IN THE NEWS
On Teacher Certification · On Charters and Change · On Charters and Choice
On the Union Merger · On Academic Standards and Testing  · On Teacher Contracts

Newspapers around the country shed light on what educator groups, citizens and policy makers are doing and thinking on the issues.

ON TEACHER CERTIFICATION, FROM:

The Seattle Times: “In Massachusetts, more than half of 1,800 would-be teachers flunked a literacy test — a test rated as ‘about the eighth- grade level’ by state Board of Ed. Chair. John Silber. It wasn’t just the number of failures as much as it was how they failed. There were misspellings worthy of 9-year-olds, an inability to describe nouns and verbs, and failure to define words such as ‘imminent.’ Most of the blaming fingers point to teachers colleges, which often fail to attract the brightest students or assure they master the basics of subjects they are to teach. Said ... Diane Ravitch, ‘Today in some states, it may be harder to graduate from high school than to become a certified teacher.’” (7/6/98)

The Boston Globe: “Some of Massachusetts’ best- known colleges had among the highest failure rates on the new teacher certification test... In response, the disappointed schools vowed to revamp their curriculum.” (7/24/98)

The Washington Post: “Nearly half of 2,500 aspiring Massachusetts teachers failed the latest round of teacher certification exams, marking a slight improvement over a previous test that sparked public outrage and led to calls for drastic education reform...Roughly 700 individuals were repeat test-takers in July...Of those, 145 took the entire test again because they failed all three sections in April; only nine managed to pass on the second try. [Education commissioner] Driscoll indicated that the ‘extraordinary public attention’ paid to the previous high failure rate may have led July candidates to take the test more seriously while dissuading others, who thought they could not pass, from retaking the exam.” (8/11/98)

The Boston Globe: “...The central university standards — admission scores and grade- point average —have been lightening rods for attack since 1996, when a Dept. of Education survey revealed that some state students studying to become teachers had combined scores as low as 642 on the 1,600-point SAT exam. In the years since, in an effort to improve standards, basic entrance requirements have been elevated at many Mass. schools. Minimum grade-point-averages - ranging from 2.5 to 3.0, depending on the school and the degree program - are also in place in almost all undergraduate and graduate education programs, according to area deans. (7/2/98)

And The Daily Oklahoman: “Reform of Oklahoma’s teacher certification program should include further expansion of alternative certification in areas where there is presently the greatest need, including science, foreign language, music and math education...State Superintendent of Public Instruction Sandy Garrett noted that of 2,542 degrees granted at 21 Oklahoma public and private colleges of education, 1,113 were in elementary ed. This has triggered an oversupply of certified elementary teachers, while feeding a major shortfall in core subjects.” (8/4/98)

The Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal: “...Milwaukee Public schools Superintendent Alan Brown’s proposal is late in another way, too. For several years MPS has had the authority to set up charter schools, but it exercised that authority only once. The failure of MPS to grant charters prompted the state to give...City Hall the authority to do so. Thus, a credibility problem hobbles Brown’s 11th-hour pledge that MPS will set up charter[s].

        “Such schools hold much promise for reforming urban public education, whose performance is hurt by too much central control and red tape. Charter schools are autonomous, and they are answerable for results, not the minutuae involved in how they achieved those results. To justify his call for a delay, Brown says the city-sponsored charter schools would force MPS to raise taxes by as much as $4.88 million. Is he setting up charter schools as fall guys for higher taxes? The schools shouldn’t lead to that big a tax hike, city and state officials note. The chief reason the school system lacks more charter schools is the opposition of the powerful Milwaukee Teachers’ Association. The union claims it supports MPS-sponsored charter schools, but its actions belie its words. It has tied up in court the sole grant of a charter by MPS, to Highland Community School. That’s support?... The MTEA filed suit challenging the law granting city government the authority to hand out charters.” (7/24/98)

The Denver Post : “Charter schools frequently operate on an abundance of enthusiasm but a shortage of capital. To help overcome that obstacle, lawmakers approved tax-exempt bonds for charters — a big money-saving device with financing options previously out of reach. The Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority has two bond sales headed to market — $3.2 million for the new Wyatt-Edison Charter School in Denver and $3.6 million for the 1-year-old Liberty Community Charter School in Fort Collins...” (7/6/98)

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “Maumelle’s (Ark.) city directors got the news they’d been hoping for Monday night — their constituents want them to bring a charter school to town. A phone survey of 433 adults, mostly Maumelle residents... showed more than 85 percent support the idea of a charter school...The city directors commissioned the survey in March at the recommendation of the city’s School Task Force, which has been meeting since summer to discuss how to improve educational opportunities in Maumelle. [They] agreed that a charter could be the answer but the city directors wanted to gauge public support before taking any steps...task force members will focus on three areas: determining in more detail what residents would want from a charter school; working with state legislators to relax Arkansas’ regulations governing such schools; and conducting ‘town meetings’ on the subject. (6/2/98)

The Raleigh News and Observer: “Charter schools are making members of the [NC] State Board of Education uneasy... Some members see behind the swelling numbers of charter school students in North Carolina a right-wing conspiracy...Other s see black families embrace the charter concept and worry that public schools may become balkanized into homogeneous cells.

