Where We Stand

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.

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.

The last two decades have seen the courts take action on basic national issues in areas where the legislative and executive branches had not acted. The great progress we have witnessed in civil rights would not have been achieved without the impetus given by court decisions. Similarly, undemocratic forms of representation could not have been ended if not for the court decision on one-man-one-vote.

Recent incidents of violence and disorder in public schools have focused attention on the need for school security measures to protect the overwhelming majority of students from the disruptive fewwho turn what should be a place of learning into a place of chaos and terror. Essentials as such measures are, they are of course one-sided in purpose. We must simultaneously work at improving the schools and the educational programs they offer.

By the time the holiday recess in our schools is over, one month will have passed since two teachers were raped in their classrooms and another teacher brutally assaulted by the leader of a publicly funded community group in the Bronx.  The question, after this new round of violence, of whether this time action will replace earlier promises remains unanswered.

If there is a single idea, which is most under consideration in educational circles today, it is the idea of accountability. But, unfortunately, there are almost as many definitions of educational accountability as there are supporters of the idea. To some militant local groups it means the grant to them of total power to fire and hire professionals on whatever subjective basis suits their purpose. To those concerned with rising education costs, this term means an accounting for money spent how much learning output for each dollar of input.

School fiscal crises are occurring all across the country. Educational programs are being abolished and services to children are curtailed. Only in New York City have the cutbacks so far been averted, thanks to the strength of an unprecedented coalition of forces which included parent groups, elected community school boards, the entire labor movement, the civil rights movement and high school student groups. Credit must also go to the central Board of Education for continuing to operate the schools with a full level of services until the money ran out and to Comptroller Abraham Beame, who resolved the crisis with a bookkeeping device which other governmental agencies were already using.

For many decades the New York Civil Liberties Union was admired by many as an organization which fought to preserve the democratic rights of all citizens, especially those whose rights were threatened by "the mob" because of unpopular views and affiliations. Unfortunately, within the last few years, the NYCLU seems to have abandoned its traditional role as defender of democratic procedures and has instead become involved as a combatant in substantive political struggles.

The announcement by the Board of Education that it will have to cut back $45 million in services for the rest of the school year has shocked the city. The freeze on maintenance and repair alone must inevitably lead to school closings since disrepair creates physical danger. The dismissal of 6500 teachers regularly employed in the schools and another 5000 per diem substitutes who replace absent teachers cannot be viewed as just another governmental economy move. 

School Chancellor Harvey Scribner stirred up new controversy when he recently advocated that parents, teachers and students be given a greater voice in the selection of high school principals. The suggestion was made in an after dinner speech on "participatory democracy in the schools" in which the Chancellor made numerous criticisms of the schools, supervisors and teachers.

When the Urban Coalition was formed in 1967, there was great hope. For the first time, many of us thought, the full strength of the labor movement, the business community and the civil rights organizations would be used to reduce poverty, improve education and fight racial discrimination.