From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 21 Aug 92 21:08:25 CDT
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,misc.education
Subject: Re: American schools (was: Liberal v. Conservative)
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <2A947681.18330@orion.oac.uci.edu>, by cedman@714-725-3165.nts.uci.edu (Carl Edman):
> Greg Lee writes
>> Carl Edman writes
>> }On the other hand, people who vote down bond issues for education are
>> }putting pressure for change on the establishment ...
>>
>> Oh?  How does that work?  Pressure for what sort of change?
>> We need more good teachers to do more good teaching.  How
>> does voting against a bond issue get us from here to there?
>> I find it mystifying.
>
> Giving the current educational system more money is like giving a heroin addict
> another shot, because "he _really_ needs it _so_ badly". It might make him shut
> up for a few days (the heroin addict - the educational establishment is
> faster), but it does not solve his problems. As a matter of fact nothing will
> until he gets off the habit and giving him more money just delays that.

I agree with you. Unfortunately, at the moment our kids are stuck in this
public school system. You propose zapping the money used to educate them.
What happens to these kids next? Do you see this as causing widespread
public support for eliminating public education and replacing it with a
voucher system?

I don't see it. What I see is that people with two Cadillacs in their
garages won't care what happens to the public school -- and this includes
(sad to say) most school board members. They'll never vote for any system
which takes money out of their pocket and gives it to "those" kids on an
equal basis.

If the public is going to insist upon incarcerating its kids in these
prisons we call "schools", at least give the system enough funds so that
these can be well-run prisons. Most schools today barely shamble from day
to day -- *PAPERCLIPS* are in short supply, fer cryin' out loud, and I get
a whole $50 to spend for a year's worth of supplies. I don't see your
proposal making things any better. All that'll happen is that the Cadillac
crowd will like the extra dollars in their paycheck, and never vote for
vouchers.

> But let me describe a few other circumstances too. A decade ago this school had
> about 1000 students, 50 or 60 teachers and a total non-teaching staff of four -
> three part time secretaries and one janitor. All administrative functions
> including the office of principal were fullfilled by teachers in their spare
> time - the most any of them ever got for that was a few hours of their weekly

I'm thinking of Dodson, and where the fat is. We have 900 students in three
different programs -- a Behavior Center (for emotionally disturbed and
autistic students), a Montessori magnet program (K-6), and a regular
elementary school. The non-teaching staff... hmm... there's the coordinator
for the behavior center, who is VERY important because she's the only
administrator in the building who knows how to deal with these kids (if a
psychotic kid was sent to the principal, he'd probably hide under his desk
-- well, not Mr. Curtis,  hiding under desks isn't his style, but he
certainly wouldn't know what to do with the kid!). There's three
secretaries. Two counsellors. And two custodians. The principal and
vice-principal. Then there's the lunchroom staff of three, but they're paid
with federal funds (98% of our kids get free lunch, because their parents
live below the poverty line). So they don't "really" count.

I guess this *IS* pork -- 10 people. But many of them are dictated by
reality. The two administrators are required for all the paperwork involved
in getting those free lunches and in squeezing funds out of the district,
hiring, etc. Two counsellors... given the number of emotionally disturbed
students on campus, I really don't think we could do without them. Whoops.
Forgot the speech therapist. She works almost exclusively with the autistic
kids, most of whom can be taught to speak, but it takes a lot of work on
the part of a good therapist. She spends most of her days in a classroom
teaching these kids how to speak, so I guess she can be counted as a
teacher. So we have 10 non-teaching people, and a staff of 48 teachers. And
at least three of those non-teaching people wouldn't be needed if not for
the fact that we have a behavior center here.

