The Outpost Observer

Please, Mr. Santorum, no Luddite educational reform, please!

out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement

ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity

Saturday, March 10, 2012 

By John A. Ostenburg

High school educators often find themselves arguing over how much of the curriculum should be devoted to college preparation and how much should focus on career training.

Parents usually jump into the conflict also, with some pressuring schools to do more to assure that the student is job-ready upon graduation from secondary school, while others want their sons and daughters to be admitted to a top-notch college, even – perhaps – to be so well prepared as to gain some scholarship assistance that will offset the high costs of today’s university education.

And now the discussion has reached the highest level of public policy: it’s become a debating point for presidential candidates.

The stage for the debate was set by President Barack Obama in this year’s State of the Union address when he proposed making it easier for young Americans to gain better job preparation and to go to college. He has said subsequent to that address that the 21^st century workplace often requires that workers have training beyond what they may have received in high school. Among his administration’s policies is funding to enhance the opportunity for America’s students to gain job skills by making education and training available to them after they’ve earned the high school diploma.

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum doesn’t agree. The President’s “a snob” because of that plan, Mr. Santorum recently told a Michigan Tea Party rally as he commented on the President’s call for all students to be prepared to engage in some form of post-secondary education. “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college,” the former senator from Pennsylvania told the Tea Party activists. “What a snob,” he said to cheers from the TP-folk.

Of course, Mr. Santorum had it wrong on several fronts.

First of all, the President hasn’t said that every American should go to college. He’s said that every American should have the opportunity to go to college, or to receive some form of post-secondary training, if he or she so desires. The Obama policy proposal is for the government to make sure anyone who has the desire for post-secondary education can afford to see that desire fulfilled.

Secondly, Mr. Santorum truly is mentally captured in a previous century if he thinks it’s snobbish to be well enough trained to get a job. The last folks to advocate that approach, to my knowledge, were the Luddites of two centuries ago. Really, is that what the Tea Party-goers want? To go back to a time when ignorance so prevailed that angry mobs destroyed mechanized equipment as it was introduced into the workplace of a new industrialized world?

Unfortunately, comments such as that made by Rick Santorum do great harm to the education movement in America. Perhaps it was true decades ago that entering the manufacturing workforce required little formal educational training – not even a high school diploma – but that’s not the case today. The kind of equipment found in most of today’s manufacturing workplaces is highly sophisticated and requires a trained workforce for its operation. One of the reasons manufacturing plants are coming back to the U.S. after the hiatus of operating abroad is because the new equipment needed for their operations demands a better prepared workforce than what is found in many of the countries where the companies moved their plants over the last quarter of a century. American workers offer the best potential for those plants to operate at highest levels of capacity, but those workers need to have skill levels that stay consistent with the demands of the new equipment.

Is it snobbish to think we owe our students the opportunity to acquire those skill levels?

A former boss of mine liked the adage that “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day,” and it’s an observation truly applicable to Mr. Santorum. Indeed, he was right when he told the same Tea Party group that “Not all folks are gifted in the same way.” That’s an observation that President Obama certainly would agree with. That’s why he has stressed that all avenues of post-secondary education and training should be made available to interested students. For some it’s going to be a college degree; for some it may be an associate’s degree from a community college; and for some it will be merely one or two training courses. It’s up to the student to decide, and to decide at his or her own pace.

But after sharing that one iota of good sense, Mr. Santorum went back to his old campaign pathology, telling the TP-folk that President Obama wants everyone to go to college because that way the liberal professors can “indoctrinate them.” He explained, “Oh, I understand why he (President Obama) wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.” Bet that scared the pants off a whole lot of those white folks in his audience!

If the American public can step beyond the idiocy of sound-bite statements such as that made by Mr. Santorum, perhaps we can get to the development of educational policy that deals with the true issues involving both college-preparation and job-training. It’s not – as Mr. Santorum would like us to believe – an “either/or” situation. Rather, it’s “a both/and” situation. America’s students can have both preparation for college and training for a job.

