Where We Stand

The Newark teacher strike continues, though it has disappeared from the headlines. The press reported the start of the strike, the clubbing of a group of teachers by a uniformed band of young men, the arrest of the teacher leaders and the fact that the Mayor, the president of the Board of Education, the teacher union president and the local "community" leader are all black. Beyond that, the public has been told little or nothing about this major struggle.

The school fiscal crisis deepens every day. In the New York area, New Rochelle has announced it may have to close schools. The district has run out of money and cannot raise taxes since the legal tax limit has been reached. New York City has imposed a job freeze, and the Board of Education is making cuts to head off a projected $50 million deficit. Newark teachers are on strike following a Board of Education demand that teacher's sign a four-year pact providing no salary increases over the contract period.

When the school decentralization law was passed, all the parties made many compromises. As a result, Republicans and Democrats, school supervisors, the majority of black and Puerto Rican legislators and the UFT supported the bill. Now, less than a year after its passage, there is a concerted effort to reopen one of the basic compromises in the law: the question of whether the Board of Examiners shall continue to license professional personnel on the basis of civil service-type examinations.

Charles Silverman's book Crisis in the Classroom is enjoying well deserved success. The book, the result of a $300,000 Carnegie Foundation grant for study of teacher training, is broad in scope. Far from limiting itself narrowly to the area of teacher training it raises basic philosophical and scientific questions: How can we train teachers unless we know what it is that teacher's do which brings about desired changes in students? What are these desired changes?

The school budget is more than a financial prospectus; it is a reflection of educational philosophy and a measure of how much we really care about children. Looked at in this way, Chancellor Scribner's proposed budget leaves much to be desired.

Every year sees some new educational idea advance as the answer to our school ills. This year is no exception. The Office of Economic Opportunity is spending millions of dollars on "performance contracting." 

Budget time is here again, and it is going to be difficult to get school improvements. The reasons are easy to see. 

School violence may not be the most appropriate holiday season topic, but it is hardly avoidable. While parents, teachers and pupils enjoy their winter vacation, Frances Glick, the teacher-victim of an assault at George Washington High School Annex, remains in the hospital. At last report, her head injuries we so severe that she could not recognize her father five days after the assault occurred.

The U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity has been pressing for the adoption of a voucher plan. While there are many versions of the voucher plan, the basic idea is to give the children ( or their parents) the money which the public schools now spend on their education and permit them to spend that money for education in public, private or parochial schools. 

The teacher's job is filled with frustration. There are the day-to-day struggle to reach and educate the children, the endless petty chores, the effort to get special help for students who need it, the difficulties of getting the right books and supplies and now the near-impossible task of coping with school violence. This column is our way of telling the parents and the public where we stand on the important educational issues facing our city.