High Schools Under Fire
Morning at a West Coast high school. The first-period bell rings, barely audible above the classroom din. "O.K., everybody, settle down," says the soft-spoken teacher of the course called Modern Problems. Her two dozen students, grouped around seven tables, pay scant attention. She switches on a video machine by her desk; a neatly categorized outline flashes on the board.
Have you already copied this down?" she asks, point ing to the topic headings. A few heads bob yes, several more shake no; the rest of the stu dents merely carry on with their private conversations. The subject of the day is not terrorism, energy or Watergate. Aptly enough, the topic is "The Problems of American Education."
What the teacher might have taught her class, had they been willing to listen, is that American education in the '70s is in deep trouble. And almost by definition, any problem with public education is a big one. No where are the difficulties more acute than in the 25,300 public high schools, junior and senior, in the U.S., which enroll 19 million stu dents and carry a million teachers on their payrolls. To maintain the U.S.'s vast public education establishment, from elementary schools to colleges, taxpayers will spend $144 billion this year -- a 152% increase over the past decade. Those billions add up to more than the country spends for national defense.
But never have more Americans worried about whether they are getting their mon ey's worth from the institutions that were once the symbol of the nation's dedication to democracy.
Although confidence in the schools is hard to measure, a majority of Americans seem convinced that the quality of public education is on the decline.
Former Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz, head of a panel of experts that has spent two years studying the problem, concluded this fall that U.S. education has been "off stride for ten years." Reflecting the general concern, Jimmy Carter during his campaign called for creation of a separate, Cabinetlevel Department of Education to help remedy the situation; one of his aides S declares, "We're going to get that started." But whatever Washington does, issues of public education are largely a matter of state and local responsibility.
Of all the areas of concern about U.S. education, only one is showing some improvement. The dropout, who was a great worry in the alienated, rebellious 1960s, is no longer so common. The percentage of high school students who quit before g graduation has fallen to about 25%, down from the dropout rates of 1960 (31%) and 1950 (37%). At the same time, about 45% of those who do graduate now go on to college, up from 33% in 1960--though that is probably less a measure of scholastic excellence than a reflection of the increase in available places in two-and four-year colleges, and the greater competition for jobs at all levels. Everywhere else, the health of U.S. education in the mid-1970s--particularly that of the high schools--is in deepening trouble:
Declining performance. After more than a decade of vaunted "innovations" -- free-form "open classroom" programs, flexible mod ular scheduling, enough electronic gadgetry to make some schoolrooms look like Mis sion Control -- all signs indicate that today's students are more poorly equipped in basic skills than were their predecessors. After holding steady for decades, the average scores on the College Entrance Examination Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test, still the broadest standard of nationwide educational achievement, have been falling slowly but steadily since 1962. As measured on the SAT'S 200-to-800 scale, average verbal ability has fallen by 10% (to the 430 level), while average math skills have declined by 6% (to the 470s). Expectations that gifted s students, at least, would benefit from the infusion of money and technology into education also seem dashed. The number of high achievers on SAT tests (those scoring over 600) has been dropping. A report commissioned by the College Board found that scores of top students --valedictorians and salutatorians in 145 high schools--showed a similar decline. Graduates who claim that they are illiterate have taken school boards to court in some states. Meanwhile, colleges complain of entering freshmen who read at the sixth-grade level.
Rising violence. The mayhem wreaked by students on their own schools--and teachers--continues to grow. In 1975 the latest year for which totals have been compiled, secondary-school students attacked 63,000 teachers, pulled off 270 000 school burglaries and destroyed school property worth $200 million. The level of violence has continued to climb especially in the much-troubled big-city schools. In New York City, 132 teachers reported physical attacks in the first six weeks of this school year alone.
Spreading shutdowns. Taxpayer rebellions against ever-rising educational costs, which are largely supported by property taxes, are forcing school systems to the financial wall. Partly because the city did not put a school tax increase on the Nov 8 ballot--it would never pass, officials said--Cleveland's 110,000-student system is flat broke and remains open only because a federal court has said it cannot close. Some 40 other Ohio school districts are also facing shutdowns.
