The True Sad Story

The special school board meeting was set for 7:30AM to discuss the performance of the Superintendent of Schools. She had asked for the public forum believing erroneously that it would dampen the criticism and let her skate past the rising tide of board sentiment seemingly bent on removing her. She had had problems of both style and substance during her relatively short time on the job. In one of her original talks to the staff via closed-circuit TV she had said she was a 4-eyed, titty banger, which was not considered of an adequate professional standard. Also, the performance of the district had shown no real improvement in the areas she had signed up to “fix.”

As the discussions progressed that morning I was sitting next to the local paper’s education reporter. Not many people in attendance other than district administrators, the board and a very few of the public. During the board’s discussion, one board member told that he had visited one of the five larger high schools in the district the previous week. He had been told that 150 9th grade students were reading between the 1st and 6th grade level. This out of a total freshman class of about 450 students.

What was the response to this bombshell? Nada, Zip, Zero. Rather than discussing the issue which pointed to a very poor performance of the district and a very poor future for the students, the board president deftly moved the discussion on to another point. There was no response from the superintendent, the deputy or assistant superintendents (Doctors of Education, all). Did the newspaper reporter include the revelation in her report? She did not.

The fact that there was no response is strong evidence that “professional educators” believe the deterministic view that “those kids” (the gap children who are primarily poor and minority) cannot learn to high standards. This is not true, but because it provides a ready excuse for not really trying to improve the lot of the gap kids it is continuing to have negative effects. And the kids that the board member was talking about were gap kids. The 150 kids mentioned had to be a representative sample of many other kids in other high schools in the same predicament.

While there was no response at the meeting, there was a prompt response afterward. The next day the assistant superintendent of instruction emailed a copy of The Blueberry Story to all of the thousands of staff in the district. This was written as an apologist piece at the behest of the NEA. Its basic message is that, yes improvement is needed but we poor educators can’t do anything until society starts sending us high quality students ready to learn.

An even stronger response followed shortly. The person, who had displayed such poor judgment by telling the board member the truth, was fired. That is, in education your contract for the coming school year is not renewed. This sent a chilling message to the staff. Poor performance is OK, but telling the truth is a hanging offence. Thus, the status quo was strongly reinforced and those kids and the others following in their footsteps have continued to be harmed because educators couldn’t be bothered to do their jobs correctly.

This is a perfect example of the problem E.D. Hirsch so aptly describes in The Knowledge Deficit.
"The reason for this state of affairs – tragic for millions of students as well as for the nation – is that an army of American educators and reading experts are fundamentally wrong in their ideas about education and especially about reading comprehension. Their well-intentioned yet mistaken views are the significant reason (more than other constantly blamed factors, even poverty) that many of our children are not attaining reading proficiency, thus crippling their later schooling."

While it is true that most educators will tell you they have good intentions, their brainwashing and the iron bound rules regarding conduct in their work places, effectively prevent the truth seeing the light of day. When political correctness rules the communication you can’t discuss the reality of the organization’s performance and brainstorm actions which would solve the problems identified. Because of that the ongoing harm to kids goes unaddressed. We must stop giving educators the benefit of the doubt because of “good intentions” that aren’t good at all.

The educators have shown no ability to correct their problems. We must demand it and provide enough incentive to force the change. Otherwise the kids will continue to be harmed.