Where We Stand

A new, national study of what students don't know always spawns a new bunch of newspaper and magazines commentaries (often including my own) on why our kids are so ignorant and how we should reform our schools to take care of this. 

Does this country have more will than wallet? That's what President Bush told us in his inaugural address last year, and his policies have been consistent with that assertion. But Herbert Stein, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon and Ford, doesn't agree. 

Bill Honig, California's superintendent of public instruction, is one of education's best and brightest. So I was shocked and disappointed to find that he is sponsoring legislation (along with Assemblyman Jack O'Connell) that will ban strikes by teachers and school employees and create a new collective bargaining structure culminating in binding arbitration.

What goes around, comes around ... Last week, as I was debating the former school superintendent of one of our largest cities on schools, I suddenly felt as though I had stumbled into a time warp. I was back in the early '60s, in the midst of one of those debates about whether or not teachers and other public employees had the right to engage in collective bargaining and, if they did, what this would do to the balance of power.

When people talk about fixing what's wrong with the way we educate America's poor, minority children, they often make it sound like an act of charity, something we really ought to do -- if we can afford it. 

It often looks as though no good deed goes unpunished. The latest example is the threat facing the
Toledo Federation of Teachers' peer evaluation program.

The Committee for Economic Development, a business group that has already put out two excellent reports, one about school improvement and the other about the problems of disadvantaged and at-risk children, began meeting on a third report the other day, and I was particularly struck by one speaker's comments on the obstacles that bureaucracy puts in the way of innovators.

The decision to set national education goals was perhaps the most important result of the Education Summit last September. Now we have them: In his State of the Union speech, the President unveiled six goals for America to accomplish by the year 2000. How do they look?

Where will U.S. business and industry find the well-qualified workers we need to make our nation competitive in the new world-economy? Everybody is asking that question as they look at the shrinking labor pool and the generally low level of skills among current high school graduates. One answer is to forge closer links between work and school.

We're seeing increased pressure these days to teach more history, but whose history? Just how difficult it can be to deal with that issue becomes obvious when you take a look at the report on multicultural education produced for New York State Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol by his Task Force on Minorities: Equity and Excellence.

All across the country we're busy trying to improve American education. How? By applying the techniques commonly used by American business management --frequent evaluations to find out who is doing a poor job, career ladders and merit pay to reward the productive worker and easier dismissal for the weak and incompetent. But will it work? 

Is there a war between the generations for society's resources? Samuel H. Preston, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and director of its Population Studies Center, thinks that children and the elderly are in direct competition for economic support -- and that for the past 20 years the elderly have been winning.

Over the last year the media have featured one or more major stories each month dealing with school problems. One might even call these problems minor scandals.

The management of the New York City public schools is becoming an issue in the political campaign now taking place. Almost all the candidates for public office have had some harsh words for the central Board of Education.

Last Sunday, The New York Times carried a shocking education story on its front page. The story, based on a report by the office of the City Comptroller, compared New York City school expenditures with those of other cities. The report found that while New York City spends more money for the education of each child than other cities, so much of the money is diverted to purposes which are not directly educational that the money actually reaching the students in the form of teaching, guidance and other direct services is less than other city school districts. 

Since this is a Presidential election year, it is also a year in which different interest groups seek commitments from candidates. Those whose major concern is education are no different from other interest groups in this respect. So far, the promise most often made by prospective candidates to education lobbyists is to support the creation of a separate Department of Education which would be headed by a Cabinet member who would be called Secretary of Education.

Research in science is one thing, research in education is another. 

In the past few years so much has been written about teachers militancy, protests and strikes as part of the national movement toward collective bargaining, that many tend to forget that the movement is relatively new. December 1971 will mark the tenth anniversary of the election of the United Federation of Teachers as collective bargaining agents for New York City's teachers. 

At a time when universal agreement on matters pertaining to education and ours schools is virtually non-existent, the emergence of any significant area free of controversy is worth noting. Such an area is that of job-related vocational education. 

The concept of accountability continues to rank high on the list of discussion topics in educational circles.