        “Coming to grips is difficult because the State Board represents a hierarchical approach to schools that stresses uniform statewide standards, and, despite professions to the contrary, has a low tolerance for idiosyncrasy. A statewide system dominated by a centralized bureaucracy in Raleigh is naturally made nervous by the idea of self-invented, self-governing schools.

        “NC will have more than 60 charter schools operating in the fall, with a combined enrollment of 10,000. Existing legislation authorizes 100 charter schools; some lawmakers are eager to remove the quota after one year of experience.” (7/19/98)

William Raspberry, syndicated columnist: “If I find myself slowly morphing into a supporter of charter schools or vouchers, it isn’t because I harbor any illusions that there’s something magical about these alternatives. It is because I am increasingly doubtful that the public schools can do (or at any rate will do) what is necessary to educate poor minority children.

        “I hasten to say that a lot of public schools do manage to educate these youngsters... But most don’t. And the people who run the schools and school systems can’t seem to figure out why. Oh, I hear what they say. They need more money, or more parental involvement, or newer facilities. And while they are saying it, the involved parents of the children they are failing are doing whatever they can to transfer their kids to schools with less money, shabbier facilities — and markedly better success rates.

        “I’d rather support the efforts of the public schools to be more successful...The problem is, so few of them seem to be making a consistent effort to improve... A year ago, I talked to Sandra Feldman... president of the [AFT]...She was so certain that she knew how to improve the schools — and how to enlist the cooperation of parents and teachers in the process — that she would take over a floundering public school and set it on a solid academic course. No extra money, no new facilities — only the permission of the local union, the willingness of the local staff to try and the benign support of the Gen. Becton, then... superintendent of the D.C. schools.

        “I called Becton to make sure he was aboard. He was, and would convey the offer to a meeting of school principals. And sure enough, he did. He told [them] that any one of them who wanted to take Feldman up on her offer was free to do so. It was at that same meeting that he announced [that] any principal found to be failing would be fired. Naturally nobody volunteered.

        “Feldman won’t like this, but her proposal, and the self-confidence behind it, echoes the conclusion that is driving the growing support of charter schools and vouchers: If the public schools aren’t getting it done, many parents are saying, then give us the authority (charters) or the money (vouchers) to do it ourselves.

        “...Didn’t the public schools used to teach poor and minority children?...A generation or two ago, it was enough to do OK in school - to learn to read, write and do sums — and be willing to work hard. With no more qualification than that, young people could find work, support their families and live a reasonably good life. Now, when it takes a good deal more than that to be successful, thousands of our children are getting a good deal less. (6/30/98)

The Louisiana Times – Picayune: “The ideal of public education is not ‘under attack,’ no matter what the teacher unions say...It’s true that Congress, state legislatures and think tanks are humming these days with talk about vouchers, charter schools... What underlies this talk, though, isn’t an irrational, exogenous hatred of public education, but an anxiety about whether our public schools are adequate to prepare children for an economy that places a premium on academic achievement. This anxiety is informed by years of disappointing standardized-test results and some educators’ kill-the-messenger denunciations of those tests... This is the context surrounding the proposed [teacher union] merger...

        "The perception that local school boards, state education officials and the U.S. Department of Education cave in to union demands at the expense of student performance forms no small part of the present apprehension about public schools...

        “What a merger will do is silence the intellectual rivalry that has been the unions’ biggest contribution to public education. Historically, the NEA has taken a more expansive view of which national issues are education issues, while the AFT has been a stronger advocate of nationwide academic standards and less enthusiastic about pedagogical trends.

        “At a time when politics is increasingly a war of ideas and parents are apt to judge schools by the results they produce, it’s ironic that the unions are proposing to trade the benefits of intellectual competition for the questionable power to defend their turf.” (7/4/98)

ON ACADEMIC STANDARDS AND TESTING, from:

The New York Times: "The percentage of New York City public-school children who passed this year’s state reading exam fell sharply from last year... The test, which measures minimum competency in reading, is given annually to third, sixth and eighth graders. The percentage of the city’s third graders who passed this year slipped by more than four points to 64.7 percent; last year, 68.9 percent of third graders passed the test, while 64.1 percent passed the previous year. (8/14/98)

The Education Intelligence Agency's Communiqué: “Teacher contract negotiations in Middletown, NJ, have gotten so turbulent that the union bought billboards and newspaper advertising to advise prospective home buyers to avoid the area.” (8/3/98)

Click here to read the rest of the CER Monthly Letter to Friends, Back-to-School 1998.

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