This isn't the best ratio in the world, perhaps, but it's hardly the
disaster you say it is. If we were a truly locally-governed school,
answerable only to the parent/teacher governing committee, our three
administrators would give us a 300:1 pupil/administrator ratio.
We could probably get rid of at least one administrator if we didn't have
all the district and Federal bureaucracy to cope with, for a 450:1
pupil/administrator ratio. This compares favorably with the private
Catholic high school that I attended, which had 450 students and a
full-time administrator (the principal), along with a part-time vice
principal (who taught math and physics otherwise), two full-time
counsellors, and a janitor. We compare fairly well. If you want fat, don't
look at our school. Look at the district offices, look at the assessment
bureaucracy mandated by the federal government, look at the supplies
specialist mandated by lawsuits and the federal government (can't give the
kids a "free and appropriate education" if we don't have the specialty
products needed, after all), etc. etc. etc.

> teaching duty. Most class sizes were 30 to 35. The building was fairly decent,
> but as for technical gimmickry which many educationists nowadays seem to
> believe to be so essential there was none beyond an occassional overhead
> projector.

We have no technical gimmickry at Dodson Elementary. It is only rich
suburban school districts who can afford such nonsense. We do have class
sizes of 22 to 28 students, as mandated by the Texas legislature, but our
high schools (the equivalent of your "gymnasium" you're talking about)
average 30 to 35 students per classroom.

> There were absolutely _no_ social services (or even school lunches).

We cannot do that here. Children who are hungry do not learn, and our
breakfast and lunch programs are often the only real meals they get.

> Virtually the only employees of the entire education system who were not
> teachers were a few bureaucrats at the state ministry of education. As a
> consequence despite higher teacher salaries per pupil expenditures were only
> about half of those of the average american education system.

Note that they did not bother educating many kids, too. For example,
take our behavior center. Autistic or emotionally disturbed kids are not
taught in the German schools, they are sent to institutions. Similarly,
retarded kids are not taught in the German schools, they are sent to
institutions. And finally, kids who are not "high achievers" are not taught
past a certain point -- they are sent to a very different sort of
institution (to learn "manual trades"). I wonder, if you put that money
back into the budget, how much less would German education be?

> First of all, paying more to current teachers is not going to make them better.
> If they are illiterate and ignorant before they will be so even if paid $100k a
> year. Attempts to at least attract higher quality new teachers by only paying
> them the higher salaries would be killed by the teachers unions faster than you

The problem is one of evaluation. I say, evaluate by results. I don't care
what grades the teacher had in college, the teacher's IQ, the teacher's
shoe size, whatever. DO THE KIDS LEARN?

That's the question. It's a question that, as you may be figuring out, the
educational establishment is eager to avoid. Principals say "my job is
administration, not instruction" and don't take direct charge of assuring
student learning. Teachers make glib excuses "well, these kids are so
DEPRIVED, y'know" and give less than their best.

But I don't see any way to evaluate a teacher until she has been teaching
for three years (which is long enough to follow her students upward to see
if they pass or fail any more often than their peers educated in other
classrooms). You say that we should hire the "best and brightest" straight
out of college. But being "best and brightest" doesn't mean that you can
TEACH. Ask anybody who has suffered through a typical college-level
Calculus class, as taught by some soul who last spoke coherent English
somewhere prior to his doctoral dissertation.

> No, I'm afraid that there are no solution to the education disaster short of
> fundamental reform. And (did I mention this before ?) the only way to such
> reform is genuine school choice.
>
>       Carl Edman

I agree with you. However, I disagree with you if you're saying that true
school choice, via a voucher system, is coming anytime soon. The best
that'll happen is a "district choice" plan, where kids can go to any public
school in any district that has a space for them. The problem is money: who
has it, who is willing to spend it. The school systems have the money,
raised via property taxes and local sales taxes. The states, on the other
hand, are near-broke. This is probably why Minnesota chose this route to
choice, rather than going straight to a voucher system. In many states,
like Texas, it's ILLEGAL for the state to levy property taxes (would need a
constitutional amendment to make it legal). Until this is remedied, which I
don't see happening, I see no way that near-bankrupt states are going to be
able to fund a REAL voucher program -- one which gives choice to ALL,
including the 98% of kids at Dodson whose parents live below the poverty
line.

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.sccsi.com         Dodson Elementary
 (713) 437-6908  uunet!nuchat!elgamy!elg      Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections