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| | Unfixing our schools
Friday, Dec 10, 2004 By Jack Moseley It's admittedly a radical idea, but has anyone considered not "fixing" whatever is supposedly wrong with public schools in Arkansas and throughout the rest of America. Instead of "fixing" things, what would be wrong with "unfixing" many of the laws, rules and regulations that now govern every minute of every classroom day? The goal would be pretty radical, of course. It would be aimed at letting good teachers actually teach in orderly classrooms. As things stand now, it can take weeks to get a disruptive student removed from a classroom. We're protecting the disruptive individual's legal rights, you see, at the expense of the frustrated teacher and all the other students, who just might want to actually learn something. If you think we have had and are having problems with public education in Arkansas, consider what is happening in New York City, where public education is an unending disaster. As always, the proposed bureaucratic solution is to spend more money - a lot more money. Would you believe $5.6 billion more per year on the students, plus $9.2 billion for new classrooms, libraries and other facilities? Sound familiar? I'm not against spending money to improve education, but simply throwing good taxpayer cash after already wasted public dollars actually accomplishes very little. Remember Kansas City? In 1985, a federal judge "fixed" the public schools there to the tune of $2 billion from the city and the state. He ordered new schools be constructed in new locations to improve the racial mix of students. He imposed a student-teacher ratio of 13-to-1. And what happened to the quality of education? Very little improvement resulted. I will concede that Arkansas schools probably are not as cluttered with laws, rules and regulations as those in New York City, but teachers from Jonesboro to Fort Smith are hog-tied and frustrated by laws, bureaucratic rules and regulations that do virtually nothing to help children actually learn. The ridiculous extreme in New York requires that 100 different laws and regulations must be followed in order to hold an athletic event. These range from having automatic defibrillators to a rule that mandates the size of the earflaps on a softball helmet. In an article on the New York public school crisis the other day, Phillip K. Howard, the founder of a bipartisan group called the Common Good, revealed tens of thousands of legal obligations that have been imposed on public schools and public school teachers in that city. The volume of laws and regulations in New York is so great that not even the U.S. Department of Education knew about all of them, Howard said. Howard makes valid points that merit consideration, even in a supposedly backward state like Arkansas, for which we can thank God that we have not become as "sophisticated" as New York City in schooling our kids. Howard says that laws and mandates are "ill-suited as a management system," because they are rigid and leave no room to adjust to changing and special circumstances. A legalistic approach to education becomes poisonous and encourages what can become "a viper's nest of competing entitlements, as people start parsing the rules to get their way." Howard notes that students quickly learn that what matters is not right and wrong, but what you can argue. The authority of teachers and principals erode into ineffectiveness. Rules quickly become oppressive. In New York, it's against the rules to even ask a teacher to help out in the halls or in a lunchroom. And firing an incompetent teacher can take years of preparation and legal hearings. It's so much hassle that most principals don't even try. Howard's message is clear. Legal micromanagement of public schools is not the way to go. Protecting the rights of students with laws and rules was a noble goal back in the 1960s, but somewhere along the way, it got completely out of hand. As a result, virtually everybody in public education is being penalized. Let's "unfix" some laws and give common sense a chance to work for the common good in Arkansas. Let teachers teach. Let principals manage. Keep the State Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education out of day-to-day school business unless reasonable checks and balances are being abused. Set standards, yes, but do not dictate every minute of every teacher's classroom time, especially when you don't have the slightest idea what's actually going on along the front lines of public education. And, oh yeah, we might consolidate a few more school districts instead of unnecessarily building costly new facilities where they really are not or soon will not be needed. Life, luck and -30-. ------- Jack Moseley writes for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jackmoseley33@hotmail.com. |
