My hometown of Los Angeles – that well-known epicenter of hypocrisy – is a place where the vast majority of its traditionally liberal upper middle class ritually supports the State Teachers Union at the polls, but wouldn’t dream of sending their children to the public schools where its members teach. Everyone knows those schools (with a few exceptions) are wretched, yet hardly anyone seems willing to break with tradition, even though private school tuitions are rapidly heading north of thirty thousand per annum, leaving all but the extremely wealthy in their wakes. Soon enough the best schools will be havens of the mega-rich, with students in two hundred dollar designer jeans, arriving in Porsches, etc., leavened only by a handful of scholarship-students-of-color chosen, literally and figuratively, for face.
Shame on us – but that’s the least of it. Shame on our country whose educational scores lag behind practically every industrialized nation in the Western and Eastern worlds.
Of course this is a situation that, like the weather, everybody talks about it but nobody does a thing about. So LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – once a member of the LA school board himself- is to be applauded for wanting to take on this problem. Or he was to be applauded – because, according to the LAT, he is now busy compromising with the very teachers union he was originally going to take on in serious battle. And this union, like so many bureaucracies, has become a serious part of the problem it was originally intended to solve. It is the kind of organization that complains – correctly or incorrectly… I am suspicious — that the problem of our schools is too little money while spending an astonishing seventy million dollars (according to the same LAT article) between 2000 and 2004 to get its point across. How many classrooms could that have built?
But the problem is so much more than money and classrooms. At least in part it is the rise of a pseudo-professional class with entrenched values and needs straight out of Milovan Djilas. I wonder if in places like Singapore (where test scores dwarf ours) very much attention is paid to such matters as educational theories or whether there is a professional class of these “educators” replete with degrees from graduate departments of education. I rather doubt it. I strongly suspect they are too busy teaching particle physics and calculus for that.
I am not, however, implying we should turn into Singapore or anything like it. I am just saying it is time for all of us to look out of the educational box – way out. And that “all” includes the highly-paid union bureaucrats so loathe to give up power to elected officials.
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25 Comments
1. Joe Schmoe:Ah, Villagairosa doesn’t want to control the schools so that he can he can fix them and impelement better educational policy. It’s all about power.
He wants to control the school board so that he can control the budget and the patronage jobs.
Jun 20, 2006 - 1:03 pm 2. TomTom:Nationally, we taxpayers are shelling out a gazillion dollars a year to the depraved, self-serving public educational system which is literally ruining millions of young kids for life. Future workers (not) and clueless voters. And nothing remedial is done.
In this, as in so many other areas of public administration, the citizens keep hitting brick walls.
It will take a revolution to set things back on track.
Jun 20, 2006 - 2:05 pm 3. David Thomson:Michael Ledeen sometimes pretends to be channeling dead CIA officials. I should start doing the same thing with Peter Drucker. There is little doubt but that the late management guru would consider the public schools, in many parts of this country, to be beyond saving. The bureaucratic establishment is safely ensconced. Vouchers are the only realistic option. Private schools must truly be able to compete with their public sector counterparts.
Jun 20, 2006 - 2:08 pm 4. Joe Schmoe:Also, Roger is right about the effect this will have on the middle class. Our youngest is three and will be ready for kindergarten in two years. Our youngest will be ready in four years.
We are already priced out of the housing market here. Our only hope is that prices will decline by around 50% in the future. Otherwise, there’s no way.
If we have to send the kids to private school, we will never be able to own a home.
Situations like this really will drive the middle class out of California. I have a good job, too; if I were a police officer, managed a restaurant, or drove a truck, I’d have left the state already.
Jun 20, 2006 - 2:33 pm 5. Jamie Irons:Long, long ago, I was lucky enough to have a shot at both a public (11 years) and private (one year) primary and secondary school education. Both were superb.
When I first moved to California to attend medical school, the state’s public schools were near the top of the heap for the entire nation.
What happened? As obnoxious as they are, I don’t think the problem is just the unions and the educational bureaucracies. My impression is that our society as a whole (on the average) values learning less than it once did.
I don’t know how you begin to turn that around.
Jamie Irons
Jun 20, 2006 - 2:45 pm 6. Steven Mitchell:There were three very salient characteristics of the public school systems, when they worked, that are generally no longer true in public school systems today:
1. There was a defacto system of “merit pay” for teachers, no matter how circumscribed or meager it was. Sometimes, it was merely appropriate and thankful recognition. Sometimes it was actual rewards, even money. But whatever is was, it was something the recipient valued. That is, it was real. There was some incentive to be a good teacher, beyond one’s own duty and love of the students.