Teacher troubles. Despite the spreading taxpayer revolt, teachers continue to close schools all over the country to dramatize their pay demands. They have struck in 93 communities--from Franklin, Mass., to Fremont, Calif--since January.
Mounting absenteeism. According to the Washington-based National Association of Secondary School Principals, absenteeism is now the worst problem facing teachers, ahead of poor motivation, lack of discipline, vandalism, tardiness and drug use. In Florida's Dade County (Miami), school officials trying to cut double-digit truancy rates in low-income areas have been experimenting--rather successfully--with luring kids to class with free hamburgers, Frisbees, T shirts and yo-yos donated by local businessmen. After a decade of stormy debate, there is no consensus about how schools can right the wrongs. Conservative back to basics" forces rail that '60s innovations have left schools flaccid. They demand a return to a three-Rs curriculum and call for "minimal competency" testing, to make sure that high school students are not granted diplomas until they can read and write at some rudimentary level. More progressive forces disagree with this approach. "I'm all through with mandating, with forcing students to march through a maze," counters Harvey Scribner, former New York City chancellor of schools and now a professor at the University of Massachusetts School of Education. "Classrooms should be opened up." Meanwhile parents blame teachers, teachers blame parental permissiveness' and educators point to society as the culprit. "Everyone is trying to pass the buck," says Grace Baisinger, president of the national Parent-Teacher Association.
Most often the headlines and the horror stories come out of big-city ghetto schools, where the problems --racial, financial, educational--are the worst. The problems are real enough, but in many ways they are so special as to be part of the larger society's difficulties in improving the lot of America's underclass, rather than crises of education.
More alarming is the fact that nine out of ten high school students attend small-city and rural institutions or quiet suburban schools, and that these schools, once the very symbols of the best the U.S. could do for its children, are also suffering from a profound malaise. For the 55% or so of American teen-agers who do not go on to college, high school is the apex of their formal educational career; they will prosper or join the ranks of the unemployed largely on the basis of what the schools teach them.
For a look at what has gone wrong inside both school and classroom, TIME correspondents visited three U.S. high schools that are not afflict ed with the intractable problems of core city schools. One is in Medford, Mass., a Boston suburb. One is a small-town school in Coos Bay, Ore. One is a middle-size school in Iowa City, Iowa. All are fairly representative of that historic backbone of America's public education system, the public high school. A tale of three cities:
Medford High: Strife in the Suburbs
The facilities at Medford High, located on a hill next to a woodland preserve, are superb. Eight interconnected stone and brick buildings in one giant comprehensive and vocational school, with a gym just short of a football field in size and the second largest indoor swimming pool in the state. The much esteemed math and science departments--which offer such courses as computer programming, calculus and earth science--have at their command a computer with eleven keyboards The facilities for vocational education, which train 471 of Medford's 3,548 students, include a fully equipped school of cosmetology When Medford High opened seven years ago, after an older facility burned, it cost more than $16 million--the most money the town had ever spent on anything. Medford's 60,300 residents, many of them blue-collar families of Italian and Irish descent, did not mind.
The city still has what one teacher describes, in a reference to traditional ethnic regard for education as the door to upward mobility, as "enough of a foreign element to insist on good education." The school on the hill is the pride of the community.
But that pride is not shared by all the students. Vandalism is a problem; a favorite prank is to smash the school's two-story glass windows, which cost $700 each. Last year's damage bill came to almost $30,000 --close to what the school spent on textbooks. The great majority of students could not care less about their school. "The school spirit of the 1940s, football and rah-rah rallies have gone the way of the dinosaur," says Guidance Counselor Robert Shea.
Kids now race off to part-time jobs after school (an increasing phenomenon in the '70s) or congregate around the McDonald's in Medford Square. It is hard to keep them in class. The daily absentee rate: 12%.
So many students have taken to alcohol and dope that Medford has set up a special office for drug and drink consultation.
Three years ago, when the extent of the drug problem became apparent, Headmaster William McCormack called in a 27-year-old undercover agent. Posing as a transfer senior, he ambushed 39 students.
Thirty-eight of them swore off drugs after conferences with McCormack and their parents. Many more eluded him.
