Education

Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Hi Brotons,
When you asked me why I didn’t put my thoughts about education in the book I was embarrassed since that is certainly an important part of our culture. In order to bring the subject down to an understandable level I want to talk about the Minneapolis School District which I think represents the big cities and where most of the students live. To begin here are some stats.
Budget $654,000,000
Students 35,000
Teachers 3,300
Staff 6,300










Doing a little math tells me that the cost per student is $18,900 and class size is 10. I also learned that about 1,700 of the staff people belong to the teachers union. Here are the results of the last school board election.
chool board member
3 seats 131 of 131 precincts (100%)
Lydia Lee *
61,623 22
Jill Davis
58,998 21
Carla Bates
54,691 20
Sharon Henry-Blythe *
39,476 14
Kari Reed
33,118 12
Doug Mann
28,416 10

Notice that it takes about 50,000 votes to win. If the 5,000 members of the union and their spouses and their parents vote they get a 30,000 vote head start. The result of this is that no teacher backed candidate has lost an election in the past 20 years.
This is all factual material and now I will move into the area of speculation. If I am the teachers union, I will select candidates that I know will be on my side. I will ask my members to donate funds to their campaign, have coffee parties for them, put signs in the yards and even go door to door.
Then when I sit down to negotiate my contract things will go my way. My guess is that this sort of thing goes on in many big city school districts across the country and if your district is not doing this you should get new union leadership.
Now on to some specifics. The first reason why our education systems is failing many of the students in the inner cities as represented by the widening gap between whites and Asians on one side and others, is the lack of fathers in the homes. There are a number of reasons why this is the case but one of the most obvious is the change that occurred in the past 50 years. When the Great Society under Johnson, (whom I voted for) started providing benefits for the underprivileged the family unit in the inner cities began to deteriorate. Divorce rates increased, drop-out rates increased, the number of single moms increased, crime increased and drug use increased. When there is no father in the home children do not learn respect for authority and this carries over to teachers, coaches, and law officers. It causes disruptions in the classroom which affects the other students and the whole thing snowballs downhill.
Second, there are many minority students here in the cities who think that getting good grades is being white. Now it doesn’t matter how much money you pay the teachers or how qualified the teacher is or how new the buildings and equipment are these students cannot be taught until their attitude changes. This has led to grade inflation and passing kids to get rid of them or to keep them from self-esteem problems. The result is that we have high school graduates who cannot read and write and in the high tech world we live in we should not be surprised if there is a gap in earnings.
Third, centers around the seniority issue. This is a weakness and a strength in all unions. Most people within a district can tell you who the good teachers are and when layoffs come many times good teachers leave and those not so good remain. This suggests that the union is protecting the teachers at the expense of the students. This does not happen often but makes teachers feel uncomfortable.
Forth, as a society we have decided to place students who are challenged in the classroom with the others including those who have problems with the language.
Finally teachers are asked to assume too many of the responsibilities that belong to the parents and this leaves precious little time to take care of the three R’s.
There are a couple of obvious solutions to many of these problems. First is to use the merit system to evaluate teachers. The problem with this is that many principals are not properly trained in the ways to grade teachers and all too often personal feelings get in the way. The second is to allow students to choose the school and have the state money go with the student. This will bring in the concept of competition. Finally to make better use of Charter Schools.
Last but not least is to overall the “No Student Left Behind” program. The change to Obama’s plan of “Race To The Top” is not enough.
I personally think that getting rid of the Department of Education and pushing decision making down to the local level would be an improvement since the teachers and administrators in the district have a better understanding of the local needs.
I will remind you of what I said on the back cover of my book that these are only my opinions and designed to encourage others to opine.
John Novick