Of course, achieving that end requires that education be entrusted to the educators without the intrusion of the Rick Santorums of the world. Teachers and school administrators have it within their ability to develop curricula that simultaneously go in both directions, especially as relate to preparation for the new manufacturing workplace.

Will students need computer skills for the new workplace? Most definitely. The assembly line of yesterday has been replaced by a new assembly line that’s controlled by a touch-screen monitor and a keyboard.

Will students need good math skills for the new workplace? Most definitely. Math is the basis for most of the programming that is used in modernized manufacturing.

Will students need good communication skills for the new workplace? Most definitely. The ability to communicate efficiently and effectively is a basic requirement for almost every job that becomes available today.

Will students need the ability to think clearly and make decisions on the spot? Most definitely. Jobs of the future increasingly will require clear thinking that reaches far beyond rote memorization of mechanical procedures.

So where’s the conflict? Well, there isn’t one.

Academic coursework at the secondary level as we prepare to satisfy job requirements for the balance of the 21^st century needs to be integrated in such a fashion that the student has the necessary basic educational preparation so as to move with ease into whichever career path he or she may choose. Without question, a college education will be needed for some career choices, e.g., medicine, law, teaching, etc., and high schools need to make sure students desiring to go in those directions are adequately prepared.

When in comes to preparation for jobs in the manufacturing sector, however, a basic set of educational skills are required regardless of what avenue the student eventually might choose to pursue. If those basic skills are fostered, a student looking toward a manufacturing career can leave high school and go immediately to a good paying job; or can be prepared to enhance his or her skills through post-secondary training courses or by acquiring an associate’s degree at a community college; or can pursue college work in areas of engineering, management, or any one of several specialized areas.

What public policymakers should be doing is providing the proper atmosphere for educational professionals to develop curricula that lead to those ends. What they should not be doing is denigrating the importance of education at any level, be it pre-school, primary, secondary, post-secondary, or graduate-level.

Hear that, Mr. Santorum?

John A. Ostenburg is in his fourth four-year term as mayor of Park Forest, Illinois, and formerly served in the Illinois House of Representatives. He retired in July 2010 as the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union after holding various CTU posts over a 15-year period. A former newspaper reporter and editor, he also has been a teacher and/or administrator at elementary, secondary, community college, and university levels. E-mail him at JOstenburg@aol.com.

 

Let's eliminate the false formula for reforming our public schools

out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement

ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 

By John A. Ostenburg

The reform movement within the American educational system today is based on the “SSD Formula”: symptoms, scapegoats, denial.

The non-educators who are advancing reform of our public schools are focusing on the symptoms of the problem because they obviously are not knowledgeable or experienced enough to recognize the root causes.

They look to scapegoat teachers and other educational professionals as being at fault for those very problems they themselves are unable to identify.

They are in denial as regards the numerous circumstances outside of the educational system that are major contributors to the difficulties so many schoolchildren face.

A symptom is by definition an indication of something else. A student’s difficulty in reading to grade level, for example, is an indication of something that is causing the child not to be able to read effectively. That “something” very well could be the failure of the teacher to instruct properly, but then again it also could be any one (or more) of a vast number of other things.

Education professionals recognize this reality and seek to identify the specifics behind a child’s poor performance as the best avenue to correcting a deficiency. If it’s poor eyesight that is causing the problem, they will seek vision help for the child. If it’s an inability to concentrate, they will work with the child to improve concentration, perhaps even by recommending some special programs that could help. If the child has not received proper preparation at a previous grade level, or in pre-school, or at home, they will seek remedial assistance to bring the child up to speed.

All of these approaches, however, require time and careful attention to the child’s individual needs; the problem may not be remedied immediately, for several weeks, or even for a few years. Immediate gratification may not be possible, despite what many politicians and bureaucrats who make uninformed decisions about educational policy may think or desire. Furthermore, the solution to such a situation is not simply to subject the student to standardized tests. In fact, such an action can offset the proper attention the child is receiving, or should receive, by creating a loss of confidence and thus causing him or her to give up.