Discipline problems haunt the school's five miles of corridors. Under an "open campus" scheme that permitted upperclassmen to roam throughout the school during certain periods, most respected the privilege. But some smoked joints or whooped it up in the halls. When a fight erupted briefly in September between some of Medford's 135 black students and several whites-- reputedly members of a tough gang called "the River Rats" -- officials abolished the program. The community, concerned about lax discipline, was delighted.
Medford's SAT scores have dropped about 10% in the past decade. Its accreditation by the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools -- once al most automatic-- is being reconsidered.
The students blame the teachers. "Most kids don't even know what a term paper is or how to use footnotes," complains Michele Phillips, a tall, sophisticated student who is president of the school's National Honor Society chapter. "Academically, this school isn't bad," says Phil Holmes, student manager of the radio station. "But the school's too lenient. People graduate and don't know how to read and write."
Top-level advanced-placement courses are available but soft options are far more enticing. Some of the 185 courses sound like question categories on some TV game show: Great Sleuths, Exploring the Occult, Contemporary Issues. Graduation requirements are "pathetic," says one administrator. Students must compile only 80 credits, including four years of English and one of American history. They must also take one year of civics and four of physical education, although passing grades are not required. Headmaster McCormack has repeatedly tried to boost the minimum number of credits to 104, but has been turned down for financial reasons.
Some classroom vignettes raise questions about the value of teachers' time. In a ninth-grade college-preparatory English class, for instance, a teacher instructs her students on how "to talk to one another." She pouts and gestures to illustrate tone and attitude changes, then reads a short story about being loving and capable. For homework, the students are told to make a tear in a sheet of paper each time someone is mean to them and a pencil mark when someone makes them feel good about themselves. The kids snicker as they file out.
In a business-English class, the students spend 40 minutes reading and parsing one paragraph from Call of the Wild. The teacher, a peppy, ruddy-faced man, punctuates the period with kidding remarks about his students' clothes or hair.
For their part, the teachers criticize the students for skipping class, for disruptive behavior in the halls and for general apathy. They complain that their charges cannot read and write adequately. "They are so poor in basic communication," laments English Department Head Leah Caliri.
Teachers also blame the administration for not giving direction to the school and for lowering standards. "I used to be tough and demanding, but I was told to lay off," confides one teacher. If he fails more than 20% of his students, he says, he is "called on the carpet"--a plaint echoed by other teachers.
But there are those who think the teachers and the teachers' union account for a big chunk of Medford's problems. Faculty salaries, which comprise 88% of the $4.4 million annual budget, are good. Yet the militant Massachusettes Teachers Association staged a 15-month slowdown at Medford between September 1975 and November 1976. Teachers refused to work with students a minute past their scheduled 7:45 am. to 2:15 p.m. day as a protest against what they felt were low salaries, large class size and insufficient job security In the end, they won their salary demands. A tenured teacher with a B.A. now earns $17,357 annually, one with a master's degree 19,825. In previous bargaining, Medford teachers had already won a limit of three evening appearances at the school per year (two for parent-teacher open houses). They are only required to remain 30 minutes after school twice a week to help students. Any supervision of student activities costs Medford extra.
In contrast, McCormack, 62, looks back fondly on his own teaching days, when he voluntarily wrote and directed school plays and put out the yearbook on his own time. "Now a man makes $1,495 a year for doing nothing more than putting out the yearbook,' he says. "I have no complaints today about paying for these services, but I think that something has been lost in the personal relationship."
A headmaster of the old school, down to his gray herringbone suit and rimless glasses, McCormack finds it difficult to keep tabs on his gargantuan school from his office in a converted second-floor storeroom. He blames Medford's problems mostly on the crowding produced when 1,100 freshmen were jammed in with the three upper classes--but not on any lack of spirit. Other principals might give up; not he. A giant blue and white button on his lapel broadcasts his philosophy. It is emblazoned MEDFORD PRIDE.
Coos Bay: The Classroom Blahs
The town of Coos Bay (pop. 14,132) is nestled in the rolling hills of southwest Oregon, 140 miles north of the California border. It bills itself as "one of the world's foremost lumbering centers and its dock area hums day and night with ships loading wood chips for Japan. Otherwise, it is a collection of modest houses, an attractive downtown shopping area and several motels--most of them strung along U.S. 101, the main street. Its nigh school, a Depression-era legacy of the Public Works Administration, sits prominently on a high hill. When the morning fog clears--at 8 a.m., whiteness blankets the town--Marshfield High commands a sweeping view of Coos Bay.
