By Paul D. White | Op-Ed in the Long Beach Press-Telegram | http://bit.ly/yOTBCg
| smf: This Op-ed appeared in the March 4th Sunday Daily News and was referred to but not included in the March 4th 4LAKids e-newsletter and blog because it wasn’t available online . I agrre with some but not all of of Mr. Whites Premise.
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Posted: 03/04/2012 03:01:43 PM PST :: NO education reform article I've ever read accurately identified the two real stumbling blocks to improving our K-12 school system. The reason is because almost all of them are written by school administrators - not teachers.
Our schools are melting down - academically and morally - for two simple reasons that (contrary to what you're told) have almost nothing to do with teacher quality or a lack of funding: Ineffective leadership at all levels and a refusal to hold parents accountable for their children's behavior.
That's it.
These two areas are the source of every single thing that's wrong with our nation's schools.
School leaders would have you believe that public education's failure is totally due to ineffective teaching. But their endless attempts to lay full blame on inadequate teachers, teacher training programs, tenure, nonspecific curriculum, etc., are nothing but camouflage blather, used to distract the public from the real causes of this problem.
This problem starts at the top, with the U.S secretary of education.
The education secretary is the symbolic head of all K-12 schools in the United States. Secretary Arne Duncan, like most of his predecessors in the 33 year history of this position, has never taught a single contract day of K-12 education in his life.
Re-read that last sentence, and think about it for a moment.
The Bar Association is always headed by an attorney. The American Medical Association is always headed by physicians. The Federal Aviation Administration is run by pilots.
But our schools? Our nation's most critical training ground for our country's future are lead by individuals who arrogantly believe that no firsthand teaching experience is necessary for their job. And we wonder why federal school reform ideas don't work?
The school leadership crisis and hypocrisy worsens at the local level. Superintendents and principals profess how much they "value the contribution" and want to "upgrade the professionalism" of teaching as a career. They repeatedly (and rightfully) claim that "teaching is the most difficult and most valuable job in education."
And then they turn around and pay their teachers 2 to 3½ times less than they pay themselves.
Contrary to what you're told, most teachers do have new and creative ideas for how to improve schools and student learning, and they want to implement them. But when they suggest these ideas to their principals, they're usually turned down because of the principals' and superintendents' fear of the second cause of school failure: refusal to hold parents accountable for their children's behavior.
Well-parented, respectful children who come to school each day motivated to learn are the minority and are rapidly disappearing. Every day teachers are crammed into a 900- square-foot box with 35 to 40 students who are increasingly: behaviorally incorrigible; under the influence of drugs or alcohol; texting incessantly and/or sleeping; and for whom working to get a world-class education is the lowest priority in their lives.
Yet amazingly, there are still countless teachers who want to tackle this challenge and make schools work again.
Teachers want to create good learning environments and are willing to stand up to chronic troublemakers and remove them from class. But principals and superintendents make teachers keep these students rather than confront ineffective parents and tell them that the behavior they've allowed in their children is not acceptable in school. Emboldened by administrative cowardice, parents continue to avoid responsibility for their children's behavior by bullying school leaders with claims of "unfairness" or "discrimination" and threats of irresponsible lawsuits.
Teachers want to create high-interest, relevant lessons that would engage their students. But principals rarely allow them because, again, they fear standing up to parents who believe that anything that offends their extremist views should not be taught to anyone.
So where does this situation leave the future of our education system? School exits are jammed with early-retiring, effective teachers who still love their profession and want to keep practicing it. But the combination of huge classes, unruly children, irresponsible parents and weak, non-supportive administrators are making the job impossible.
And the teachers getting hired are those who are willing to accept outrageous amounts of abuse from students, parents and administrators. Only those who are wiling to accept annual pay cuts to already minimal salaries and the ultimate loss of tenure need apply. And when tenure is eliminated, teachers will never be able to speak out against these injustices, without risking immediate termination and being unhirable in any other district.
How can we fix this problem? What is the best, quickest way to reform our schools? Since we're talking about education, let's make it a multiple choice test:
A) We can continue to blame the problem on America's 7.2 million teachers, or
B) We can start terminating the 20,000 principals and superintendents whose leadership, theories and practices brought us to this crisis. We can replace them with leaders who will recruit, support and not be intimidated by strong, creative teachers.
If we choose try B (and what do we have to lose?) it's not too late to turn our nation's classrooms into the life-transforming learning centers we need.
Paul White is a career teacher who co-founded the West Valley Leadership Academy in Canoga Park. He's also the author of "White's Rules: Saving Our Youth, One Kid At A Time" and "The Eureka Learning Academy Student Handbook."
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