2. There was a strong component of local control, even if somewhat regulated. There might be good or bad regulation, but the decisions about how the education was to be administered were made locally.
3. Schools certified their own students, but against a recognizable standard. This one is difficult to explain, because it’s been mostly gone for 60 years now, and we have lost the will to zero in on pertinent results. The simplest form was that when high school XYZ gave out a diploma, it meant that the school said that the student could read reasonably well, do enough math to get by, etc. If employers found that they could no longer trust the diploma, then the graduates *of that school* stopped getting jobs, college acceptance, etc. The school board (aka local concerned citizens) didn’t try to measure the reading, math, etc. They dealt with the more obvious results.
BTW, Colleges also self-certified. Notably, teacher colleges self-certified. Since grade and high school principals hired new teachers partly on the reputation of that certification, the system was somewhat self-supporting. Furthermore, teacher certification was focused on the fact that the college insisted that the certified person was capable of teaching the subject.
Now, I would argue that public schools only had any of those three things for so long because they inherited it from the earlier, local schools that were incoporated into the public school systems, circa 1850 – 1920 (depending on whom you ask). That is, it was becoming public schools that started the long squandering of an intellectual inheritance, but it was a big inheritance. However we got to where we are today and for whatever reason, though, we certainly don’t have a lot of those three in public education now.
As to decline in society, homelife, teacher quality, grade inflation, etc.–they’ve always mattered in the specific, but they are not determinative for the nation as a whole. Great schools have run for decades in neighborhoods with nothing much (and vice versa). No, to get a nation-wide problem, you need a nation-wide cause. There are plenty of reasons we have lost those three things, but for it to be endemic, the trouble has to be organized.
In short, it takes sustained work to screw things up this badly. Vouchers, home school, charter schools, any real public school internal reform–those are all political and civic means to attempt to inject one or more of those three things back into the equation. They attempt it indirectly by attacking the sources of the screw ups.
Jun 20, 2006 - 3:34 pm 7. MikeD:“I am not, however, implying we should turn into “Singapore or anything like it. I am just saying it is time for all of us to look out of the educational box – way out. And that “all” includes the highly-paid union bureaucrats so loathe to give up power to elected officials.”
The last sentence explains why nothing will be done–and the problem is hardly limited to LA.
Singapore might offer some insight, but we all know that “wouldn’t be the American way”. Unfortunately the “American way” has delivered something like 40 years of snowballing disaster. American education lamentably, is irretrievably broken and probably beyond repair. I have no brilliant ideas how to implement meaningful change but by now we all realize that more money is not a red-herring, it is a red-whale and while some teachers are dedicated and hard-working, many more are not. Too many students (not all), and too many parents (not all) simply don’t care. Singapore might offer some real insights there. We need to start over, anew, fresh, with different guidance, philosophies, priciples (and principals). Wipe the slate clean and something good might happen. But reform? Too many oxen get gored for that; and besides we would all rather just bitch about it.
And the problem doesn’t end after K-12.
Jun 20, 2006 - 3:44 pm 8. Bruce F Webster:Sounds just like Washington DC, where I lived for six years (moved to Colorado about a year ago). Same disparity, same hypocrisy. The interesting part is that DC ranks very high among major cities in dollars-spent-per-student, yet has one of the most wretched school systems in the country. And, of course, all the politicians who work so hard to block voucher programs and other types of educational reform send their own kids to private schools. ..bruce..
Jun 20, 2006 - 4:18 pm 9. David Thomson:ìMy impression is that our society as a whole (on the average) values learning less than it once did.î
ìThe simplest form was that when high school XYZ gave out a diploma, it meant that the school said that the student could read reasonably well, do enough math to get by, etc.î
Acquiring credentials is often now deemed of far greater importance than actually getting an education. The affirmative action polices of the last four decades have made a bad situation even worse. Lawyers warn employers against promoting someone over a minority candidate possessing more credentials behind their name. The actual job performance is considered virtually irrelevant.
ìI don’t know how you begin to turn that around.î
Gosh, you donít? I do. Itís very simple. Credentials should never be more valued than real intellectual accomplishment. End of story. Wasnít that easy?
Jun 20, 2006 - 5:31 pm 10. Insufficiently Sensitive:Milovan Djilas’s autobiographical works make a dazzling eye-opener with regards to his own education. Little one-room schools in the villages, gaping lack of resources, very few teachers of radically variable qualifications (occasionally requiring them to physically defeat their rougher students). Yet he, and some schoolmates he describes, emerged as intellectuals with worldwide influence.
