Tell it like it is, Dr. Liz

I’m not saying anything new, but I’m saying it anyway.

I just finished watching “Oprah Special Reports: Schools in Crisis.” I actually turned the TV on specifically to watch this episode, and I kept yelling at Oprah and her guests during the show. The “special report” merely underscored a well-known reality, especially for someone who has worked and taken an interest in education for many years. I applaud the show’s desire to put a spotlight on this issue and make it real and important to Oprah’s very middle- and upper-class viewers who may not face this reality in their local schools. I also support wholeheartedly the good works being done by any number of individuals in pursuit of real reform – in this case, Kevin Johnson (former Phoenix Suns players who retired and personally rehabilitated several Sacramento area schools), the founders of KIPP, and Bill and Melinda Gates. However, these shows all too often make it seem like what’s done in these schools can magically be replicated in all public schools. I’m not saying public schools can’t be reformed, and I’m definitely not saying there’s not a “crisis” in schools, but we need to be honest and open about what makes these schools work and what they are and are not doing. Let’s start by looking at what makes a good school effective:

Parental involvement: All of these schools – Johnson’s Sacred Hope Academy, the KIPP Schools, and several US schools funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – require parents be involved. Any school that requires the student to fill out an application and get a parent signature on the form has instituted some selectivity. Are these the best and brightest students with the most stable home environments? No. But I taught plenty of kids in Greene who would have had a hard time getting their parents to fill out a simple form like that required by these schools. Once students do fill out the application, they’re then entered in a lottery, and before they can be enrolled in the school, the parents have to make a commitment to be involved in their students’ education by attending family days at the school and all parent/teacher conferences. Again, this is more than a lot of parents are willing to do. If kids have parents like these at home, they’re already steps ahead of many of their peers. Perhaps it is the failure of the public school system that we don’t require this of parents, but as with so many other “standards” in the public school system, how do you require people to adhere to these standards without consequences? And what consequences (aside from the obvious detriment to the student and society) can exist in this situation that don’t involve taking the child away from the parent (extreme, and clearly unproductive) or removing the child from the school (not an option in a country that’s dedicated to education all students). The founders of KIPP were on the show and talked about, essentially, giving parenting advice to some of these parents. One of the founders even took a television out of a student’s home because she wasn’t getting her homework done. All well and good for a fifty-something male who likely has his own kids. Something completely different for a (when I started teaching) twenty-three-year-old female who most parents think is a student and who has no parenting experience. Kevin Johnson’s Academy, like the one where I’m about to start teaching, is a college-preparatory school. Parents must be committed to the idea of their children going to college after high school graduation. As he put it, “I don’t have time to deal with parents who have to be convinced of the importance of their child receiving a college education.” I agree. But public school teachers don’t have that choice. They have to teach everyone they get. Parental involvement isn’t required for a child to be successful in school; in truth, none of the things listed here will make or break a child’s chances – there are examples throughout history of people who didn’t have one or the other but who was nonetheless successful – but it goes a long way in creating unity between the home and the school and helping teachers and parents reinforce the lessons learned from the other.

