Regarding the first problem, John Taylor Gatto, in his book, The Underground History of American Education (free online at johntaylorgatto.com) makes a good case that schools are simply social vehicles used to funnel children into their “proper” places in society. He quotes Woodrow Wilson (in a January 9, 1909 address to the New York City High School Teachers’ Association):

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education, and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.

And when he said “a very much larger class”, he wasn’t kidding: about one percent become the movers and shakers, the Titans of industry and leaders of society. Another five or six percent become the props for the Titans: the lawyers, politicians, bankers, professionals, etc. The rest of the ninety-three or so percent become the mid-level managers, the drones, and the consumers of the Titans’ stuff and the followers of whatever plan happens to be on the table for the convenience of the “leaders”.

Oversimplification, of course, and okay, so maybe everyone didn’t want to be a Henry Ford or a Rockefeller; maybe they didn’t mind working a crummy, thankless, uninspiring job if the pay was decent and they had some kind of retirement benefits. But with jobs going overseas and retirement accounts being raided, things have changed in this particular century…

As for the second problem: studies show that children of lower socio-economic status (SES) are punished twice–once socially for being poor, and second intellectually and academically for not conforming to the “bell-curve” model inherent in our tests (even the criterion-, rather than norm-referenced tests), in which the test becomes a self-referencing sort of IQ exam. As a matter of fact, most children above a certain socio-economic status could probably stay home and watch cartoons, and get just as good a grade on the end-of-year assessment as they do from sitting in the classroom.

In order to solve this problem, research shows that our curriculum, instruction and assessment must be aligned. And even the children who are above-average SES, aren’t really as smart as we might like to think they are. We are generally a mediocre district in a mediocre state, in a mediocre nation. Statistics show that the students who graduate from even our best high schools often have trouble in college, need remediation, drop out, and perform poorly on other crucial indicators.

What do we really want for our students? Don’t we want them to be informed, responsible, accomplished people? Well, it seems that we do and we don’t. Even though the “Nation at Risk”, then Goals 2000, then NCLB says that we MUST make our expectations clear and measurable, our district, our state and our nation still don’t have a comprehensive curriculum, instruction and assessment program–not even one we could use or not use as a model if we so chose, since everyone is so adamant about local authority. We’re all waiting for someone else to do it. Meanwhile, to use a culinary example, we let some expert tell us we should plan to teach the kids how to bake a cherry pie, then spend billions teaching them to make tuna salad sandwiches, then the state tests them on whether or not they can make clam chowder. Oh, and then the job market is heavy on how to grill a salmon.

The problem is really more complex than that, but a statewide alignment (in which the planning, instruction and assessment work seamlessly with each other), along with a model program for local districts to chose or not chose to implement, would go a long way toward building a solid foundation for future work. We look around and ask, what should our standards be, how do we get there, how do we know when/if we get there? No one knows, because it’s a lot of hard, thankless work, kind of like cooking for three days to prepare a Thanksgiving meal that people eat in fifteen minutes! But you know what? People have been, and are now being, paid to do just this work of cohesive planning, instruction and assessment, but THEY’RE NOT ACTUALLY DOING IT! Why should they, if no one holds their feet to the fire?

As it stands, our children fail, not because they’re stupid, but because the adults in the children’s lives, the “educators”, the business community, the parents–none of us give a flying you-know-what about getting serious about what we want for the students. The “educators” get a paycheck, the parents get free baby-sitting, some of the community gets to participate in some kind of minimal way to make themselves feel better for a little while (and maybe get a tax write-off). There’s just too much invested in “things as they are”, to do much about “things as they should be”.

I’m not criticizing teachers–I’m criticizing everyone. If we truly love and respect our children, we would take some time to do the hard work that is required to properly plan, instruct and assess for success. Until then, the rest is just throwing money down a rat hole.

And for those of you who think that your student or your district is doing pretty darn well, thank you very much? Well, give it a few years until the true impact of globalization hits your child and/or grandchildren. A former spokesperson for a high-tech industry based in Missouri, says that out of a thousand high-status, high-paying jobs, only one hundred fifty could be filled by American workers, and eight hundred fifty went to foreign workers. Our American workers weren’t even in the ballpark when it came to the technology.

Nancy Merrill Sayed

Good knee jerk reaction to lower the comparison bar. That’s what got KCMO schools in the toilet in the first place.

Heaven forbid, KCMO compare themselves to a school district somewhere else that actually educates kids rather than pay bureaucrats and union heads.

Depending on how a distict catergorizes such things, counselors, social workers, resource officers and the like may fall in “administrative” costs. Urban schools spend a greater percentage on these services than suburban schools.

Just us little-people’s “bad” habits….

-Groucho