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Cutting in the name of reform hurts students
Retirement doesn't prevent Bill Archer from making perceptive observations about school politics and policy. . . and from caring about the well-being of students. Kudos.
By Bill Archer
The big picture in public education is not to be captured only by the dismal fact of the losses of professional jobs in local public education and diminished services for students and their community. The image, instead, is one of an entire nation that is suffering from the damages of a death by thousands of cuts.
Locally, our Volusia District Superintendent Margaret Smith bemoans that recent cuts are "heart wrenching." Of course, they are. They are the results of the thousands of cuts during her six-year tenure -- cuts that she recommended to the School Board for its approval. But she -- like most of the nation's other district administrators, who are now being forced to work with starvation-size budgets -- has to make those sad cuts.
And the present big picture in public education didn't just suddenly appear. It started in the 1600s when the early school was first nurtured in the New England colonies, by the Puritans and Congregationalists. They used the structure and religious teachings as a ready format. Those in the community who held other beliefs would be the seeds from which later education reform would arise.
Around 1791, after the Declaration of Independence, 14 states had their own state constitutions and seven of them had their own state boards of education. Then, came a rash of schools in the 1840s that were highly localized but available only to the wealthy.
It wasn't until Horace Mann came later and made the furrow for those of different viewpoints to plant their seeds to grow a free and public education. Mann suggested that schools could assist in teaching common knowledge in the community and would help diminish criminality, among other things.
Today, politically misguided school reform has affected school district functioning in a most destructive way. And the harsh reality of public funding has shown its ugly razor. Local district control of public education has seen its power and authority diminished because of it and its power also lost along with the numbers of employees it has cut.
The destructive impact of recently imposed "education reform accountability" policies, to include charters, choice, vouchers and high-stakes testing has had its explosive way with public schools. Diane Ravitch, who previously and enthusiastically backed such ideas for two former presidents (G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush), has written a new book on education reform. She has now recanted and described, instead, how their reforms created a disaster for the nation's public schools.
Teacher competency is one of the first casualties to suffer at the hands of their accountability machine. Unions were attacked for supposedly preserving the incompetent teachers that would further damage students. And impossible as it sounds, attempts are still being made to bind student test performance to teachers' pay, as if all students learned at the same rate simultaneously.
And seemingly distantly related, are the corporate-size test publishers. They are hopeful that they can continue to publish all the manuscripts necessary to keep the nation's school districts' "high-stakes" test programs in full operation. Thus, their profits will remain healthy, and many will not be any the wiser about their less-than-virtuous motives.
So, now, public schools are under yet another siege known as the Obama-Duncan "Race to the Top." And it is a repackaging of the earlier, now 10-year-old, education-reform plan. And, as if things couldn't be worse, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is not certifiable as a classroom teacher in any of the public schools in the United States.
This most recent disguised education-reform program is worse than the previous one. It's the same one Ravitch recently condemned as unworkable in her best-selling book. So, it's time for Superintendent Smith to make the best cutting decisions possible as the sinking ship approaches its bottom.
On June 9, I read in The News-Journal that Superintendent Smith was cutting nearly 450 more positions. Some teachers are now protected by the class-size amendment and will not a part of that unfortunate group of 450. But shockingly, I saw guidance counselors among that group for cuts.
Now, it's getting personal.
Especially during these anxious times, when forces are destroying our traditional public schools by using unsound tenets of educational philosophy and non-common-sense processes, to have guidance counselors on board is an absolute necessity. Superintendent Smith, with her master's degree in counselor education, knows of this necessity. When scoring well on bogus high-stakes tests is the ultimate goal, guidance counselors are essential.
The most unsophisticated, lowest intellectual function is recall. Recall is the intellectual skill most required to remember enough information to luck into an impressive grade on the bogus high-stakes test. Students need calmness and emotional stability to allow objective recall to occur. Guidance counselors help students to be calm and productive on these tests. Guidance counselors work routinely in school classrooms to relieve student anxiety caused by bullying, deprivations of poverty and disease, child and adult abuse (physical, emotional and sexual), weight problems, mental, emotional and physical challenges, drug abuse, suicidal behavior, poor family economy, home foreclosures, job losses and much more. When so much is collapsing around her and her other superintendents nationwide, Superintendent Smith must not cut her guidance counselors.
With her degree in counselor education, Superintendent Smith should instead join her counseling colleagues and begin to protect the wellbeing of the students by making cuts furthest from the students and classrooms. This strategy will resurrect a wounded public-school system rather than continue to butcher it.
Bill Archer grew up in Daytona Beach and returned here after 17 years of teaching and counseling for Department of Defense dependents' schools in several countries. He worked as both a teacher and a guidance counselor in Volusia County for 22 years before retiring. He lives in Daytona Beach with his wife.
— Bill Archer
Daytona Beach News-Journal
2009-06-15
http://www.news-journalonline.com/opinion/editorials/2010/06/15/cutting-in-the-name-of-reform-hurts-students.html
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