The participants in our dialogue have been discussing the merits of school choice, which ha led to a discussion of alternative types of schooling, and finally, how Bush's America 200 program....
Q- I kind of like the idea of magnet schools myself. The philosophy behind the magnet school concept is that successful schools should be imitated and even duplicated.
Magnet schools are designed to attract students from outside their areas and presently comprise twenty-five percent of all schools of choice. Magnet schools generally focus on specialized academic courses such as math and science, or they focus on performing or creative arts or vocational education or unusual or experimental learning methods; some are remedial.
Students are admitted either because of their superior academic performance or on the results of a lottery or on a first come basis.
A- I understand that Montclair, New Jersey has turned all its schools into magnet schools with open enrollment and that St Louis allows transfers within 23 districts.
Q- Just what is meant by "open enrollment"?
A- Open enrollment started in Minnesota in 1987. Students can apply to schools in any district because the money provided by the state follows the student to the school of his or her choice. Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Ohio all practice open enrollment.
Other states have what is known as "controlled choice", where parents cite their school preferences. Controlled choice doesn't permit a child to attend his neighborhood school if it would upset the racial balance. Controlled choice is not as flexible as open enrollment.
Q- I read that New York City gives 90,000 of its 940,000 students choices among 250 alternative programs; some by lottery, others subject to screening.
A- Magnet schools, open enrollment and tuition tax credits and vouchers all apply to private as well as public schools. The whole idea is to encourage schools to work to meet the demand parents have for quality.
Since 1973 the graduation rate has increased in the open enrollment district of East Harlem in New York City from less than 50 percent to over 90 percent. And even though East Harlem has the highest poverty in New York City, it ranks 16th instead of last in New York's testing.
Q- I guess that refutes Jonathan Kozol's argument about choice turning public schools into dumping grounds.
A- Absolutely! The two schools in East Harlem that failed to attract students were simply closed and later reopened with new staff and programs. "Choice" will work, but it must be accompanied by high standards and autonomy.
Q- The money in Bush's education plan, unveiled in April 1991, is to go to so-called disadvantaged kids only. As for those who suggest that choice might encouraging segregation, federal civil rights laws would still apply.
A- President Bush gave a speech in Portland, Oregon on September 9, 1991 in which he emphasized four points:
Q- How about a brief rundown on the proposal of the Education President?
A- Bush's program, America 2000, calls for nationwide standards in English, history, geography, math and science. It calls for voluntary achievement tests for 4th, 8th and 12th grades beginning in the fall of 1993. The Bush administration would give grants of $1 million to start 535 experimental schools over the next five years.
Q- That's one for each member of the House and Senate.
A- Actually the plan is to have at least one experimental school in each congressional district, which means 51 New American Schools for California.
Kentucky has overhauled its entire education system and Oregon is starting down a new path in the fall of 1991. In July, 1991 Oregon passed the Oregon Education Act for the 21st Century and the Oregon Workforce Quality Act. That state is determined to produce the best educated citizens in the country by the year 2000 and a superior work force by 2010.
Q- I think a lot of states have that as a goal. Just how does Oregon plan to top everyone else?
A- The new legislation establishes a 21-member council which can create committees and sub-committees.
Q- Oh sure, more bureaucracy should do the trick!
A- You haven't heard anything yet. They plan to create regional councils, school advisory committees, building site committees at every school and no one has any idea of the cost nor has any cost-benefit analysis been done. As for being competitive, Oregonians are serious.
Even before this new legislation, Oregon tied with Iowa for the highest test scores in the nation. However they ranked 35th in their high school graduation rate and they plan to correct this by tracking dropouts and having work rules that make it almost impossible to find a job without first passing a test given at the end of the 10th grade. The test will put students on the college or vocational track during their last two years of high school.
Oregon's new plan calls for a variety of professional, technical and college preparatory programs and a longer school year. They plan to have K-3 non-graded, support programs for early childhood, full funding of Headstart, increased parental involvement and business partnerships.
Oregon is a philosopher-king's dream. Well-meaning do-gooders have the problems solved if only "the people" will cooperate and follow their blueprints for achieving excellence.
