
Respectfully,
David A. Hancock
Chester resident
THE PLAIN DEALER: LETTER TO THE EDITOR
TOO MANY ADMINISTRATORS AND NOT ENOUGH TEACHERS
I really had to chuckle when I read the editorial, “Grading New Teachers” (PD May 22, 2000). The question asked was, “What do supervisors—principals and superintendents—say about their teaching skills?” It needs to be pointed out that administrators in general do not have many years of classroom experience. During my thirty-two years of classroom teaching experience, I have only known one administrator with more than five years of classroom teaching experience. Most administrators (most will not admit it) who were fortunate enough with connections—and known as the sycophants—could not wait to escape the classroom.
In 1960, classroom teachers made up two-thirds of the full-time staff of American schools. By 1991, classroom teachers barely made up half of the full-time employees of American education; nonteaching staff had risen from 25 percent to 47 percent in three decades. Between 1960 and 1984 (A Nation at Risk alarm, remember?), local school districts increased their spending on administration and other nonteaching functions by 107 percent after inflation—a rate almost twice the increase in per pupil instructional expenses. During the same period, the proportion of money spent on teachers’ salaries in elementary and secondary education fell from more than 56 percent to less than 41 percent, according to a fact sheet from Education Digest.
A remarkable number of people are being added to the payrolls of public education, none of whom have anything to do with teaching students in the regular classroom. They are guidance counselors, curriculum specialists, psychologists, deputy superintendents, assistant / associate superintendents, coordinators, in-service staff, professional development personnel, etc.
The eminent lawyer Gerry Spence refers to these individuals as the “miscreants of the corporate oligarchy.” This scenario also infers the pernicious-elitism factor. There are many examples of public school systems that double central administration when the number of students decreases.
I have found it to be very interesting to observe that once these people go from the classroom to administration, they tend to become idealistic bosses with the elitist halo-effect behavior. If we could read their minds, it would be similar to, God, I’m so happy and grateful that I am not in a classroom trying to manage twenty-five students. Many just peek in by the door for a few seconds.
Despite all this nonsensical nonsense, education bureaucrats have continued to relentlessly push for increases in the missions of the schools—expansions that would result in further escalation of noninstructional hiring and spending. I have observed this many times during my thirty-two years of classroom teaching experience—certified classroom teachers being appointed to nonclassroom positions. Personally, I think that noncertified personnel (staff assistants) could be placed in these positions. It would definitely save a copious amount of money.
I think Lee Iacocca said it best when he said, “In a perfect world, teachers would be paid the most, and everyone else would be paid less.”
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
It’s Up to You
Personal responsibility is out of fashion these days, but in Shaker Heights, it’s imperative that African-American students revive it in the district’s quest to raise the achievements of its minority population.
Last week, a subcommittee of Project Achieve released a list of sixteen suggestions on how to raise the achievement levels of minority students. It follows on the heels of the controversial article in the Shakerite, the student newspaper at Shaker Heights High School, that claimed that African-American students weren’t achieving as well as their white counterparts.
Raising the achievement scores will require the district to refine its teaching methods, offer remedial work, and encourage minority students to take more advanced-placement classes. It will require it to encourage minority students to be all they can be.
But it will also require cooperation of the students and their parents. Too many students admit that grades take a back seat to socializing. Too many said they didn’t aim for honors classes because those classes were predominantly white. If so, they are only sabotaging themselves.
African-American students have an opportunity to show the district, the city, and the nation just what they can do.
The Shaker schools are excellent. Students are fortunate to be there. Teachers are dedicated. Classrooms are well equipped. All the African-American programs, Black History programs, and other extracurricular events may bolster black pride, but they won’t bolster grade-point average. Only students, teachers, parents, and administrators, working together, can do that by taking academics seriously.
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Outside “Experts” Know Nothing About Education
To the editor:
It’s that time of the year again. Time for all the demagoguery about public school proficiency tests and education standards from the standardistos (media, pundits, politicians, corporate leaders) who are gushing forth from state boards of education.
Most of this nonsense has a lot in common with septic tanks, says Susan Ohanian in her enlightening book One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards.
Ohanian points out several sanctimonious examples of obfuscations about the invasion of almost-unattainable education expectations and standards.
It’s really getting bad in Atlanta were (stuporintendent?) Superintendent of Schools Benjamin O. Canada defends the elimination of recess because “we are intent on improving academic performance. You don’t do that by having kids hanging on monkey bars.”
Ohanian responds, “This is monkey business. Treating a kindergartener like a robot or Wall Street broker-in-training cannot help.”