The lush resources available to the LA school districts dwarf those of old Montenegro. Yet will any of their thousands on thousands of students have the ability to publish a description of the current NEA bureaucracy with a political influence comparable to Djilas’s “The New Class”? One can just hope.
Jun 20, 2006 - 6:02 pm 11. Steven Mitchell:David,
“Acquiring credentials is often now deemed of far greater importance than actually getting an education.”
I’d say the reason for that is that the belief in the credentials lasted longer than the belief in the education. As with all such sophistry, that then became self-fulfilling–not least because to question it now is to explicity question some people’s (very brittle) sense of self-worth.
For example, it’s not enough that I can teach math better than some people that have supposedly taught it for 20 years. Not better than the best, or even good math teacher, mind you–simply better than the poor math teachers. For people that stop and think for a moment, such a statement is not even controversial. (In a nation of 300 million people, it would be surprising if there were not people knowledgable enough to do a *decent* job teaching high school math not currently doing so. Nor would it be surprising that there are duds currently teaching.) But some real dud have a certification saying they can, while I do not. Ergo, that concept is a threat.
When certification really meant something, it was because there were tangible rewards for providing the education and tangible punishments for not providing the education. Ultimately, the reason for a publically provided education is to provide good, (at least) minimally educated citizens. Such citizens will contribute to society in some way. The community will measure that, while those that want more education are positioned to get it.
I think we agree on the point of certification, though. I certainly don’t advocate focusing on that instead of the education. Rather, if the certification is awarded by the entity providing the education, then it reflects the judgement and ability of that entity. Thus, the entity has a vested interest in seeing the certification not awarded unless warranted. A certification awarded in another manner, for something as subjective as whether a person is educated or not, is invariably corrupted.
Jun 20, 2006 - 6:29 pm 12. westsidedad1:I applaud Mayor Villaraigosa for wanting to “reform” the LAUSD, but I suspect that this is about contributions from the teachers’ union more than reform. It’s not like he has a personal stake in the LAUSD. His son attends Loyola High School, the best Catholic High School in Los Angeles (I know, my sons attended that school).
Jun 20, 2006 - 9:16 pm 13. smtpgirl08:Hey Roger,
Was dinner with Mary that good???
Let’s talk, if you are so courageous, give me an email address I can reply to.
Why do you give people false information???
Are you part of the cabal, or you just a stupid fuck??
Time will tell
Jun 20, 2006 - 10:18 pm 14. cj:I’ve thought about this in-depth (having 3 kids in public education), and I think there is a fundamental issue that is often over-looked in the messiness of public education (messiness equaling lack of teacher competence, rise of unionism, rise of legalism, etc.).
In my view, the short — very short — answer is that the public education system has been viewed as a mechanism to cure the ills of society (as opposed to a mechanism for teaching children fundamental learning skills).
For example, “bussing,” the supposed answer to societal/real estate segregation. Now, schools are also charged with assuming the responsibility to feed children (not only lunch, but breakfast), instill character and discipline, serve as “absent parents” for latchkey kids (not only in the afternoon, but in the early morning hours), etc.
Schools have been given (by the overt or covert consent of the majority) the responsibility of raising our children in the face of ever-higher hurdles (i.e. lawsuits); a demand which has produced less-qualified instructors; and yet some seem to be surprised at their lack of success in single-handedly fixing the flaws of our society.
The fact that “Mom” is no longer there (has to be a part of the two-parent income-generator of our consumer society) to volunteer in the school and enforce teacher, and cultural standards during non-school hours, has been very detrimental.
Jun 20, 2006 - 11:14 pm 15. Gary Rosen:smtpgirl08:
“Are you part of the cabal, or you just a stupid fuck??”
Well, it’s quite obvious from Roger’s last name that he is part of the cabal. And unless he’s Sephardic, the article linked to here:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/7/29/20293/9910
proves he is not a stupid fuck.
- Gary Rosen, a hook-nosed cosmopolitan Zionist neocon wire-puller
Jun 20, 2006 - 11:29 pm 16. Terrye:Maybe we are trying to do too much in the schools. I doubt if the folks in Singapore worry about the extraneous subjects and issues we deal with in our public schools.
Here in Indiana I know several people who send their children to Christian schools. I was very suspicious of this for awhile, but it seems the kids test well.
But maybe that it part of the problem too, we test too much and we tend to educate for the test, not life.
Jun 21, 2006 - 3:21 am 17. Hammerbach:smtpgirl08:
“Let’s talk, if you are so courageous, give me an email address I can reply to.”
Is there something wrong with a public forum, or can you only be “courageous” in private?