Q- The Cascade Policy Institute found that Oregon's public school system had one central office person for every 92 students whereas its private system had one central office person for every 2,300 students. Even without Oregon's new proposed bureaucracy, that state already has 53 oversight and regulatory agencies to which the public schools are accountable.
A- Private schools are only accountable to parents. It's not hard to figure out which system performs the best!
Q- I'm afraid as far as a lot of people are concerned the jury is still out on that question.
Oregon also plans to extend the school year from 175 to 220 days by 2010 by adding forty days to the school year gradually over a 20 year period.
A- It has been wonderfully said that more of the same isn't better if the same isn't good enough to begin with. Engaging in what is not successful for a longer period of time is foolish.
In New Orleans a school district which extended its school year to 220 days found little improvement in their test scores and a goodly increase in the expense of education. The federal government picked up almost two-thirds of the nearly $900,000 tab for the extra time but the school board doesn't feel it can continue contributing it's share which came to over $250,000.
Q- What do you think extending the school year would cost in a state as large as California?
A- In California a move to a 220 day program from kindergarten through high school would cost $121 million a day according to the director of the National Association for Year-Round Education.
Q- What suddenly makes extending the school year such a popular idea?
A- Since our kids seem to be getting less education than kids in many other parts of the world we have been looking at differences in the various educational systems. The length of the school year is something that is real easy to isolate.
The number of school days required in Japan = 243, Germany = 210, USSR = 210, Thailand = 200, Holland = 200, England = 192, Finland = 190, France= 185, Sweden = 180 and USA = 180.
Q- Our feelings about national testing are different also. European countries test students when they reach age 14 to determine if they should be tracked for higher education.
A- We generally view that as an elitist policy, but according to Mr. Fiske, we actually track more in the USA than they do in Europe.
In December 1990 the Progressive Policy Institute held a meeting to discuss whether the apprentice program, developed in postwar Germany and hailed as a source of that country's remarkable economic growth, can be successfully adapted to the USA.
Proponents of the idea believe that American companies should dedicate themselves to providing intensive--even expensive--on the job training so employees continually upgrade their skills.
Q- Attempts to combine academic with on-hands work experience is nothing new to this country. The Lick Wilmerding High School in San Francisco is an example and so is Ohio's Antioch College founded in 1852. There has always been good reason to increase the skills of American workers.
A- For almost ten years Rich's Academy has offered work-for-credit and provided part time jobs for students in Atlanta, Georgia. Rich's is a department store and it provides the space and some funding as well as employee-mentors.
The public school system provides the teachers and English, history, math and science curriculum. Many former dropouts attend Rich's and similar schools set up by companies as diverse as Sears Roebuck and Burger King and even non-profits like the YWCA which is involved in the operation of schools for homeless children in Oregon and Washington.
Q- I read about the most fantastic vocational program in New York City which trains high school students as certified aircraft maintenance workers. Upon graduation from Aviation High, students receive a Federal Aviation Agency certificate in airframe or engine maintenace, which amounts to a ticket to a starting mechanic's salary of betwen $30,000 to $40,000. Some of the graduates go on to technical and engineering colleges.
A- I bet the competition to get into the program is intense.
Q- When I heard about Aviation High back in 1983, it had room for only one out of approximately seven applicants. The over 2,000 students were drawn mainly from inner-city schools and were kids with average abilities. The admission officers looked for motivation and reliability. Half the day was spent in shops learning how to install propellers or check out fuel systems and the other half involved some pretty intense academic classes such as calculus and physics.
A- How is it that so many public school administrators blame their lack of success with these same inner-city kids with only average abilities on broken families and poor environment? What makes these New York kids and the kids at Garfield High in Los Angeles, able to exert the discipline to tackle calculus?
Q- I've got a feeling that is a rhetorical question.
A- I believe it is mainly the high expectations and strict demands of the teachers.
But I have a pragmatic side and its been wondering if these New York City students get to work on actual aircraft?
Q- The school, back in 1983 remember, boasted a fully equipped maintenance hangar with 21 airplanes and helicopters, mostly donated by the Navy and Air Force.
A- Aviation High is such a contrast to so many of the low-expectation mealy-mouthed solutions being proposed today. So many of them remind me of the high-cost-low-results CETA programs of the seventies.
