From: cho@ucbeh.san.uc.edu
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,misc.education,talk.politics.misc,sci.edu
Subject: Re: Why can't the liberals just admit that public education has failed?
Date: 22 Jan 93 15:26:39 EST
Distribution: world
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati

In article <1993Jan22.153106.28165@m5.harvard.edu>, borden@head-cfa.harvard.edu (Dave Borden) writes:
> 
> In article <1993Jan21.112126.2519@ucbeh.san.uc.edu>, cho@ucbeh.san.uc.edu writes:
>> > 
>> Where?  The $10,000 salary I received was in the early eighties.  I am not
>> aware of current first year salaries now.  I do know different salaries are
>> offered for different cities.
> 
> I think it's in administration where too many people are getting way too much for
> doing little of positive worth and possibly a great deal of negative worth.

Yes, have you checked salaries of superintendents lately?  Incredible.
Perot made a comment about how the salaries from the top to the bottom
are way too exaggerated.  It's true.

> 
>> > 	But right down (up?) the road in Dayton, they spend twice as much per
>> > pupil, yet score half as high on achievement tests.
>> You got facts to support that?
> 
> Well I have facts on the New York City public school system.  In fiscal year '92,
> they spent $7414 per student, only 32 percent of which went to classroom
> instruction (teachers' salaries, books, supplies, etc.).  Most of the rest went
> to administration.  And I don't have figures on their test scores, but I think the
> failure of the NYC public schools is well enough known that I can be forgiven
> for that.

Actually, I have no idea about the NYC schools.  But if they're like most city
schools around the nation, I get the idea.

> I agree with that, but I also think the teachers need to know a lot about the
> subject they are teaching.  Some of my teachers in high school were excellent and
> knew a great deal. Some of them were poor and really didn't know much of
> anything.  I also think that teacher certification could be streamlined a good
> deal.  I think a couple of months of teaching practice with concurrent classes in
> teaching technique would be sufficient for a lot educated people to learn what
> they needed to jump in.  Right now, one to two years of classes is just too much
> of a time commitment for a career that I'm not sure I want to be my life's work. 
> So I'm very unlikely to become a teacher for that reason.  Incidentally, my
> experience tutoring makes me think I would be a pretty good teacher - but there's
> just too much in the way.

Yes, teachers need to know their subject matter.  As an example, my computing
skills were for the most part, self taught.  But because I loved it SO much,
I spent many, many hours learning about it, becoming a sort of 'hack' if you
will.  We even set up a KID-BBS in the room.  We had a lot of fun, and we
learned so much, and I was able to teach kids (these are 7th graders with
no computer experience) not only 'how to use a keyboard'...but I had kids
programming all kinds of stuff at the end of the semester....I didn't do it.  
They did it.  One kid amazed me with her graphics program...it was a draw 
program that she programmed in BASIC so that when you used the arrows to 
draw a picture, it would create a data text file on the disk, which could be 
read by the program if you wanted to edit it later, and so on.  It was just 
incredible.
   The other teachers in my group (there was a big turn-over) really did not
*enjoy* the subject matter, and also didn't know much about it.  They
spent their time teaching kids 'Computer Literacy'....bare minimum work.

Enthusiam goes a long way, along with knowledge in the subject matter, and
a few good teaching strategies, which all will go a long, long way.  

> 
> By the way, I think you may be right about K-8, like you said, more than about
> 9-12.  Someone like me could probably do pretty well with high school teaching,
> whereas working with younger students takes a lot of skill and technique with
> which I'm unfamiliar.  

Well, you can't take anything for granted, especially in the early years.  
One year when I was the 'roving' test administrator, I was assigned to a
first grade class for a week, to give the exam.  One of the skills we taught
them was how to use a paper 'ruler' to help keep their place so they could
make a black dot on the right answer place.  I had to keep a careful eye
out to make sure everyone was marking the answer # that matched the question
#.  Those kinds of things you normally take for granted.  It's pretty cute.

>> 
>> My opinion is that teachers and parents really don't expect enough out of a
>> student.  I think they (the students) have a far greater capacity for learning
>> but people just don't want to spend the energy 'making' them or getting them
>> to learn.
> 
> I have an example of that: in my high school, for two years, there was a very
> good teacher, Dr. Meckler; he had a PHD in math.  He was fairly demanding, but
[some extra deleted--regarding a good teacher who was not rehired]
> board in my town were idiots - of course, I thought so before then.

This brings up an extremely important point, that I hope everyone notices.
The POWER of PARENTS is incredibly moving to ADMINISTRATORS.  I learned 
that as a teacher, in fact.  You see, no one (admin) listens to the teachers.
They're sick of us...but the parents are a completely different story.

How did we get the school to finally purchase computers?  Me?  Ha!  When
I asked the superintendent about it, he just chuckled and snorted something
about the budget not even being able to purchase new football uniforms, and
I quote.  So....it's not 'cool'....but I mentioned it casually to some
rather vocal parents (who loved me :)  ) and that was all I needed.  By
the next year, we had 3 new labs outfitted with 30 computers each.  I had
me a department, and I was made head of it.  PARENT POWER works miracles.

>> Anyway, I think everyone's expectations have gone to the mediocre, lowering 
>> our standards to teach the generic child.
> 
> Here's another example:  in my public school system, when I went through it,
> Algebra I was normally taught in 9th grade, but good students could take it as
> early as the 7th grade, which I did.  Then, going through the rest of the
> sequence without repeating any courses, I was able to take A.P. Calculus in my
[some extra deleted]
> would no longer be made available to seventh graders, only to eight and ninth
> graders.  What idiots!  For no good reason they diminished the educational
> opportunity available in the school.  This is in my opinion a perfect example
> supporting school choice.
> 

That's EXACTLY what they did in Galveston.  But then enough parents raised
cain about it and reversed the decision.  It took some doing, but they did
reverse it.  You need to get some *HOT* parents who are also respected by
the community.  This works very well.  Teachers have only minimal power,
but parents probably do not realize how powerful they can be.  I'm not sure
why this is so, but even as you described that wonderful math teacher get-
ting ousted, it was parents that accomplished the action.

At least it's been true in my experience.
Regards,
Pamela Cho
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