In my last entry, I discussed the unfortunate truth that students, parents, lawyers, and politicians have essentially decimated any chance for discipline (and therefore proper learning) in our schools. In this second submission about Taking Back Our Schools, I've focused on the school structure and how little change has actually occurred in the past 150 years.
Prior to the end of the Civil War, there were few formal schools in the South. The idea of the "Common" school adopted in the North East had not caught on. Once started, southern schools were basically modeled after those in the North East. This fundamental structure of public education exists still today.
Now much larger in scope than 19th century schools, the basic premise of public funding, local school boards, school district administration, school administration, and teachers, remains intact. Unfortunately, while within the rest of the industrialized United States, immense progress has been made, our schools are still operated in the same hammer and chisel manner as existed 150 years ago. And the system continues to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
In my opinion, "inbreeding" is one of the greater mistakes made within the system. Simply stated, this means that in order to move up in the system, you must be part of the system. Therefore, someone must first be a teacher before they can become a vice principal (assistant principal), a vice principal before principal, or at the very least, must have a graduate degree in school administration before they become eligible for some district-level position. One may reasonably ask why this is so important. The answer is that inbreeding brings forth no new concepts, methods, or external insight. In short, teachers are taught one way of doing things by professors who have some background in education. To progress in the system, they are taught even more status quo information by others brought up in the same system. There are no "outside the box" contributions, because they are all within the box.
The next stumbling block comes in the form of "stagnation." Stagnation occurs when a person is promoted to their highest level of incompetence (The Peter Principle, paraphrased). This means that once a person is promoted to Principal or a district-level administrative position, they tend to stay there the remainder of their careers. How's that for creativity for and modification to the existing system?
Each district-level administrator MUST justify their reason for existence; therefore, they think up ways to generate data to show the Superintendent of Schools how well they're doing. They are often assisted by the Federal government who imposes some new program or requirement that dictates the need for data. The local district-level administrator issues an edict to school principals that this data must be reported to the district at least monthly, but sometimes it's each week.
The principals, who should act as barriers between teachers and nonsensical requests from district personnel, simply passes the latest burden on to the teachers, holding them accountable for gathering the data, getting it to the principal a day or two early, so the principal can ensure nothing negative leaves the building. After all, the principal is held accountable for getting the junk back to the district on time. This type of make-work only serves to further encumber teachers, causing them to have less time to teach, less time to devote to students having academic trouble, but more time after school and on weekends just to maintain some foothold on what they should be doing.
Were I king, principals would be mandated back into the classroom every five years, for one year. They wouldn't lose pay, but would be relegated to the level of teacher to reacquaint them with the pain of having to teach, gather data, deal with problem children, problem parents, inefficient programs, lack of supplies and equipment, etc. At the end of the year, the principal would receive an evaluation, just like other teachers. I would do something similar with district administrators. They should be made to feel and understand the impact of their flawed decisions.
Such an undertaking could be accomplished by transferring 20% of principals and administrators per year back to the classroom. At the end of five years the cycle would start again.
As always, I solicit your comments....
One could only wish that all who administer or otherwise provide services, goods or "justice" were required to partake of and or receive such.
ReplyDeleteApart from a depressing lack of moral standards, there is and has always been an even more troublesome lack of empathy. Life, too often is treated by many as a kind of hazing experience. Once you've paid your dues and move up the ladder, the inclination is to look back down a rung or two and muse, "Sucks to be you". Regards