Q- No wonder CETA cost more than $58 billion; it funded just about anything without any concept of economic return to those who provided the dollars and those who invested the time.
A- The Opportunities Industrialization Centers started in 1964 under CETA was, I admit, an exception to the rule.
Q- If I remember correctly, the guiding light behind OIC was Leon Sullivan, a minister in Philadelphia.
A- Right. OIC offered participants in its courses a real opportunity to make a living upon graduation.
Q- Just like New York City's Aviation High School.
A- And like the teachers at Aviation High, the teachers at OIC were nonsensical and expected participants to tackle the academic courses because they saw a purpose for the skills they were developing.
Q- What was offered?
A- Courses were offered in many areas as diverse as office machine maintenance, data processing and food service, along with courses in math and English.
Q- I know OIC programs continued under the JTPA (Job Trainig Partnership Act) which replaced CETA in 1984, but more than that, it's empowerment philosophy proliferated to all parts of the country.
A- Certainly empowerment is the key more than ever during the economic slump of the nineties. The other hot idea is to encourage participation by the outside community in the running of the public schools. The more input the better, since everyone seems to agree that our present system of education is not working.
Q- That's the easy part. Now if everyone could agree on what needs to be done. Any input there?
A- I agree with Adam Urbanski, Vice President of the American Federation of Teachers: "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got."
Q- You've got to agree on a little more than the fact that change needs to take place. What kind of change?
A- Most importantly we need to develop in our young people, a desire for learning, a questioning mind and a love for knowledge and truth. With this goal in mind, more than fifty corporations banded together and created their own Corporate/Community School in Chicago in 1988.
They chose students randomly from the more than 1,000 applicants in the destitute Lawndale area. Although the elementary school is privately operated, it is tuition free. Children as young as two are enrolled in this year round 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. facility.
As a private-public alternative to Head Start, the Corporate/Community School is a bold experiment to reach disadvantaged children early.
Q- I've got to admit that many of our present teachers are less than inspiring. Many function only as disciplinarians and many of the buildings where education is supposed to take place are dangerous and ugly places that children should not be forced to attend.
A- On the other hand primary school youngsters still need to relate to a human teacher who, as every teacher of young children can affirm, serves as much more than an instructor. In fact he or she must often function as a surrogate parent.
As for older youngsters, I believe we need, not only a choice of institutions, but also a choice in the way knowledge is transmitted. I'm one of those who would like to see us take advantage of new computing and telecommunication technologies in structuring a brand new approach to education in the twenty-first century.
The idea I've entertained for a long time, and that I believe ranks right at the top of the heap along with vouchers and competition, is incorporating new technology into learning and allowing students that have the desire to work alone with video tapes, computer programs or TV teachers, to forge ahead at their own pace, following their own interests. The only stipulation would be that they continue to pass the "did-you-get-what-you-paid-for" tests ---the TSTs---tests to satisfy the taxpayer.
Q- Along that line, Teaching Company, is a private firm, already marketing video lectures delivered by the best college instructors in the nation.
Today a huge library is accessible and interaction with prominent scholars is possible via any phone jack. Edutech is a Monterey, California company that came up with a much needed way to make computer programs as affordable as text books. Schools buy rights to make copies of a computer program at a fraction of the capital needed to buy multiple programs outright.
A- That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Why shouldn't electronic devices be adapted to educational uses? It only takes the political will and leadership strong enough to shut down the outmoded classrooms that continue to consume more and more of our tax dollars and give us less and less educated youth.
Q- IBM has been a leader in this area. The company has developed a multi-media approach to education that is second to none. Children are able to learn about the Declaration of Independence, and read great historical documents in it's "Illuminated Books and Manuscripts" program. History comes alive in a multimedia version of "Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond".
A- And what about ACOT---Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow. For more than six years Apple Computer has been experimenting and speculating on how technology affects learning and teaching. The company donated computers, laser disk players, optic scanners and video cameras to at least 100 schools around the country. After observing more than 3,000 students, ACOT found that by using high tech products students became more confident and brought a more positive attitude to problem solving in general.
