CER Guest Editorial
by Jeanne Allen, President
The Center for Education Reform
Investor's Business Daily, September 5, 1996
Back to school is a sentimental time for many of us with school-age children. But most kids will not be heading to schools that have the academic rigor that we expect or that our children need.
Indeed, few of us hear much on the war now going on among policy leaders as to what the character of the schools will or should be.
For most kids, school will mean business as usual. There will be no real response to the great demand that they perform better, no markedly different consequences if they fail or succeed -and no real change in the way government treats teachers, or in how school boards treat members or principals.
Consider a few events that ring in the new school year:
A judge ordered the nation's capital to keep six schools closed for health, safety and fire-code violations. That forced hundreds of students into makeshift classrooms. The district government says it can't pay for repairs, yet dozens more schools are at risk of electrical failure and fire if winter weather turns rough.
What happened to the nearly $10,000 spent each year on every child in the Washington schools? Isn't that meant to provide, in part, precisely the assurance that buildings are safe and secure? The money certainly is not being spent on world-class textbooks, teacher training or the best instruction money can buy: D.C.'s dropout rate is nearly 50%.
The stars at this summer's American Federation of Teachers convention were actor Richard Dreyfuss, Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., and Vice President Al Gore - none a leader in education. At the same time, the AFT decried the charter school movement, saying it supports this valuable reform only if the new schools are forced to play by the same red tape that shackles other public schools.
The Hartford, Conn., teachers union, an affiliate of the National Education Association, went to court to fight the city's plan to tie small bonuses to performance for principals and teachers. The union's court brief claims, ''Independent research has never found a link between teachers and student achievement.''
The people of California woke up one morning to learn that their children's reading-test scores had fallen to 49th among the 50 states (behind just Mississippi). Why? Phonics - the most basic key to teaching kids to read - had not just been discouraged, but banned from most classrooms because of so-called research that favored a different approach, ''whole language.'' The answer? The Golden State has set about the unwieldy task of retraining thousands of teachers to use both phonics and whole language.
Many in charge of our schools don't face these sobering realities. There's a whole cottage industry of professors-turned-entrepreneurs amassing fortunes by telling hordes of education bureaucrats just what they want to hear - that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, everything is OK and the education establishment deserves a big pat on the back.
Can we really afford to hide our heads in the sand because our own children seem to be doing well, their school seems rather pleasant, our best friend is on the PTA and Joey looks so gosh-darn cute in his new Dockers shorts?
No, we can't. Parents of the '90s need to take a page from the activists of the '60s and begin to question authority. They must not just ask but demand to know: Where is the money going? What is the plan of action to bring all kids up to speed? What are the options?
In places where that is happening, communities are beginning to see glimmers of hope:
The number of states with laws allowing charter schools is now 26. In just 12 states, more than 77,000 children will attend 400-plus charter schools this fall.
The fight for school choice for poor parents rages on, led by parents no longer willing to send their children to failing public schools. Courts upheld the constitutionality of Cleveland's program, opening up better, private education to some 2,000 disadvantaged children. Another court stopped Milwaukee from adding parochial schools to its program - but that sparked more than a million dollars in private donations to help the city's children escape the public schools. Several states, led by Arizona and Florida, are hard at work to develop and implement real academic standards. Virginia has already done so.
These are only glimmers of hope -small victories against a vast set of problems. And for these points of light to burst into bright rays of hope, more parents from across the social and economic spectrum must demand that more be done to meet the educational needs of all of America's children.
Apathy is what got us here. Only activism will get us out.
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Jeanne Allen is author of THE SCHOOL REFORM HANDBOOK: How to Improve Your Schools, and president of The Center for Education Reform in Washington, DC, a national non-profit advocacy group providing support and guidance to thousands of individuals and communities nationwide who are working to bring fundamental reforms to their schools. For more information, please call (202) 822-9000 or (800) 521-2118, or send e-mail to cer@edreform.com.