Where We Stand

"Why don't you become a columnist for the New York Times?"

Last Wednesday, this column celebrated its 25th anniversary. Where We Stand first appeared in the New York Times on December 13, 1970, and, except for one summer break, it has come out every week since then-- a total of nearly 1,300 columns. Why did I start Where We Stand? I answered this question in a column I wrote in 1990.

The overwhelming majority of students received a relatively small amount of schools' additional spending.

We are often told that per-pupil spending has doubled in real terms over the last 25 years but the investment hasn't produced academic gains. So why should we keep throwing good money after bad? The negative equation -- more spending equals no greater student achievement - fits right in with the current anti- government mood. Why should taxpayers play Santa Claus? But the math is wrong, as researchers from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) demonstrate in a new study.

"We took out a long sheet of paper that looked like an application for a mortgage."

American educators have always had a weakness for educational fads, and most teachers have seen many of these "innovations" come and go. But even veteran teachers are sometimes startled by the latest novelty. That was the reaction of retired teacher and special education supervisor Leon Schuchman when he saw his granddaughter's "New Age" report card, which, as he says, isn't a card and doesn't report. He describes it in a recent issue of New York Teacher:

The author of this week's guest column is Gary L. Crum, a retired teacher who worked mostly with disruptive and hard-to-educate students for over 25 years. The column first appeared in the Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard on October 5, 1995.

California charter schools are, in effect, imposing entrance requirements on the basis of family accountability.

Charter schools, like vouchers, are being marketed in part as a last-ditch effort to spur reform in public education. Under laws passed in 19 states so far, parents, teachers, nonprofit groups, and others can apply to establish new public schools or remake existing schools outside the regular system, usually with the stated purpose of realizing a vision for better teaching and learning. The idea is that these experimental schools, funded by tax money but freed from state and local regulation, will show other public schools by example how to create successful learning communities for all children -- especially those with the greatest educational needs.

Soviet agriculture went down the drain when ideology took over from science.

The recent Fairfax County, Virginia, school board elections featured a battle between right-wing and liberal candidates. According to the Washington Post, at least 12 of the 35 candidates favored teaching creationism in the schools. Other hotly debated issues included "what to teach about homosexuality and how big a role phonics should play in reading instruction" (October 21, 1995). A commentator describing the election said, "What is at stake is the ability to educate our children in the values that both sides hold dear." Values? Wait a minute! What you want your children to learn about homosexuality is a matter of values -- or ideology. But should science be subject to an ideological test? Or methods for teaching reading?

Today's guest columnist is the distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. His article is condensed from a commencement speech he delivered at Roosevelt University, May 21, 1995.

Could raising academic standards in public schools do more harm than good? Believe it or not, some educators think so. Making the curriculum more challenging, they argue, will only lower the grades of average students and raise the failure rate of students who are just getting by.

In most classes with a chronically disruptive child, none of the children are being educated. That's why parents are angry.

Every poll shows that the American people say discipline is the number one problem in the schools. In focus groups, parents say that they don't believe any proposed reforms will work if there is a chronically disruptive student in the class. What should be done? Agreement is overwhelming. For example, "First Things First," the Public Agenda report released last year, found that 76 percent of white parents and 79 percent of African- American parents say disruptive students should be removed from class; and a recent Gallup poll found that 77 percent of all Americans favor educating these youngsters in alternative settings. This would allow the vast majority of students to learn and the few disruptive students to get special help.

The schools have a window of opportunity to regain public support.

Time is running out on public education. Americans have always been committed to the public schools. They consider them a basic democratic institution where students from the many diverse groups in the U.S. can learn to work together. But according to Public Agenda's new study, "Assignment Incomplete," the support for public education is wearing thin. A majority of Americans believe that the public schools cannot be counted on to provide the things they consider most important in an education -- discipline, the basics, and standards. Assuming the report is correct - and it is very convincing -- the schools have a window of opportunity to regain public support. If that is ignored, we will see the collapse of the system.