For us classroom teachers today, standards are pretty low on the list of things that concern and irritate us. Higher-up are squirrely, uncooperative, resistant, passive, apathetic, indifferent, and there are low–self-motivated students and pushy parents. There is also a lack of administrative support, administrative harassment of teachers, and unsatisfactory environmental conditions.
Isn’t it about time to tell the standardistos to “sit down and shut up” (sounds like corpulent Governor Christie) shut up? It seems like everybody is supposed to learn everything. The sad part is that when students are taught everything, they don’t learn much of anything. But standardistos believe that teachers teach and students learn. However, students don’t necessarily learn what teachers teach.
Standardistos don’t talk about how boring school is for most students. Most adults probably could not sit quietly and go through the assembly-line, factory-model maze for one day without feeling like one of B. F. Skinner’s pigeons. They would probably need Ritalin.
Ohanian asked 108 California teachers, “What do you think of the nation’s education standards?” Not one has seen them. Their attitude is the attitude of teachers nationwide. This too will pass. One teacher said in despair, “Why don’t they just build jails next to the schools?” Interesting idea. Since 1980, California colleges and universities have downsized eight thousand jobs. The state’s prisons have upsized by 112,000 inmates and 26,000 guards; plus, it seems that public schools are becoming part-time orphanages.
Ohanian discusses Louis V. Gerstner. In 1993, he went from being CEO of RJR Nabisco to becoming CEO of IBM. He got a signing bonus of $4,924,596 plus
a generous stock package (around $21 million). She states that in his 1994 book Reinventing Education, Gerstner blames teachers for not producing an increasing supply of “world-class workers,” which he claims IBM needs. But soon after receiving his signing bonus, Gerstner fired 90,000 of IBM’s 270,000 employees—the same kind of highly-trained workers he insists the schools aren’t producing. Yet his stockholders love him. IBM’s market capitalization is up $70 billion, Ohanian writes.
She also notes that while American corporations are sending jobs to foreign climes with low wages, they are demanding the schools save American business from the threat of foreign economies. “Corporate life is rather mindboggling [sic] in its greed,” she notes.
Nobody gets rich worrying about children. But the 1996 Congress gave the Pentagon $9 billion more than it requested while cutting $54 billion from child nutrition programs. Fortune 500 businesses and the Pentagon do not have to resort to bake sales or collecting cash register receipts to buy equipment they need.
Ohanian writes that it doesn’t matter that standards ignore the needs of children and sell teachers short. Standardistos move ahead with the education-reform plans dreamed up in corporate board rooms and conservative think tanks. The standards apply to all students, regardless of their experiences, capabilities, learning differences, interests, or ambitions.
She concludes, “These standardistos’ statements [sic] prove a major tenet of education: If you’re sure you know the solution, you are part of the problem.”
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Students Must Be Responsible
To the editor:
Before we criticize, let’s answer two questions:
Is the medical establishment responsible for your health if you misuse or abuse alcohol, tobacco, and drugs (acquiring emphysema, lung cancer, cirrhosis, etc)?
Is the educational establishment responsible for your learning if you avoid studying and participating in the educational process (i.e., failing proficiency tests)?
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
The writer is a teacher at Heights High School.
Poor Expectations Explain a Lot
To the editor:
Let’s settle some nonsense right now.
John Ogbu, a cultural anthropologist, has done a careful study of the origins of human competence in different countries. Each country had easily identified minority members regarded as outcasts. These outcasts were systematically denied full participation in society. After so many years of harsh repression, such outcast minorities learned their lesson. No matter how hard they worked in school, their future opportunity was extremely limited.
Ogbu’s point is that the apparent failure of minority students to complete their schooling (e.g., the high school dropout rate for American Indians is more than 90 percent) has been a functional adaption of reality.
As educators, we need to become particularly sensitive to the motivation issue. We can remind parents and teachers that their attitude can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and that no relationship exists among ability, effort, and ethnicity.
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Behavior Shows What Kids Learn at Home, Not School
To the editor:
Powell Caesar’s “Perspectives” column (The Sun Press, Oct. 28, “School District’s Best Public Relations Is Its Students”) was an exemplary example of a sardonic diatribe and first-degree demagoguery. Students’ rudeness, crudeness, profanity, and rowdiness, etc., reflects peer groups much more than school. Believe me, I can say without a doubt that students do not learn these behaviors in our classrooms.
Instead of education personnel telling (encouraging) the students to be on their best behavior (which we do), how about reminding parents to tell their children to be on their best behavior going to and from school (which I’m sure most do). I observe many adults who exhibit the behaviors that Caesar is writing about.
Here we go again, blaming the school for student misbehavior. The school’s primary mission and responsibility is education, instruction, and counseling. We all know what the primary responsibilities of the parents are.