Q- Many companies are getting into the act. Xerox, Coca-Cola, The Prudential, Saturn, Sprint and the Johnson Publishing company have come up with a video and guidebook series focusing on black heros.
A- Fiber-optic networks, with their almost unlimited capacity for transmitting information can be the revolutionary new tool our secondary educational system needs, linking the most gifted teachers with the greatest number of students. The connection can be interactive, with dialogue taking place between teacher and student no matter where each may actually be. With the application of "virtual reality" a master teacher can virtually appear in many places at once. Exercises done on the computer and assessed electronically could be part of the program.
Q- Have you ever heard of the Jason Project?
A- Absolutely. Jason is the name of the robot use by Dr. Robert Ballard, director of the Center for Marine Exploration at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Dr. Ballard gives high school students a rel-life feel for some of his underwater exploration trips via satellite hook up. For two weeks, participants in the Jason Project go to one of twenty satellite receiving centers where they view live, interactive broadcasts of Dr. Ballard's underwater exploration teams and even have the opportunity to control Jason, the underwater robot. Before the viewings participants have spent an average of fifty hours following a course of study specially prepared by the National Science Teachers Association in anticipation of the project.
Q- How is the project funded?
A- It is underwritten by the National Geographic Society and several large corporations.
Q- Do you have any idea how many students participate in any one project?
A- I know the expedition to the Galapagos Island in December 1991, is expected to provide a unique and stimulating educational experience to 10,000 teachers and about 600,000 students.
Q-Fantastic! I'd sure love to participate if I had the opportunity.
A- One of the innovations I favor most is referred to as distance education. Master teachers can instruct millions of kids in distant classrooms, or even in their own homes. Two way communication is even possible today where students across the country are able to call in questions before or after a class or specific lecture. Everyone can have access to the very best teachers in any subject via satellite. There are not only a limited number of experts, but there are a limited number of experts that also have master-teacher skills. So many times a teaching method can turn a student off or on to a subject by making the subject matter appear easy or difficult.
Q- Jaime Escalante and his method of teaching calculus is a terrific example.
A- Exactly! This technology has long been used with preschool education as seen in the Sesame Street productions, but it is equally, if not better suited for the college age crowd. Already thousands of students nationwide enroll in classes produced in University or college studios and broadcast live, or pulled off a satellite or computer, or packaged in videos, as done by Teaching Company, as you mentioned earlier.
The Annenberg Corporation for Public Broadcasting Project offers courses at over 2,000 colleges nationwide and also gives credit for courses offered on cable and public television stations.
These are especially attractive to adult part-time students who are expected to make up 60 percent of all college enrollment by the turn of the century. New technology allows these mostly workers, to sandwich classes in at odd hours during breaks.
Q- This so called distance education is really nothing new and doesn't demand technology beyond the written word. Correspondence courses have been around for over 100 years.
A- You're preaching to the choir. I was able to pass the California State Bar the first time out in a year when there was only a 31.4 percent pass rate, thanks to correspondence study with LaSalle Extension University in Chicago, one of the oldest and most reputable distance educators in the nation.
Q- The Wall Street Journal featured an island in Maine in a recent article on the subject of distance education. (9-13--91) It seems that Maine was ranked last in the nation in adult participation in higher education and 47th in having their high school graduates go on to college.
In 1989 the Community College of Maine began offering courses via video and audio transmittals to other campuses and public schools. In the fall of 1991 almost 4,000 students registered for 35 ITV courses (interactive TV). Teachers get double pay for each remote course they teach and this helps attract a better faculty who don't mind working harder and coming up with innovative new ways to reach distance students.
ITV students hear the same lectures and must turn in the same homework and take the same tests given to on-campus students, but there is obviously no face-to-face contact and often the phone calls with questions or comments are backlogged causing concern to the faculty about the quality of the program.
A- I've heard that ITV students perform as well, if not better than campus students.
Q- Their test scores back up your contention and their high motivation plays a large part in their success. Also ITV students have certain advantages, like being able to review a taped lecture and recapture any part they may have missed through distraction or whatever. In Maine, a biology course is even offering ITV students fetal pig specimens to be dissected at home while viewing a televised demonstration.