Youngsters do math and write every day, and they spend a lot of time reading.

How can we raise the achievement of poor, minority students in urban schools? That's a question thatparents and teachers all over the country are asking. It looks as though Barclay, an elementary school in one of Baltimore's poorest neighborhoods, has found an answer.

The jury found that Bray had "exceeded the bounds of common decency .... "

What usually happens when a student takes it into his head to disrupt a class? I'm not talking about the occasional guffaw. I mean day after day of shouting out in class, threatening the teacher, and generally creating an uproar that makes teaching and learning impossible. Often, not much at all.

We need a vital union movement today as much as we ever have.

The American economy is expanding and productivity is reaching its highest levels in many years. Inflation is down, the stock market is up. So everything is going along pretty well, right? Wrong. Things are going very well for some people, but less and less well for most. In fact, we now have the widest income gap between wealthy and ordinary Americans in our modern history, and the widest of any industrialized country. For a nation with our traditions, that's not a good sign.

Last week, the AFT launched a national campaign for standards of conduct and achievement in U.S. schools. The public overwhelmingly supports these standards-- and so do the people who work in the schools. But they haven't been heard.

The public continues to call for commonsense steps to improve the schools.

This year's Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll, "The Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools," gives policymakers a clear picture of what Americans want. The results are consistent with "First Things First," a survey by the Public Agenda Foundation that I have commented on in previous columns. The public continues to call for commonsense steps to improve the schools. Is anyone listening?

Given EAI's current program and track record, the results are not likely to change.

The long-awaited independent evaluation of private management in Baltimore public schools came out this month. It shows that the millions of extra dollars Baltimore taxpayers spent on schools managed by Education Alternatives, Inc. (EAI), got them nothing more -- and maybe a little less -- than they got from any other district schools. EAI promised to produce "immediate" and "dramatic" gains in academic achievement. But at the end of three years, the only difference between the EAI schools and other city schools is the profit carted off by the Minneapolis-based firm.

Barclay language arts and writing scores, which were consistently below the 30th percentile, are now above the 60th percentile.

What is the most serious problem facing the U.S. today? I'd put educating poor, minority students in urban schools close to the top of the list. For many of these youngsters, a good education will be the only chance to get out of poverty and become successful and productive adults. But test scores and other measures of achievement show that, on average, these children lag far behind students in middle class schools. It's true that minority test scores have been improving over the past 20 years, but we are still doing poorly. Nobody knows this better than the people who work in these schools, and they are desperate to find answers. That is why the principal of Barclay, an inner-city elementary school in Baltimore, went, about ten years ago, to beg the superintendent to let her try something different in her school.

Public-school teachers choose public schools for their own children more often than the general public.

In "The History of a Hoax," a wonderful New York Times Magazine article last March, Yale professor Barry O'Neill recounted his search for the origins of two widely quoted lists of top school problems. There was a 1940's list featuring gum-chewing, talking, and not putting paper in wastebaskets, and a 1980's version with drug abuse, suicide, pregnancy, and violence. The contrast between the lists was supposed to show how bad our schools had become. People who cited them had no idea where they came from; everyone just picked them up from someone else. O'Neill never did unearth any original studies because there weren't any; instead, he discovered a man who had created the two lists. The man said he knew what to include because he had gone to school in the 40's and "read the newspapers." In other words, the lists were neither polls nor scientific surveys. They were one man's invention circulated by many as social science.

A number of readers took me to task for a recent column in which I said that the English language might be partly responsible for the poor math performance of U.S. and British students.

Is Goals 2000 about to get the ax? That's what Republican budget cutters are telling us, but we will be making a big mistake if we let that happen. Goals 2000 has been in operation for only one year, and it is already taking hold across the country. If it goes, we will lose an important chance to reform our education system and raise the achievement of all our students.