If your thoughts have weight, they will stand up here. If they don’t, they won’t accomplish anything in a private email.
Jun 21, 2006 - 5:58 am 18. PJ:“He wants to control the school board so that he can control the budget and the patronage jobs.”
And to influence the teachers’ unions with their millions in PAC donatiobns.
Jun 21, 2006 - 7:57 am 19. Good Ole Charlie:Some comments on the post and its comments…
I went to Loyola High myself, as does (I guess) His Honor’s son. One of the reasons that it still is the best Catholic high school is that it’s run by the Jesuit Order. The Jesuits don’t particularly subscribe to the latest fashions in education and political theory but teach a classical education. Four years of Latin was mandatory when I was there…and the student body was frankly divided into classrooms based on ability.
Jun 21, 2006 - 9:01 am 20. Steven Mitchell:This recognition of varying abilities, plus challenging everyone to excell as best they can is in stark contrast to modern public education. Perhaps the good fathers are on to something.
Now – I am a retread in education. After Caltech, Harvard and industry I returned to education in my late fifties. I started as a substitute teacher in science and mathematics, found I liked it, and spent something on the order of fifteen thousand to finish education courses, take Praxis exams, finally getting certification to teach chemistry, physics, and mathemtaics 7-12 in Pennsylvania.
Sounds good, eh?
Try to find a permanent job at my age…the two public schools for whom I had been substituting turned me down when I applied for a permanent job.
One told me I was “judgmental” because I graded homework and laboratories. I was “insensitive to special needs” because I gave homework in the first place, not to mention “hard tests”.
The other joint – I had a full year as a permanent substitute – called me a trouble maker. I noticed that they were using the 8th edition of a text that was in its tenth edition and wondered why. The Science Department Chairwoman explained that none of the other teachers wanted to change their lesson plans (the 10th edition was revised upward in content) and besides “the kids are too stupid to teach this stuff”.
I might add that the permanent staff was either too lazy or too stupid to learn the material themselves.
So I went and found a job teaching at a cyber charter school as the one-man chemistry department. Day and Night Difference.
1) I teach the course that I can. We have three flavors – Basic (no math), Regular, and AP Chemistry. The Regular uses the tenth edition I referred to above. AP text is an introductory college text (my son used an earlier edition at Penn State).
2) Kids are hard working, knowing that Good Ole Charlie gives hard tests and homework and does no hesitate to flunk them. Incentive driven, eh?
3) Everyone – the parents especially – are pleased by the results.
And so what happens? We are now atttracting bright kids from normal public schools. The teacher’s union is lobbying the legislature to shut down ALL charter schools in Pennsylvania. They hate us with a passion…we are showing them up.
Governor Rendell (Democrat…what else did you expect?) is trying his best to satisfy the union’s demands. The Legislature – Republican controlled – are for us. All the educational establishment – teacher’s colleges and administrators are against charter schools…we disprove their smug assumptions.
One last world: when I was hired, I was told that the school policy is to “no longer require the services of the bottom tenth of the faculty”. The remainder get bonuses ranging up to 15% of their yearly salary (base salary is competitive with non-charter public schools).
My bonus was near the max…
Just a few thoughts…time to go back and re-write some lessons I’m not happy with.
“In my view, the short — very short — answer is that the public education system has been viewed as a mechanism to cure the ills of society (as opposed to a mechanism for teaching children fundamental learning skills).”
I’d say that is a symptom rather than the disease–though now the symptom itself certainly causes massive problems. When a school can’t educate, it starts looking for other reasons to justify itself.
“The fact that “Mom” is no longer there (has to be a part of the two-parent income-generator of our consumer society) to volunteer in the school and enforce teacher, and cultural standards during non-school hours, has been very detrimental.”
I don’t see that as a problem at all. When we were mostly an agrarian society, Mom and Dad were home, but neither one had any time to spend at school. The non-school hours thing is a mitigating factor, but not as big as teachers like to pretend. (A kid with a bad home life needs a *better* education, not excuses for why his home line prevents one. A kid with a good home life might get a good education at home despite the school, but that is hardly a ringing endorsement of the school.)
That said, the best suggestion that I’ve ever seen for taking best advantage of community support is to build the senior citizens center into the school. A school that isn’t threatened by “smart people without certs” helping educate can get a tremendous amount of milage out of those volunteers. Kids visiting with the seniors that need help the other way is very educational for the kids as well.
Jun 21, 2006 - 10:06 am 21. jaafar:I would like to comment as a teacher, or a former teacher.