A- The best part is the chance for people, who for some reason had to delay their education, to now get a second chance at fulfilling their potential. There have been inspirational cases of people who never completed high school being motivated by this technology to pass the high school equivalency exam and go on and complete college and even attain graduate degrees.
Q- Another aspect is the relevance for school districts strapped for funds.
A- Absolutely. Schools that never on their own could afford to do so, are now able to offer their students courses formerly available to only the best students in New England's elite prep schools. Interested students can take ITV courses in advanced math, foreign languages, science, economics, philosophy----whatever! It is now possible to enrich the curriculum of the most rural, poorest school systems in the country for almost no cost.
Q- I'd like your opinion on an idea expressed by Newton Minow, former head of the FCC under President Kennedy and now with the Annenberg Program. He spoke to the National Press Club on October 2, 1991. He would like to see an excise on the sale of TVs in this country. He pointed out that Japan spends twenty times per person what we do on public television programing and that consequently NHK, the Japanese state station, is the dominant force on the airways.
A- Such an idea does not appeal to me at all.
Q- Mr. Minow coined the phrase years ago about commercial television being a vast wasteland and says there is a need for better programing and we have to find the money to serve the public interest.
A- I say market forces should prevail. Consumers would lose control, as they always do, when something is funded by force. It's much harder to change what people want, but that is far preferable, and in fact the only acceptable solution, as far as I'm concerned. I am sick and tired of rulers doing what is good for us, in the public interest---in the name of the people---for our good--they do what they know we should want! I've had it with their knows and shoulds!
Q- Are you familiar with the concept of "increasing returns"?
A- I've never heard of it.
Q- I thought not. Stanford's Professor Brian Arthur and his colleagues have developed what one might call a new theory of high-tech economics. It suggests that high-tech industries don't respond to free markets the way commodities do. In fact it seems quite probable that carefully timed intervention by government is not only desirable, but may be crucial in maintaining a nation's competitiveness in the global marketplace where highly technical products abound.
A- I've heard that argument from Robert Reich at Harvard and even earlier it was expounded by Joseph Schumpeter in the fifties before there was a market for high-tech goods as we know them today.
Q- If I'm not mistaken, you go along with the idea that after a certain point, extra investment yields diminishing returns. The concept of "increasing returns" maintains that the opposite may be true today. Although large investments are needed to produce semiconductors and computers, for instance, per-unit production costs fall as output rises.
A- So what else is new?
Q- Cheaper costs stimulates demand which leads to even cheaper costs and so forth. The new idea is that the demand for knowledge-based technologies ia not finite in the sense that commodities are. Getting a jump on the market or having the most capital to invest generally determines market share in the high-tech field. It is no longer enough to play the old game of being best.
A- I might not have recognized the term "increasing returns" but I am familiar with many of the arguments for government intervention and the term there is "socialism".
Q- I give up. You would probably agree with Mr Minow that TV is the most important communications tool ever invented. He was impressed by the power of instructional films used in WW II and would like to see TV used in much the same way. He believes TV should be used in combination with a teacher, never alone. He envisions it being used to show clips of Shakespeare for example, followed by a class discussion, then maybe a TV replay, more discussion and so forth.
A- I think that is too limited a use and that to agree to such a formula would be missing a good deal of the medium's potential.
Q- Mr. Minow is an advocate of Whittle's Channel One. How about you?
A- Channel One is an attempt to bring daily news clips into the classroom at no expense to a school system. Because kids are subjected to a few commercials, some people are against the proposal. I figure the average child is exposed to 2,000 commercials every week so being a captive audience at school for a few minutes is not very damaging. Since students are seldom exposed to any news segments (by their own choice or their parents lack of choice)I think Channel One is a good trade off.
Q- Have you ever heard of the privately funded Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY)?
A- Certainly. They believe that often the best students go unchallenged and become frustrated and turned off by a system that holds them back. Instead they push kids as hard and as early as they can. Those who work at the Hopkins Center feel that stress and competition are important for learning and attaining educational excellence.
Q- Certainly that's a controversial stand. Also you might recall the assertion of Mr. Gatto, who you claim to admire so much, that no child is either handicapped or gifted; they just respond to different teaching methods. American schools have stayed away from any form of competition and especially standardized tests in an attempt to protect the self-esteem of all students. Besides many experts believe too much stress can be harmful---at all ages!
