If the last decade has produced anything in education, it has been an outpouring of books critical of existing school procedures and practices and calling for a multitude of changes. The critics, almost to a man, see teachers as a major obstacle to "innovation." In the sense that teachers, drawing on their experience and training, see the need for restraint in the current passion for "innovation," the critics are right. To the general public, the word "innovation" may mean "improvement." For the teacher, the word, in all too many circumstances, has an entirely different meaning.
Year after year, new programs are introduced in the schools-team teaching, upgraded schools, higher horizons, educational TV, computer assisted instruction, differentiated staffing, and so on, and on. To the public, the introduction of each program may signify an educational advance, but for the teacher the new program is more likely to be a replay of an old tune. The adoption of new programs and the abandonment of old ones can, by and large, be better understood in the light of the public relations needs of boards of education than of the educational needs of children. Small wonder, then, that teachers have become skeptical. The longer they teach, the wider-and more disillusioning-their experience with innovations. The "old ways" (last year's innovations) are always described in negative terms; the new programs are "doomed to succeed."
Thus, school districts throughout the country are busy ousting their school superintendents (who have failed) and replacing them with new ones. In their hunt for new school superintendents and new school programs, school districts are engaged in a game of educational musical chairs in which each district hails as new and innovative that which is being discarded as a failure in a neighboring area. Not only has this process engendered an understandable cynicism among teachers, it has also brought about a steep decline in public support for education. A train of flamboyant changes in program and personnel has been thrust at us as a substitute for the much less dramatic, but much more significant, gradual improvement in existing programs.
Problem: School Board Obstuctionism
At the heart of the problem is the refusal of boards of education to be educationally accountable; that is, to open their doors to an honest evaluation of their educational programs. The clearest demonstration of this obstructive attitude was provided by no less than 13 of the 15 largest cities in the nation, when they refused access to their schools to U.S. government researchers working on what later came to be known as the Coleman Report. The reason, apparently, was that the officialdoms did not want their school districts compared with any others. In most instances, however, the cover-up process is not so obvious. Instead of outright refusal to permit evaluation of educational programs-a position they could not long maintain-the school boards have adopted the practice of hiring their own evaluators.
In Gary, Indiana, for example, one public school has been operated in its entirety by a private company functioning under a performance contract. The program is a controversial one, and honest evaluation is essential; yet the evaluating agency was jointly selected by the private company whose financial future is at stake and the board of education whose political reputation hangs in the balance. Whether or not the evaluating agency does an honest job is somewhat beside the point since the method of selection must inevitably cast doubt on the validity of the results.
Similarly, the New York City Board of Education, in its apparent eagerness to dump the More Effective Schools Program, employed as "independent" evaluator Dr. Bernard Donovan, former school superintendent with a seven-year public record of opposition to MES. In another area, it employed Preston Wilcox, an I.S. 201 militant, to evaluate the 201 "demonstration" project! Such actions are comparable to assigning George Wallace to do an independent evaluation of the progress of school desegregation. Public support for education is at ebb tide. Regaining public support will not be easy. A basic starting point might well be the readiness of boards of education to abandon the game of musical chairs and the pretense of self-serving reports and make way for honest, independent and unrestricted research. We badly need the equivalent of a Consumers Union for our public schools.