I have always considered myself a born teacher — it is what I love doing. Yet I have never sought employment as a teacher in the United States — at least never in the public schools.
Why?
1) “Look for the Union Label.” I have never felt the slightest sympathy with unions in my life. I think I should be paid (or not paid) depending on my own merit and contributions. But the public schools in America are a Union Shop.
2) Inability to flunk students. I’m not quite sure when this came in, but it’s obviously ridiculous — as is the entire dishonest grading “system” promoted and protected by the Union Shop. EVERYONE GRADUATES AT AGE EIGHTEEN, whether or not they have learned anything!
3) Totally inadequate classroom discipline. Let me describe adequate classroom discipline first: the teacher teaches his class, and controls it, unless and until a Major Infraction occurs. When such a Major Infraction occurs, the offending student is sent off to the Boys’ Dean — and the student passes out of the teacher’s concern. THIS IS CRITICAL. Society needs policemen. And so do schools.
4) Complete lack of respect for teachers in America. O, I know, I know: Americans are always TALKING about how much they respect education, but they don’t walk the walk. How many Americans read books which are anything more than simple entertainment? How many Americans regard serious readers as anything more than fools? In fact, when Americans tell you that they have “signed up for a course,” you can bet good money that the “course” is something like “Holistic Yoga” that requires no brain power at all. And when such people (programmers, lawyers, etc.) meet actual, REAL teachers on a social occasion, the reaction of the movers and shakers is always CONTEMPT. “Oh, you couldn’t qualify for a better job?”
But we really admire education! We just TOTALLY DISREPECT anything connected with real mental learning!
Why should I spend even ten minutes serving such idiots?
Jun 21, 2006 - 11:29 am 22. calvinist:Roger, you may want to look at Catherine Johnson’s site, http://www.kitchentablemath.net, for a running commentary on math and other education issues.
I’m not a “math person”, but I do have a son entering 1st grade, and it’s become one of my favorite sites.
Jun 21, 2006 - 2:54 pm 23. Jim Rockford:Roger –
As a former teacher I can say the Public Educational System is SUPERB in doing what the voters want it to do:
BABYSIT their kids, not educate them.
In Singapore the rather Authoritarian government does not cater to voters (through elected School Boards and State Legislatures) desire for keeping controversy, risk, challenges, and standards that are required for learning to occur.
Instead, in truly massive school districts hundreds of thousands of kids are successfully baby-sat with as little controversy as possible.
Teachers are evaluated on: discipline and how well-behaved their students are, performance on standardized tests, numbers of students in their classes (critical issue for teachers with electives) and extra-curricular activities aka extra baby-sitting.
Result: teachers respond to incentives and meet the baby-sitting standards, teach to standardized tests and provide “infotainment” to keep elective head count numbers up.
State Ed code is about five feet high; result of Legislators being rewarded for mandating educational policy to the minutae; school boards want most of all to avoid any controversy and don’t care if students learn nothing because neither do VOTERS.
If voters rewarded Legislators and School Board Members who pushed true learning and punished baby sitting you’d get results like Singapore. Instead we get babysitting because Voters reward it.
Villaraigosa is like Canute. Riordan tried the same thing, failed there too IIRC.
Jun 21, 2006 - 9:00 pm 24. Steven Mitchell:“If voters rewarded Legislators and School Board Members who pushed true learning and punished baby sitting you’d get results like Singapore. Instead we get babysitting because Voters reward it.”
In my state, I’d settle for an admendment to the state constitution saying that no legislator could be currently employed by the state. In Alabama, 1/3 of the legislature is comprised of individuals that are supposedly teaching or administering schools. (How they do that and show up to vote at the same time is somewhat of a mystery.) No money can go to public schools without equal subsidies for college education and administration nonsense. Despite what the MSM will tell you, *that* is why Alabamians routinely squash tax hikes to “fund education”. We know that the money will do no such thing.
I don’t want the legislators to push learning. I want them to get out of the way.
Jun 22, 2006 - 12:01 pm 25. michael:‘Schools are wretched.’ Why? Maybe Johnny’s primary motivation is NOT to learn to read or learn anything. He’s got too much acting up to do. Also he can’t be restrained really from being disruptive because if the school says something is wrong with him then the school has to pay for it; every kid has to have a full oportunity to learn to his potential by federal right and that is just one of the clear, monetary, ways in which they would pay; residential treatment is kind of expensive. So see no evil. Good teaching is therefore as easy as winning the NBA with your team playing by soccer rules. Blame the unions; blame somebody for not being nice and inspiring enough. You’ve done your bit then.
Jun 23, 2006 - 6:32 pm