A- Nevertheless students who have attended CTY classes generally rise to the challenge despite, or maybe because of, the stress. Kids as young as eleven take a full year of high school chemistry in fifteen days and learn to accept criticism of their work instead of the normal praise they receive on a continual basis in their regular classroom settings. One fifteen year old participant said going back to regular classes after a bout at CTY was to be intellectually undernourished---"like giving a weight lifter 10-pound weights"---not much of a work out!
My oldest son took four years of college in two with Johns Hopkins allowing him to take as many as ___hard core units instead of the usual__. And you're right, most colleges would not have allowed this in an effort to "protect" students from stress.
Q- I read that 52 percent of California's budget goes to education.
A- I've seen various figures close to that. Remember, it depends on what is included in the writer's definition of education. Also remember by the terms of Proposition 98, pased in California in 1988, forty percent of the state budget has to, by law, be allocated to education. Regardless of the budget percentage in actual practice, it is absolutely clear the system needs to become consumer driven and results oriented. Funding should follow performance.
Q- When you said funding just now, I was reminded of an amazing story. Theodore Johnson never made more than $14,000 a year, but he invested so wisely that he accumulated $70 million over his lifetime, half of which he donated to scholarships for kids who otherwise might not be able to attend college.
A- $70 million with that kind of salary! He must have had a long life!
Q- Ninety years and going strong! Mr. Johnson had worked for UPS at what at the time was a very decent salary and he had purchased as much UPS stock as he could during his working years. He retired in 1952 when his holdings were worth about $700,000.
All during his retirement years he watched his UPS stock go up and up and up so that in 1991, at the age of ninety, he was able to divide his charity among six groups: $14.4 million to a small Florida college that emphasized free market principles, $7.2 million for UPS employees' children, $3.6 million to the American Indian College fund and $3.6 million to A school for the Deaf and Blind and another $3.6 million for scholarships for disadvantaged children.
A- I agree that is an amazing story, for at least two reasons that jump out at me. The story illustrates the miracle of compounding in investment strategy. If everyone in the country could just understand the power that is unleashed if one starts early and invests consistently, even very modest amounts.
Q- Early and consistent.
A- You've got it! And the other point about Mr. Johnson's story that really got to me is the credibility it gives to my contention that human beings are basically generous. I take his story as one more piece of evidence that wanting to help, to do good, to make a difference on this earth, ranks right up there for most people right after the desire to look after the purely physical needs.
Q- I don't know if you heard about this, but in Maryland a couple years ago, a Baltimore Judge began sentencing juvenile offenders to "library time". Juveniles had to read as a condition of their probation.
A- I know what you're talking about. I have a quote which I love from Judge John Carroll Byrnes, a man who firmly believes that kids that get in trouble have as much potential as anyone else. He says, "The huge difference between good and bad in our society is education." By giving them books to read he feels he is giving them a chance to get a look at life and values that are far different from the street values that they have been exposed to all their lives.
Q- There are so many good ideas out there in society that it would be a shame to cut any off by centralizing and standardizing.
A- The idea that books can make a difference is hardly new, but another prominent apologist is West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd who in the fall of 1991 suggested that one of the best ways to produce better young students is to throw away the television sets and encourage kids to read good books instead.
Q- You're right, that's hardly a new, or constructive, suggestion. But isn't Florida trying something innovative in the education area?
A- Lee County elementary schools have adopted what they refer to as a "core knowledge" curriculum based on the work of University of Virginia professor, E.D. Hirsch, Jr. Critics charge that the material is classical-traditionalist running the gambit from Greek mythology, to Abe Lincoln.
Professor Hirsch feels that schools have recently taken "diversity" in curriculum too far so that if a student changes school there is no continuity in the curriculum. He believes students are too often encouraged to concentrate on skills to the exclusion of content. Knowing how to think critically but knowing nothing to think about is ridiculous.
Q- Where does the Bush administration propose to get the money to fund the ideas contained in America 2000?
