 |
 
 |
|
Make no mistake about it
As you are only too well aware, the public is being told over and over again by eager media that our schools are "failing." They claim it is the teachers' fault that kids aren't graduating, aren't acing all the tests, are apparently going to wind up in jail or on welfare. Public education is a disaster, they shout, and you are the reason.
You and I know that's not so. Unfortunately, the statistics that paint a very different picture aren't readily available. If you obtain the latest edition of the United States Department of Education's Digest of Educational Statistics, you can learn some very interesting facts - but the general public doesn't know that. I've worked through the statistics and believe you can use some of the figures I found there, despite the fact that statistics aren't the most exciting reading you can find. I think, though, you'll want to know about the following numbers.
To begin with, as we suspected, California is now dead last in class size - 50th among the states - with an average of 29.7 children per class. (The number one state is Maine with 18.5 kids per class.) You and I know that a class of only 29 kids can actually be a bonanza - we're more likely to have 35 than 29.
Keep that figure in mind, and then consider this. Our state has the largest public school system in the country with 6,050,609 students. Texas has 4,025,923 and New York 2,884,000. Yet Texas and New York have more teachers per student than does California. Texas has one teacher for every 15 students; New York has one teacher for every 14 students. But, in California, the figures work out to one teacher for every 20.6 students.
Something doesn't compute here. With that teacher-student ratio, how come the class size average is 29.7? We don't have to look far for the answer. Too many people who are categorized as teachers and qualified to be teachers - holding teaching certificates - are not in the classroom teaching. They are administrators.
The statistics are there. In the fall of 1998, the U.S. Department of Education reported that California has 2,271 central office administrators, 11,760 principals and assistant principals, and 5,860 instructional coordinators - that's one administrator for every 14.7 classroom teachers. That's bad enough, but add to it another baleful number - 21,353 administrative support personnel - and you've got 1.5 people working to support every single administrator in California.
That's a big part of the "failure" of public schools in our state: Instead of putting our money and skills into the classroom, we're using them to support a huge bureaucracy and maintain classes too large for teachers to do their best work.
Now move your sights to another area - the kids in our schools. We already know that we have the most ethnically diverse population in the nation's schools. In 1998, 41.4 percent of our children were Hispanic, 37.9 percent were white, 11.1 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander, 8.7 percent were African American, and .9 percent were American Indian/Alaska native. We know that this rich mix of backgrounds is something to celebrate; but we also know that, to our shame, a far too high percentage of minority children live in poverty.
We're talking really disgraceful figures here: 36.4 percent of African American children, 33.6 percent of Hispanic children, 14.4 percent of white and 13.2 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander children live in poverty. And as many as 300,000 of these kids are homeless.
Poverty, which should not even be a factor in this prosperous nation, has serious effects on the children. The average dropout rate for kids nationwide in 1999 was 11.2 percent, but kids in the bottom 25 percent of household income had a dropout rate of 21 percent. Compare that to the 3.9 percent dropout rate for kids in families in the top 25 percent of household income. That's a devastating fact, relating directly to the children in our classrooms.
The figures tell us about college graduation rates, too. In 1999, in the 25-29 age group, 33.6 percent of whites were college graduates compared to 15 percent of African Americans and 8.9 percent of Hispanics. Clearly, these figures are connected to family income and poverty. All the factors involved, from malnutrition to substandard housing to overcrowded classrooms to lack of health care and more, point to lifetime struggles and tragic failures to achieve potential for the kids born into poverty.
Our devotion to American ideals reminds us that California state and national governments have a profound social responsibility to help all of our kids obtain the kind of education which gives them a chance for happy, productive lives. The problem of children denied the right foundation for a decent life must be tackled on many fronts, and we as teachers have a limited field of action - our own classrooms. We are not responsible for nor will we accept blame for the fact that poverty cripples large parts of our population, no matter how many "educational" commentators point their fingers at us.
It is a bloated bureaucracy of administrators that sucks money away from classrooms and thus is a major part of the school funding problem. More money overall is needed, certainly, but it must be spent on the classroom, not the central district office.
We know that ethnic minority children are just as bright and talented as any kids on earth, but poverty is a major impediment to developing their potential, and mismanaged school funding aggravates their problems.
The statistics point to the causes of the problems in our schools today. Now we must insist that those in power change things so that the classroom receives the priority it requires.
That means funding our classes at a level that keeps them small enough for teachers to nurture fully every single youngster.
That means spending money on what is needed in the classroom: professionally paid teachers, good textbooks and materials, clean and comfortable rooms.
That means solving the testing dilemma/nightmare by devising a single valid test designed to show what we need to know about the student's academic achievement and stopping the plunge toward endless days of miscellaneous and misguided testing.
And that means putting control of the classroom into the hands of teachers who know what it's all about.
Just as there is growing recognition that insurance executives have no business making medical decisions, there must be acceptance of the fact that teachers, not "educators" and "community advisors" and isolated bureaucrats in their distant ivory towers, must be in charge of educational policy.
That's all just common sense. Who else knows the classroom as well as we do?
Make no mistake about it. These are the challenges and the goals that face us. They are big ones, but not too big for a unified, strong, professional group like California's teachers.
 |
|
|