Intelligent, committed, well-paid teachers, who have been adequately prepared for the classroom: I’ve met a lot of bad teachers, both as a student and as a fellow teacher. So get rid of them. They shouldn’t have their jobs. But we don’t really have a choice with the way things work and the way teachers’ unions operate. You CANNOT have a good school without good teacher. You can have a successful student who succeeds despite a noticeable absence of good teachers (I think Wes is an example of that), but you absolutely cannot have a good school without good teachers. You can have bad administrators, poor funding, a lack of resources, overcrowding, and more, but you cannot have a good school without good teachers. Period. Consequently, we need to take a harder look at what makes good teachers. They are several things. They are, generally, well educated. They’ve attended well-respected universities and liberal arts colleges. A lot of them did not attend undergrad with the intention of becoming a school teacher, but they have something in their personality, in their innate makeup, that lends them to teaching. They are, by and large, very committed. They work long hours at school and at home – not because it’s required, but because they choose to in order to help their students succeed – and they make themselves available to colleagues and students. At KIPP, the school day lasts from 7am until 5pm, there’s half-days on Saturday, and there’s compulsory summer school. And the teachers give out their cell numbers to the students. That’s asking a lot of a teacher, but it works. And it works even better because of the parental involvement, the administrators and teachers working together, and the emphasis on making learning enjoyable. But, though there are clearly people out there willing to do so (and God bless them for it), it is unbelievably unfair to ask people to work those kinds of hours without compensating them appropriately. When businessmen and doctors and lawyers work those kinds of hours, they bill for them. To ask a teacher to work those hours and then to pay them less than $50,000 a year (many states start teachers around $27,000) – especially in the big cities where most KIPP schools are housed – is to disrespect and undervalue the work being done. And if you want to attract the best teachers, you’ve got to be willing to pay them (and if you tell me that teachers shouldn’t be doing it for the money, I will stop talking to you; of course they shouldn’t, but nobody’s ever made that claim about doctors, now have they?). And if you’re going to pay teachers more, you’ve got to expect more of them. You’ve got to fix these RIDICULOUS teacher education programs that are WORTHLESS. It’s a cycle – expect more of the teachers, compensate them for their time, energy, dedication, and knowledge, and believe it or not, you’ll get significantly better teachers and you’ll keep them. There’s a reason we have arguably the best doctors in the world. They have to go to school for many years to do their job, there’s a lot expected of them, but in return they’re respected and well-paid.

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. Oprah noted towards the end of the show – oh, just as an aside – that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $1 million on their schools. That’s a lot of money. It’s money that’s either not spent or misspent in public schools. Money won’t magically fix things. There are obviously schools that are great that could use a lot more money than they have. But it doesn’t hurt. And more importantly it does three things – it provides resources that can make learning more interesting (a variety of books to read, technology, space, field trips); it allows for the hiring of more teachers, which means smaller classes (on the show, they showed a school in LA with 45 in a class; my college classes weren’t that big); and it shows kids that people think they’re worth spending money on. Research has shown that the kids need to have educational experiences in order for new information to “stick.” For students who aren’t getting these educational experiences at home, money gives it to them at school – the trip to the museum or the play or the symphony, the advanced computer system, the well-stocked library. Research also shows that students benefit from smaller classes (especially when it’s with a good teacher). And experience shows that people behave in accordance with their surroundings. If you put a random twelve-year-old in fancy clothes and take her to a fancy restaurant, she’ll change her behavior to match the surroundings. She won’t necessarily act like an adult, but it’s unlikely that she’ll like she would at the dinner table at home or especially like she would in the school cafeteria. When kids attend school in a place that looks like a prison, with graffiti on the walls, roofs leaking, and desks breaking apart, their behavior and attitude mirror that. They read this decay as, “I’m not worth anything.” Money addresses this.

The buzzwords in education right now are accountability, high standards, raising expectations. All good things to strive for. But there’s got to be some give and take in this. You have to create the conditions for success before can expect success. You don’t put (since I keep using the doctor comparison) a brand new intern from the worst med school in the country in a trauma unit in a makeshift hospital in the middle of a war zone and then berate him for having a high mortality rate. That’s essentially what’s happening in a lot of underfunded schools that are staffed by new teachers coming out of poor teacher education programs and teaching in low-socioeconomic areas.

The simple fact is this – until the country as a whole decides that education is important, little will change. As schools like Johnson’s Academy, the KIPP schools, and even the charter school where I’m teaching flourish, some minor changes will take place. These schools are great, but the big thing they’re not doing is educating everyone – they have a right of refusal. The public school system as a whole will continue to fail until – and in this I agree with Oprah and her guests – there’s a unified front to see things change. Maybe if more people in this country had been better educated, they’d realize this.