is willing to take ultimate responsibility for the welfare of all children.
Teachers blame parents or kids, the way Jim (aka Selby Slim) is doing, while
parents, some politicians, and administrators blame teachers. Teachers in
turn blame administrators--or school board members. School board members
blame the state or the federal government for a lack of funds or onerous
expectations or whatever, while the state or federal government mandates an
ever-changing patchwork of rules and regulations--and the cycle just
perpetuates itself. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anybody willing to take
responsibility or be held accountable, except in ways where there are no
real consequences.
When was the last time you heard the school board or district
administration--or teachers, for that matter--acknowledge that "we're
failing to serve kids," except in the context of "we have to do better,"
which becomes a meaningless aspirational goal since almost no one ever loses
his or her job for failing to close the achievement gap, significantly
improve the graduation rate, or ensuring that all children are prepared for
college or vocational training after high school. Instead, there is an
endless stream of PR from the district applauding merit scholars, students
with perfect scores on the ACT, or other "superstar" accomplishments which
take the focus off the larger reality that we're barely making incremental
progress on raising achievement and better preparing kids for life.
In almost any other endeavor, if 30 percent of an organization's customers
didn't acquire the tools they needed over a 12-year period in spite of
paying $12-15,000 a year for the service, the company or organization would
be out of business or seen as having enormous structural issues. Yet with
nearly 30% of St. Paul's high school students failing to graduate on time,
and as many as 40% of those who do graduate not prepared for higher
education (where colleges scramble to provide remedial courses that will
hopefully allow kids to survive at the collegiate level), no one is to blame
except the parents and kids?
That's not to diminish or refute the points Jim is making; behavior-problem
kids are indeed extraordinarily difficult to teach, and their disruptive
behavior makes it even harder to teach others in the classroom that are
there to learn. But to ignore the way that at least some teachers take the
easy way out by focusing only on high-achieving students while intentionally
creating low expectations for kids who may be disruptive simply relieves
schools of the responsibility for educating all children that they find in
their classrooms.
Obviously, there are no simple solutions to what ails public education, and
those in far right wing think tanks who regularly demonize teachers seem
more interested in scoring political points than finding real solutions. But
there are plenty of folks on the left and right of the political spectrum
who support teachers but are losing patience when they see a continued flow
of money into school budgets with little change in the outcomes.
Until we all collectively embrace the responsibility for educating all
children, and teachers, administrators, parents, politicians, faith leaders,
etc., are willing to acknowledge their particular contribution to the
continued shortcomings in our educational system, we will see little if any
change in the status quo. Unfortunately, without accountability measures
that have real consequences, finger-pointing will remain the norm with the
result that nothing changes.
AS with everything, however, at some point the status quo will become
unsustainable, and the fallout will end up impacting the same group that it
always hurts--the kids we're supposed to be lifting up and educating.
Tom Goldstein
Former School Board Member