A Washington Post editorial says that the reform movement
doesn’t listen enough to teachers and principals who spend the most time
in schools and classrooms.
Is the primary motivation behind the school reform movement
financial? asks Carol Burris in an editorial for the Washington Post. A
recent commercial released by former Washington D.C’s chancellor of
public schools Michelle Rhee, claims that public schools trying to
compete in the new academic marketplace is akin to a couch potato trying
to stack up against Olympic athletes. Now Burris, the principal of the
South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, along with Harry
Leonadartos, who is the principal of Clarkstown High School North in
Rockland County, are asking if the derision often heaped on traditional
public schools by eduction reform advocates is a good way to motivate them to improve.
The education system in the U.S. is in trouble, but it isn’t in the kind of trouble that appears suddenly and out of nowhere.
In truth, while we and others see daunting and unfilled needs in many schools, there has not been a sharp and sudden decline in student performance as is being implied, and in fact scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — sometimes referred to as the nation’s educational report card — are higher than ever before.
Still, it’s hard to escape from an impression that schools have
suddenly and drastically imploded. The answer could lie in the fact that
there’s a vast potential market to be tapped — if only enough panic
about the state of America’s education could be inspired. That is why,
while Rupert Murdoch is trying to position his company, News
Corporation, to take advantage of what he estimates to be a $500 billion
market. His publications in New York and elsewhere dedicate a
prodigious amount of space to criticizing the quality of schools and
educators.
The idea that public schools are doing poorly is hard to square with
results from surveys that show parents giving high marks to their local
schools while at the same time having a low opinion of public schools in
general. Is the disconnect there because parents can’t reconcile their
opinion of the school their children are enrolled in to what they’ve
been told is the state of public schools around the country?
And if public school reform really is needed as badly as has been
claimed, wouldn’t it make sense to give a voice in the direction of that
reform to the people who spend the time in actual schools and the
classrooms? Principals and teachers should have an opportunity to weigh
in too, says the editorial’s authors — but they’re frequently left out
of the loop.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo won his election in large part because
of his promise to reform the state’s education system. As promised,
within the year of taking office, Cuomo’s Education Commission held a
hearing in New York City, inviting stakeholders to weigh in on the slate
of proposals to improve the quality of New York’s schools. Despite the
promise of a forum, it turned out to be problematic:
Prior to the time and place of the meeting being posted, both of us sent a request to testify on the topic of teacher and principal quality. As high school principals, we are deeply concerned about the direction of the Regents reform agenda, especially in regard to evaluating teachers using test scores. We were joined by an outstanding New York City high school principal and two teachers from South Side High School. Both teachers had submitted requests to speak, one sending that request and her remarks weeks in advance.
We were not allowed to speak.
