While people in Washington, D.C., are talking about improving the education system and meeting national goals by the year 2000, people in many of our local schools are wondering how they're going to make it through the year.
Teachers in these schools are wondering whether they'll come in tomorrow and find that they have 45 kids in a class instead of the 40 they had today. Their salaries are already frozen, but will they hear that they're going to be furloughed or laid off? Or that their program will be the next one to get the ax? And in the midst of all this, they're worrying about the escalating needs of their students and how they'll meet them.
States and school districts across the country have their horror stories, but here are a few typical examples:
□ In Dade County, Florida, veteran teachers were encouraged to retire early to cut costs. No new teachers have been hired. But new students continue to enroll, and class sizes are huge. Many of these kids speak little if any English. What's going to happen to Dade's school restructuring effort? No one knows.
□ In New York City, where 1,000 teachers retire annually, over 4,000 teachers were enticed to accept early retirement. These teachers haven't been replaced. One out of 4 principals has also retired. Programs and services are being slashed. Some cynics might say, "Oh well, they weren't doing so well anyway." But academic achievement and school attendance had been going up and dropout rates down, The reforms responsible for this progress are stalled now.
□ In Los Angeles, like Dade and New York City, there are lots of retirees, no new hires and exploding class sizes. There have also been layoffs-among them a couple of teachers who had just been notified that their plans for restructuring schools had won a national grant competition. And few people hold out any hope that California's demanding new curriculum will be implemented.
□ In Cincinnati, teachers are spending their own money to supplement dwindling supplies, just like they are everywhere else. The average out-of-pocket expense: $200.
□ In Duval County, Florida, counselors who helped abused children, children from chaotic families and pregnant teenagers have been eliminated. The kids' problems continue, though.
□ In Baltimore City, the schools heard that their kids were below par on 12 out of 13 state standards the same week they heard that the schools would have to close down for a week in February. The reason? To save money, of course. (Incidentally, in Baltimore County, which outspends Baltimore City by about 50 percent, the kids are doing O .K. on the standards and the schools will be able to remain open.)
What makes these cuts and cutbacks all the worse are the terrible and increasing problems of kids. And I'm not just talking about poor kids. As counselors get cut, teachers, who are already having to cope with bigger classes, try to take over. But how can they possibly manage? And how can their communities simply expect them to take up the slack?
No one is more critical of the schools than I am or stronger in urging teachers to do more, do it differently and do it better. But the situation too many of our schools face is intolerable. And in case this sounds like special pleading, consider this experience of James Renier, the chief operating officer of Honeywell.
Renier, who has a special interest in education, recently accepted a challenge to be the acting principal at a junior high school in Robbinsdale, Minn. He was shocked by the number and extent of problems kids brought to school with them-and by the amount of time schools had to spend overcoming these problems to get kids ready to learn. And Renier's school was in an average suburban neighborhood. "All across the country," Renier concluded, "schools have accepted this responsibility -- largely without recognition and without support. They have acted in default of families and community agencies -- and the schools aren't equipped for the extra load." What should schools do? They "should be shouting through all the media available that unless the rest of the community acts responsibly, education is doomed, and with it our hopes for the blessings that education brings."
We want a great deal from our schools. We want them to educate our children to a world standard; we also want them to offer help to kids who need it-and that is an increasing number. But we can't expect this if we continue to slash school budgets and make teachers cope with all of society's problems.
James Renier talked about his school experiences at the National Education Goals Forum in Des Moines, Iowa. President Bush was scheduled to be there but couldn't make it. Maybe if he had heard Renier's speech, he'd be thinking about how to use the peace dividend to rescue America's devastated schools and children. That would be a better proposal for the peace dividend than any we've heard from Washington so far.