Inside the school, the bell has barely rung when the lights go out in the sophomore honors English class and the movie projector begins to whir. Act III, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice. There is no discussion and only a few questions about the plot. The 18 students and their teacher all hunch silently in their seats. Down the hall, three more English classes, packed in a small theater, are also viewing films. Complains one teacher: "I really get caught up in my subject matter. But some teachers think that's weird. The attitude in the faculty lounge is, 'Does anyone have a film I can use?' "
In another class, this one in U.S. history, the teacher keeps up a patter of jokes and badinage. A discussion of economic competition sends him off on constant tangents. "I've got to borrow some pens," he says, leaping up and racing around the circle of desks in the room. His point, although garbled, is that pen manufacturers must be careful not to overprice or their products won't sell. When a student volunteers that his Bic pen cost 39-c-, it strikes the teacher as a revelation. "Really? Have they gone up that much?" The kids loll back, tittering. "Would you cry if you lost a 39-c- pen?" he asks. "How about a $150 pen?" By now the class is thoroughly lost. "What are you getting at?" one obviously bright student asks impatiently.
In keeping with the trend of the '60s, Marshfield began offering its 1,866 students a wide variety of courses in an effort to broaden the traditional curriculum. The number of courses has grown to 215. Elective options in English include science fiction, film studies and business communications (considered easy) or British literature (harder). An array of general math and essential math courses has sprouted in the mathematics department, traditionally regarded as the best in the school. Although four years of English are mandatory standard survey courses stop after the tenth grade. No foreign language is required. Students must take two years of science and one of math, or vice versa, but the choice of courses is left to their discretion.
A easy courses proliferate, classes in the harder subjects wither away. Calculus and Russian, two post-Sputnik specialties, are extinct. Only 35 students are braving physics this year. Few kids prefer the nononsense, four-year algebra-geometry-algebra-trigonometry sequence to the simpler math courses. The attrition rate in foreign languages is so great that after the first year, students in higher courses are combined in one class. High-ability kids are not taking high-level courses," says Accounting Teacher James Whitty. The students ask: Why should we?" The school's course brochure advises college-preparatory students that they "should make certain they are getting the best preparation for college admission." But the head guidance counselor concedes that the five counselors do not believe in prodding the students to take tough subjects
John Johnson a strict, highly respected math teacher, has been at Marshfield for 18 years. He accepts the obvious: students are not taking the traditional math courses because "the homework has dropped off in other courses and it's easier for kids to get good grades elsewhere." A stocky, gray-haired man who is also head basketball coach, Johnson worries that the simplified math offerings are "an easy street for too many " Says he: There are things to be learned by those not quite good enough for Algebra 1 but who try and do their best." Civics Teacher Jerry Kotsovos, who is held in awe by students as Marshfield's most demanding teacher, feels that "students aren't being challenged enough. They complain that I make them work, I make them think. But they're glad afterward." He conducts his classes as vigorous discussion groups Margaret Burdg, who has the prim and proper air of an old-fashioned English teacher, team-teaches with History Teacher Connell an English-history course called American Culture. She says grade inflation has lowered a D from 68 to 60 and, in some classes, all the way to 50. Another teacher complains that there is great pressure to pass students "If my failure rate exceeds 12%, I'll be questioned," he says. "Someone would likely ask me if I weren't expecting too much. So the failure rate goes down, but the quality and quantity of work also go down Not surprisingly, SAT scores have fallen--57 points on verbal 64 in math, since 1962--approximating the national decline. More than half the present senior class were reading below grade level when tested in the ninth grade; Marshfield has since inaugurated a well-equipped "skills lab" with personal tutoring to help the slower readers.