I would like to know when the last time was that Caesar was physically in a Cleveland Heights-University Heights school building. Probably not too recently. I invite Caesar to visit Wiley and look around and see firsthand what is going on (Discover Your Schools’ Day).
Caesar is jumping to conclusions and being very judgmental in his perceptions about the correlation between school and behavior. It’s unfortunate, but studies show that 85 percent of what humans think about is negative.
The biggest problem we face with our students is apathy and indifference as well as the apathy of parents who are too busy making a living, parents who just can’t be reached, parents who support the school but the behavior never changes, and parents who refuse to accept the reality that their son or daughter has a problem and blames the school. There is no ABC approach to dealing with human behavior.
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Teachers Should Teach, Not Be Social Workers
To the editor:
A letter in another publication by a teacher in the Cleveland Public School District (“Do School Officials Want Teachers to Give Up?”), along with disturbing photographs inside a few schools, reminded me of Jonathan Kozol’s book Savage Inequalities. We never see this kind of degradation in hospitals, malls, and government buildings, but it seems to be OK to have conditions of squalor in many schools.
Society wants public schools to be all-purpose institutions. Teachers who thought they were hired to teach subject matter are instead asked to be social workers, moms, dads, therapists, cops, nutritionists, public health workers, medical technicians, psychologists, counselors, and perhaps, in the opinion of some students, jailers.
Phillip C. Schlechty, author of Inventing Better Schools: An Action Plan for Educational Reform, said it best: “Schools are not welfare agencies, hospitals, juvenile detention centers or psychological treatment centers. They are educational institutions with the singular purpose of ensuring that all children have school work they can and will do and from which they develop the understandings, skills and insights that are considered important to them and to the culture and society in which they will live.”
To paraphrase Dick Feagler in a past column, Where does our school’s responsibility for your life and education stop and yours (the individuals’) begin?
This is ultimately the “great human question.”
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
The writer is a nature studies science teacher at Cleveland Heights High School.
The Brain behind Bush’s Speeches Is Not His Own
To the editor:
I hope everyone realizes that 90 percent of George W’s speeches come from the brains of his advisers, not his own brain. Also, all his demagoguery about education standards and testing ad infinitum, ad nauseam, doesn’t make him an education president. Why? Here are a few quotes from W:
•“Is our children learning?” (from a speech on Jan. 11, 2000, in Grand Rapids, Michigan; quoted in a book of the same title by Paul Begala).
•“Higher education in not my priority [sic]” (San Antonio Express News, March 22, 1998).
•“Laura and I sometimes don’t realize how bright our children is until we get an objective analysis” (Meet the Press, April 15, 2000).
As Begala states in his book, “It is ironic that a guy who was a crummy student and boasts of his anti-intellectual grievances should choose education as his top issue.” He went to Andover, Yale, and Harvard with a 550 SAT verbal. This must be OK because Bill Bradley became a senator with an embarrassing 480, and Al Gore flunked out of college and became vice president.
Marian Wright Edelman is correct: “Y
ou can get all As and still flunk life.”
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Students, Not Teachers, Hold Key to Learning Process
To the editor:
After reading Susan B. Ketchum’s article (The Sun Press, Sept. 14, “National Certificates Hard to Earn”) about the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, I couldn’t wait to get a pen in hand and start writing.
“About 800 Ohio teachers have earned National Board certification. What does that mean to the average citizen?” It means that those 800 teachers—just one of every 135 teachers in Ohio—have proven they are at the top of their profession (by the way, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook 2000 labels teachers, nurses, social workers, and librarians as semiprofessionals), and the students in those classrooms will get a quality education for that year.
Great. What about the other 107,000 Ohio teachers? Does that mean their students do not receive a quality education? What does quality mean? What about the future years of students? For the teachers who choose to attain National Board certification (which seems to be more appealing to younger teachers with less than twenty years experience), I say good for them and congratulations.
Personally, a $2,500 annual stipend for ten years is not enough to externally motivate the overwhelming majority of classroom teachers (especially those with more than twenty years experience). There are just too many hoops to jump through that require an average of 120 hours to complete. Make it $10,000/year, and now you’re talking. I may even consider it with thirty-two years of experience. A much better incentive is teachers being able to retire at any age with thirty years of experience with 66 percent of your average highest three-year’s salary (e.g. $62,000, 28th year; $64,000, 29th year; and $66,000, 30th, master’s degree plus equals $64,000 × 0.66 equals $42,240). However, the State Teachers Retirement System has increased the incentive to 35 years at 87.5 percent. This is much more appealing to teachers with thirty-plus years of experience. National Board certification is not given much thought.
The Diary of a Mad Public School Teacher Page 6