Schools coming under more pressure (Jan. 4)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
The coming year is going to see considerable debate about education. Some of the issues that will develop:
+ The federal government is going to want to have a bigger say if it puts more money into education than it already does.
+ States are going to have to cut back their spending on education because of their budget deficits. In California, for example, legislative analysts predict another $20 billion shortfall — $10 billion of which will have to come from schools unless entire departments are closed up.
+ Parents who care will continue to have higher expectations for their kids, and will try to hold schools more accountable when schools turn out students who can’t read, write, add or subtract.
Here are some thoughts, gleaned from various sources, about how some of these issues might be addressed:
+ Think about making schools smaller. We have been all too ready to blame teachers for low-performing students, but what if the sheer size of schools is creating unmanageable teaching situations. One reason charter schools, church-sponsored schools and private schools turn out good students is that they are generally much smaller than schools in consolidated districts.
Unified school districts, such as Madera’s, have many advantages, but they also wind up herding students into large facilities where it’s easy for kids to be marginalized or to go astray. That isn’t so easy in smaller schools, where student numbers are small enough that teachers and administrators can keep better track of how each student is doing.
+ Think about adopting features of school systems in other countries, where students with academic promise are moved along one track, while those with less promise are moved along another — such as a vocational track.
Large schools are almost ungovernable. And it is cruel to graduate kids who aren’t academically qualified, but who could be vocationally qualified.
Here in San Francisco, our larger high schools tend to be our higher-performing and more successful. I’m not saying it’s because they’re large, but beware of generalizations! There are small-schools advocates calling for dismantling all large high schools, which would mean shutting down our city’s most popular and successful schools.