Students tend to rate Marshfield an easy school. They teach you how to write in tenth grade, but then you don't get to exercise it enough," is an oft-heard lament; so is "They don t push you enough." Senior Brenda Steward is having no trouble fielding trigonometry, chemistry and British literature along with a 30-hour-a-week waitress job at a local restaurant called the Green Bandit. Says she: "Teachers don't assign homework; they don't believe in it." (The teachers' version, however, is that many students will not do homework when it is assigned.) Adds Senior Dennis Campbell: "It's so easy to get through here. I could make it by going to classes just twice a week."
Many students do not even bother with that. The dropout rate has fallen from 24% in 1966 to 13% last year, but a fourth of the students miss at least one period a day. Save for great enthusiasm about football games and other sports, students report, apathy plagues Marshfield. It is hard to get anyone to run for student office. Only 43 freshmen out of 400 voted last year for their class officers. On the other hand, violence is rare: surprisingly so, since a strict caste system separates the "jocks" (often children of the town's wealthier residents) and the "wall rats," so named because they once congregated along a wall behind the school to smoke before an inner courtyard was designated this year as a smoking area. Their fathers are apt to be mill hands or fishermen, and they tend to come from poor or broken homes.
Marijuana and beer are common. But Marshfield's students --mostly fresh-faced kids who favor down-filled jackets and track shoes--would rather go hiking than rehearse for the school play, just as they are often more interested in their jobs than in their schoolwork. Marshfield, concur most students, is an O.K. place. It just isn't very exciting--in class or out.
Iowa City: A Basic Debate
Iowa City's West High is a product of the prosperous, progressive '60s. Built in 1968 on 80 acres of farm land across the Iowa River from the downtown area, the three-story brick and stone building was designed with the latest educational theories in mind. The $4.5 million school was provided with a 2,000-spectator gym, a little theater, a music wing and a large central commons area for student socializing.
Iowa City (pop. 49,000), a faculty town--the University of Iowa is the main industry--with a taxpaying base of prospering middle-class professionals, was in an innovative mood. It approved when Merlin Ludwig, then superintendent of schools, granted West's 1,040 students a nonvoting chair on the board of education in 1970. Ludwig also introduced a more flexible curriculum. Grades were abolished at the elementary-school level, and a pass-fail option was installed at West. As a final gesture, Ludwig declared a new motto for his school district: "Iowa City Puts the Student First." In short, West in many ways came to resemble a college more than a high school.
West is still a showcase school. But times are different, and so are community attitudes. Once overwhelmingly liberal, the school board changed in 1975 when the balance swung, 5 to 2, in favor of the conservatives. The new majority promptly forced Superintendent Ludwig to resign. In an election this fall, the voters turned out the last progressive on the board, which must now find a permanent successor to Ludwig. Several candidates are under consideration--and are being examined closely to see if they will hew to the back-to-basics line. The board has also decreed that a "comprehensive testing program" be introduced to test basic skills.
"Seven years ago, when I ran for the school board, talking basic skills was a no-no," says Board Member Barbara Timmerman, a widowed mother of two.
The first year, she recalls, she was always the dissenting vote. But gradually local sentiment has swung her way.
"I believe in individual education but not in handing a kid a book and saying 'Teach yourself,' " she explains. Acting Superintendent David Cronin agrees that teaching the basics and reinstating grades in the elementary schools are the burning issues in Iowa City. He sees the concerns as legitimate but also feels that the clock cannot be turned back entirely, that "the good old days are gone."
West High's academic offerings are impressive, and the school boasts twelve semifinalists on this year's National Merit Scholarship competition, which singles out the brightest seniors in America. College-bound seniors can elect advanced placement courses, apply to take courses at the university or propose "study projects," in which they can tackle anything from music to horse training. Yet, as at Medford and Coos Bay, the easier route beguiles many. To graduate, students must complete 180 hours of graded coursework, including 45 hours in language arts (which must include nine terms of English), 15 hours in science and 30 in social studies. But only slightly more than half the coursework is prescribed, and full credit is given for such courses as American Teen-Ager and Interior Decorating. One disgruntled teacher brands them "education by entertainment."
West's critics, many of them dedicated teachers, are worried about academic danger signs. Composite scores on the ACT test, an Iowa-bred competitor of the SAT exam, have been drifting downward since 1972. Meanwhile, almost 70% of the West seniors who took the ACT test this year had a grade point average of 3 or higher out of a possible 4, compared with only 39% in 1970. For the past four years, A's have been the most commonly awarded grade. Says Senior Kyle Schulz: "If you get a C, that's terrible."