A- It is expected that business will come up with $200 million for a research and development fund. In 1992 New American Schools Development Corp; a private non-profit entity, plans to award contracts to seven design teams. The teams are generally made up of education consultants, academic types and business people. The idea is to find which of a large variety of innovations will work the best and then to have other districts copy the winning innovations.
Q - From what I've observed, most business leaders, politicians and educators agree on the need for higher standards, more effective tests, a curriculum that emphasizes the skills employers need, better training for teachers and an expansion of preschool education.
A - That's right. We have the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh working on a New Standards Project with the National Center on Education and the Economy in Rochester, New York.
Q - Somewhere else the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is working with industry to determine how to raise standards and evaluate teachers. This group feels you can't have meaningful reform without developing some way to assess teacher performance.
A - I can't help wondering why it doesn't occur to any of these commissioners, panelists and board members that the market place will assess teachers and programs in a far more meaningful way than can be done by any fancy manufactured point system or whatever carefully structured criteria these otherwise irrelevant groups can come up with.
Q - I would think you, of all people, would be thrilled by all the volunteer energy, ideas, enthusiasm, time and money being poured into the task of repairing the nation's system of education by the private sector, especially big business.
Tandy Corp., American Airlines and Burlington Northern, all in Fort Worth, Texas, together studied one thousand jobs to ascertain essential skills that might be lacking. They concluded that there wasn't enough emphasis placed on math, and the next thing you know Fort Worth was getting an innovative training program for teachers. The package, called Equity 2000, provides counseling and motivation for students and parents also.
A- I am proud of the voluntary response, especially by business.
I realize that business is contributing more to education in every way, not just dollars, than it ever has done in our nation's history. Both IBM and Exxon gave $24 million in 1991 and the percentage of businesses making contributions of over $1 million rose from 18 percent in 1990 to 24 percent in 1991. According to figures compiled by Joel Keehn in a special report in Fortune magazine October 21, 1991, the median business contribution went from $173,000 in 1990 to $344,000 in 1991.
Q- Wow!
A- There was a big shift in giving from the upper to the lower end of the educational ladder. Between 1990-1991 the number of companies contributing to preschool education rose from 14 percent to 31 percent; giving to elementary education more than doubled from 27 percent to 64 percent.
Q- And dollars were only part of the giving spree. I don't know how much money Eastman Kodak contributed except that it was more than $5 million, but 3,000 of its employees served as tutors and mentors in the schools in Rochester, New York.
A- I would like to recommend to anyone who has any interest in the role business is playing in helping to get education back on track in this country, that he or she get a copy of the October 21, 1991 Fortune magazine where listed on pages 162-180 there are descriptions of the programs sponsored by 132 generous and caring companies.
Q- I was absolutely amazed by the wealth of ideas and the innovative programs that are already in place.
A- I've got to admit just going through the pages made me proud to be an American and to realize that nobody was forcing this kind of giving. Even though I personally thought some of the programs were detrimental (like emphasizing self-esteem and pushing kids ahead instead of offering remedial help) I was impressed with the variety. I just want to keep the ideas coming and not see them cut off by blanket mandates and frenzied micromanagement.
Q- There are many many programs that just aren't well publicized, and they occur in all parts of the country. Experimentation is the name of the game and the more options we have, the better.
Cray Research has been inviting 900 math and science teachers to rural Wisconsin for a development program every summer. GTE has been giving $12,000 awards to fifty teams of teachers .
A- I've heard of that program. It's called GIFT and stands for Growth Initiative for Teachers. As I understand it, a portion of the award has to be spent on a new classroom project.
Q- Then there is RJR Nabisco's $30 million Next Century Schools project. And the program that pays retired engineers and even active engineers to get their teacher certification and become math and science teachers. The programs go on and on.
A- The good will and creativity out there is absolutely incredible! I'm reminded of something George Bush said in the fall of 1991 after praising a host of volunteer programs in the field of education:
This could never happen if somebody tried to design a program in a subcommittee in the House of Representatives or the United States Senate. It couldn't happen. You can not generate this kind of love, this kind of concern by federal legislation that originated back in Washington, DC.
There is no doubt in my mind---we are a "can do" nation. We just have to remove the fetters---all the rules and regulations---and unleash the pent up energy and enthusiasm of the American people.