From the President:
It Is Past Time for Public Education Reform

by Jennifer Little

As we survey the many challenges facing American public education in the 21st century, consider these shocking statistics contained in the sobering new documentary movie by Davis Guggenheim titled Waiting for Superman:

• Among 30 developed countries, the United States is ranked 25th in math and 21st in science. When the comparison is restricted to the top 5 percent of students, the United States is ranked last.
• In 1970 the United States produced 30 percent of the world’s college graduates. Today it only produces 15 percent.
• Eight years after the passage of No Child Left Behind, the United States has four years left to reach the legislation’s goal of 100 percent proficiency in math and reading. Most states are now hovering around 20 percent or 30 percent proficiency.
• Barely half of African-American and Latino students graduate from high school. African-American students graduate at 51 percent and Latinos at 55 percent, while their white counterparts graduate at (a still lower than optimal) 76 percent.

While watching this movie I remembered what it was like to be in school, to be a child. Every child has a dream. Not one child wants to grow up to be a drug dealer; not one child dreams of going to jail and being a burden upon society. Each and every child dreams of something bigger, something better. Every child has the ability to do better. So why don’t they?

Somewhere along the line, too many children’s dreams are lost, their ambitions washed away. But why? What can we do to change this? Some people argue that not every child is capable of fulfilling their dreams. While this may be true, they do have the ability to be more than what I see on a daily basis. As an assistant district attorney, I see bright and capable young people getting caught up in the system every day. While many things undoubtedly contribute to this problem, a significant factor has to be the state of our nation’s educational system.

As the film notes, 68 percent of prison inmates in Pennsylvania are high school dropouts. The state spends $33,000 a year on each prisoner, and the total cost of the average prison term is $132,000. By contrast, the average private school costs $8,300 per student per year. So for the same amount, Pennsylvania could have sent a prison inmate to a private school from kindergarten through 12th grade – and still had more than $24,000 left for college. The story is similar in Georgia.

Yes, there are successes in Georgia. Just the other day the diverse Gwinnett County public school system – with a one-third white, one-third Hispanic and one-third African-American student body – was named the best in the nation by the respected Broad Foundation. Tough curriculum and testing, as well as enforced classroom discipline, are hallmarks of the system’s success.

In contrast, the Atlanta public school system is wracked by a cheating scandal on student tests allegedly perpetuated by some administrators and teachers in order to inflate test scores. This system consumes 54 percent of every taxpayer dollar, yet, even with cheating, the scores are dismal! The Atlanta schools had a higher “Does Not Meet Standards” for all CRCT test grades than the state of Georgia average. Talk about a school system “Waiting for Superman!” No wonder Atlantans are opting for better charter schools, superior suburban public schools like those in Gwinnett, or private schools like Atlanta’s nationally acclaimed Ron Clark Academy.

Waiting for Superman features emotional scenes of children sitting alongside their parents, clutching tightly to a piece of paper with a number scribbled on it, seeing if they are going to be one of the fortunate few to get a slot in one of the better urban public schools. They watch as the balls roll through the lottery cages that hold their future, hoping and praying that the right ball falls at the right time. They weep with relief when their number is called. They weep in sadness when it is not. No child should thirst for an education that much and have to depend on the randomness that these lotteries present. Oftentimes, less than 10 percent of the students that are a part of these lotteries actually get chosen to attend the schools.

The movie underscores that by 2020 the United States will have 123 million high-skill jobs to fill – and fewer than 50 million Americans qualified to fill them. Fifty years ago, only 20 percent of high school graduates expected to go to college. Most of those who did would become doctors, lawyers, engineers, clergymen and top corporate executives. The next 20 percent were expected to go straight into skilled jobs as accountants, managers, technicians or bureaucrats, while the bottom 60 percent would become workers on farms and in factories – all in an economy where those occupations generally paid wages sufficient to support a family. Based on these numbers, a system of tracking or grouping by ability emerged that served American school systems reasonably well. Today most middle-class high schools still track their students in this manner, but times have changed and our economy now requires a much higher percentage of college graduates. So the gap between what we need and what we are producing is large and growing.

There is also the perplexing problem of how to handle teachers. Why are most schools unable to pay high-performing teachers more than low-performing teachers? School systems are especially frustrated due to an inability to fire lazy and incompetent teachers because of tenure rules. The movie notes that many systems simply transfer the bad teachers from one public school to another year after year – since they can’t get rid of them. It is sarcastically called “passing the lemons.”

Then there are the notorious “rubber rooms” established for the incompetent teachers. These are rooms set aside for bad teachers removed from the classroom, but who haven’t yet been fired from the system. They are still being paid as their dismissal cases drag out year after year. New York State may be the leader in this insanity. Taxpayers expend $65 million a year to pay teachers who sit in a room and play games while their cases take eight times longer than the average criminal case. Incredible.

Yet despite these gloomy statistics and heart-wrenching cases of student/parent betrayal, growing numbers of taxpayers, parents and students are demanding reform. It is a movement that cuts across all political, socioeconomic and racial lines. “Public education” is not simply the buildings and bureaucracy that support “the education system.” We must never forget that public education is about children and their education – however that happens.

How is it that the teachers’ unions in all too many states can negotiate collective bargaining agreements for its members while threatening strikes and walkouts? In New York State the teachers’ union even recently sought to bar from public view teacher evaluations – which should be on the public record. Teachers deserve better than to be pawns in a union’s chess game, and kids certainly deserve better. Just as the old Soviet Union did everything to avoid competition from “free enterprise” so, too, does America’s public education “establishment”– union bosses and their politician allies – fight good ideas like school choice, charter schools and merit pay for exceptional teachers.

Educators ought to be able to self police and self govern just like lawyers and other professionals. Yes, teachers should be able to have an appeal process upon removal, but state teacher tenure laws must not be so tight that it takes several years, if ever, to get rid of the bad lemons. Indeed, the “lemons” have to be stopped from being “passed around” – especially in the big school systems. To illustrate my point, in Illinois, one in 57 doctors loses his or her medical license, and one in 97 lawyers loses his or her law license, yet only one teacher in every 2,500 has ever lost his or her credentials.

Please watch the documentary movie Waiting for Superman or read the book. It is an eye-opener, especially when you realize that, sadly, Georgia remains almost at the bottom of all the 50 states when it comes to high school math and verbal test scores.

Remember, too, that there is perhaps no area of government in which an active vocal person can have such a direct impact than in the area of education. Attend local Board of Education meetings. After all, board members are elected by the people and must be held accountable by the people. Check out what the local budget priorities are. Do your homework on the curriculum and textbooks, as well as the testing policies, in the schools. Furthermore, while you are getting educated and involved at the local level, insist that your state legislators and federal members of Congress stand for “back to the basics” education reform. If they don’t, vote them out. And don’t lose interest on the need for sweeping reform just because you don’t have children in school. “Superman” can still arrive to “save the day” for many of our students. Indeed, our nation’s posture as a global leader depends utterly on how well educated and prepared our children become as they reach college age.