Seniors are belatedly showing their own back-to-basics concern. Tod McConahay, who pumps gas five nights a week to save money for college, is taking English Lab, a brush-up grammar course, in addition to regular college prep courses. "Grammar--I just can't do it," he confesses. "Somewhere along the line, somebody screwed up." Classmate Jim Jordahl is also taking English Lab. "Deep down, most people feel that requirements should be stricter," he says. "If you leave what courses you take up to the school, you won't be that well off."
German Teacher Heidi Galer, considered one of the toughest teachers in West, agrees. She has an easy camaraderie with her students, some of whom are going with her to Germany this spring on a two-week trip. Galer believes students are more knowledgeable these days, but in only a superficial way, and is upset that so many cannot write and spell properly. "The kids ask me, Trau Galer, do you mark off for German spelling?' I say 'Of course I do.' But if they ask me if I count off for English spelling, I say 'Of course not; you'd all flunk.' " She criticizes the severity of her native German schools, but frets: "Next year, these kids are going to sit in lecture halls and it's going to be a big shock. Some have never even taken a semester test."
Tall, thin, bearded Principal Edwin Barker is popular with students and community alike. "He does a good job walking the tightrope of an innovative school system and a conservative backlash," observes one parent. Says Barker: "I'm a believer in basic skills, but I want to do it in a humanitarian environment." Discipline is fairly loose. Barker downplays such issues as drugs (ditch weed, the crude local variety of marijuana, is common), discipline, smoking and leaving school without permission. "We have a lot of people coming and going," admits Barker. "Keeping them in school is not one of our high priorities."
Some teachers complain bitterly about laxity--of both school and parents. They say that a student-first attitude undercuts their classes and that many students are pouring too much energy into jobs in order to support their affluent lifestyles. Fumes one teacher: "One kid told me today that he hadn't been in class for three days because 'Man, I just can't get up.' I offered to call him at home. That's our job? But we can't teach them if they're not here."
The Iowa City school board's determination to bring back "the basics" is shared by parents and school administrators across the U.S. Indeed back-to-basics is the latest rallying cry among U.S. educators, who are yet again attempting to define the purpose and direction of American public education. Some educators find it easy to agree on what has gone wrong with the schools. Says U.S. Commissioner of Education Ernest Boyer, former chancellor of the State University of New York: "We've gone through a period of overpromising. We felt education was the answer to every dilemma we faced. More recently, we seem to have expected too little from our schools." Boyer now sees, and applauds, "a new commitment to excellence in education, to search for ways to improve schools without flash-in-the-pan innovations." As a theme for the Carter Administration's as yet vaguely defined education policy, he has suggested "Access to Excellence." ut how is excellence to be defined? That was relatively simple in the colonial era, when American education consisted largely of small, church-run academies designed mainly to turn out clergymen. The basics were the elements of the classical curriculum imported from Europe: Latin, Greek and mathematics. That tradition continued, with only minor modifications, through the advent of the public high schools in the 1850s. But after the turn of the century, as U.S. society became more secular, industrial and urban, schools began to turn away from the classical curriculum.
Over the next 50 years, several competing ideas emerged. Vocational studies gained respectability. In the 1920s, John Dewey's ideas about "progressive" education, in which a child's emotional development was to be nurtured along with his intellect, came into vogue. By the late 1930s, a number of educational conservatives, including Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, began calling for a return to the classical curriculum. Advocates of vocational training refused to retreat. With the launching of Sputnik in 1957 and the sudden feeling of U.S. inferiority it engendered, excellence was hurriedly redefined in terms of better science and math courses
Then came the clamorous 1960s. With the growth of the civil rights movement, the drive for educational quality collided with the imperatives of social equality, the sense of entitlement. Schools were given major responsibility for the repair of racial injustices and began to ease requirements in the name of helping the deprived. At the same time came the protest era. "The counterculture rejected intellectuality," says Harvard Sociologist David Riesman. "Viet Nam and civil rights created an alliance of relaxed grading with social promotion."
Newly vocal students demanded-- and got -- "relevant" courses and softer requirements. Elective courses many of doubtful merit, mushroomed. "Naderism has taken over education," complains Clark Kerr, head of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. "But some basics are needed in schools, and in college too. The faculty has given away the curriculum."
Teachers became as consumer oriented as their pupils. A generation ago, teachers were low paid but highly dedicated professionals. Today, more than 80% of secondary-school teachers are members of either the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers, aggressive unions that push hard -- and successfully--for higher pay and greater benefits. Although the average teacher salary is now $13,662, some teachers in areas with strong unions earn more than $25,000 a year. Says one educator: "Teachers now decline to take home papers or stay after school to talk to the kids. They have abdicated their responsibility"
Others question teacher quality. As the profession has lost social prestige, it has attracted more recruits who are themselves only average students. Says James Koerner, author of The Miseducation of American Teachers: "Teachers are not trained as adequately as the public thinks they are." Typically, over half the courses an education student takes are in methodology and not m the subjects he will teach.
Add to the school's problems those of society: more broken homes, more two-income families with no one to mind the children and--not least--less reverence for the written word. Concern about poor writing has turned up even at the best U.S. private schools. Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass whose standard curriculum includes three years of a foreign language, math up to calculus and intensive writing was driven by what Headmaster Theodore Sizer describes as the "video generation" to introduce an English competence course five years ago. In it, students are drilled in basic sentence structure four hours a week.
Too often, says Harvard's Riesman, public schools cater to teen-agers desire "to be entertained." Consequently, homework and requirements have gone down, grades have gone up. Watered-down curriculums fail to challenge. "The only places in schools today where people are really encouraged to perform up to capacity are in sports and the band," says Riesman, adding that elitism is almost as dirty a word as sexism or racism " Back-to-basics proponents advocate tightening up the curriculum with more requirements and forcing all students to show minimal competency" in essential skills before graduating. So far, 26 states have passed laws requiring competency exams. Congress has also begun hearings on whether there should be a nationwide competency exam.
While many educators applaud the back-to-basics movement, at least as a demonstration of concern about the state of schools, some are worried that it may be pressed too far. They rightly fear that valuable electives, such as music and art, may be scrapped along with the easy courses. Says Harold Howe, vice president of education and research at the Ford Foundation: "The important issue is not innovation v. tradition, but whether we're asking kids to write and pushing them to develop."
Koerner argues that some nationally recognized test, like those used in Europe, might bring up standards. Yet, he adds, "because of the broadness of the political constituency, the exam will probably end up being so easy that it won't tell you much"--a criticism already leveled at the state competency tests. There is also the problem of how to avoid any cultural bias that might adversely affect minority students.
A more constructive approach, many educators feel, would be to concentrate on teacher training--deleting some of the methodology instruction in teachers' colleges and adding courses in the teacher's future subject. Says Howe: "Any school worth its salt also needs in-house retraining of teachers rather than sending them off to local teachers' colleges for a course and then raising their salaries."
Koerner would go one step further and abolish or reform the tenure system to allow schools to dismiss incompetent teachers and hire more qualified ones.
Educators observe that "professionals" have nosed parents out of the school system but believe parents should help set educational policy. Says Koerner: "A school-board member too is very often bamboozled by the alleged expertise of those who run the schools." Increasingly, parents are showing a healthy impatience with the professionals. Coos Bay Lumberworker Don Dean, who has a daughter at Marshfield High, complains that too many kids see school as a democratic institution. It's not. It s an institution of learning." School-tax rebellions attest to parental dissatisfaction. Other indicators are experiments in Illinois and California with performance "contracts" between schools and parents. Example: in Oakland, teachers and parents last month signed a contract in which the teachers agreed to assign homework and parents in turn promised to provide their children with a quiet corner for studying every night.
Signs of local insistence on excellence--or at least adequacy --in public education are encouraging, and a necessary correction to the excesses and the pandering of the past decade or two. One facet of the American experiment, of which education has long been a vital part, has been its capacity for correction and renewal. "The tendency of democracies is, in all things to mediocrity," James Fenimore Cooper once pessimistically observed. It is time for the schools to prove him wrong.
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