Education professionals have been trained to see beyond the symptoms to identify true problems. However, when teachers and other school professionals are not allowed to make important decisions relating to the needs of their students, and the most effective remedies, our educational system fails to operate to the maximum of its potential. Therefore, problems emerge. Policymakers then look for solutions but – being unaware of the true nature of the problems – come up with schemes that interfere with teaching rather than enhance it.

Enter here the scapegoating.

Because they don’t want to admit that they really don’t know the true nature of the problems within out public schools system, let alone the solutions to those problems, politicians and bureaucrats put the blame on the very folks who have the best potential for finding solutions if they only were free to do so: teachers.

In virtually every profession other than education, it’s the practitioners who decide on the course of action to be taken. That’s why they have been educated and trained to do the work before them. Doctors will examine a patient, perhaps consult with colleagues who have the proper background and experience, establish a diagnosis, and then prescribe treatment. Would you like for Congress or your state legislature to make a decision about how you should be treated for a heart ailment? Shucks, many Americans don’t even like the notion of Congress deciding that you deserve health care insurance coverage. How would they like it if Congress were deciding actual medical treatment techniques?

When laws are made as regards standards for medicine, engineering and construction, insurance and finance, etc., professionals from within the field are consulted and are key players leading to decision-making. Yet when it comes to public education, everyone except the classroom teacher is engaged in the process.

Here’s a good illustration of what I mean. The administration of President Barack Obama has shown extreme levels of pride over the fact that the current Secretary of Energy is a award-winning scientist. Dr. Steven Chu is holder of the Nobel Prize in physics. His entire career has been devoted to science, which gives him excellent background for the work he does as the Cabinet officer responsible for the nation’s energy policy.

By contrast, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has no educational background whatsoever. His claim to fame was as a professional basketball player before he was tagged by former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to be an assistant to former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas (who also was not an educator by profession). When Mr. Vallas resigned under pressure, Mayor Daley named Mr. Duncan as new CPS CEO. After that political appointment, Mr. Duncan received an even more significant political appointment when he was selected by President Obama to become the nation’s education chief. (Ironically, Mr. Obama and Mr. Duncan were acquainted because they played basketball together in neighborhood games.)

So why is professional experience and background something to be proud of in a Secretary of Energy but something to be ignored in a Secretary of Education?

I cannot help but believe it’s all part of a concerted effort to put the blame for problems in our public schools solely at the feet of teachers and other professionals within the education field. The message from politicians and bureaucrats – although never spoken aloud – is clear: “We don’t know the first thing about what’s going on in our public schools, but we can’t admit that to our constituents, so let’s look for someone to blame.”

Enter here denial.

Stop and think. When was the last time you heard a politician or bureaucrat complaining about the quality of education in a well-to-do or middle-class suburban public school district? Can you say, “Never!”

The problems always pointed to by politicians and bureaucrats are those that are present in inter-city and poorer neighborhoods and suburbs. And what’s the common denominator among the schools with problems? Can you say, “Poverty!”

Our policymakers don’t want to admit it, but the ability of children to learn in school is just as greatly affected by social conditions outside of the school as by the instructional activity taking place within the classroom. When children suffer from malnutrition at early ages, their learning capacity is affected. When children are left home alone on school nights because the only parent in a single-family household can find work only in night jobs, their performance level on homework most likely will suffer. When children live in a neighborhood where their sleep is interrupted by gunshots in the middle of the night, their attention the next day in the classroom may be lacking.

The number of college-educated parents among children in high-poverty areas is far lower than what’s found in upper and middle-class suburbs. The availability of a computer in the home in high-poverty areas is less likely than what’s found in upper and middle-class suburbs.

I am not suggesting that college-educated parents, or parents with more money in their pockets, are any better parents than are those who are found in high-poverty areas. But the ability of the former to provide for their children certainly is far greater, and as a result children in upper and middle-class neighborhoods have greater advantage than do their counterparts in high-poverty areas.

It is, therefore, fundamentally unfair for politicians and policymakers to compare the performance of students in those more comfortable areas with the performance of students from poorer areas unless they also are willing to level the playing field so all students have an equal opportunity. One very basic way to accomplish this end is to allow teachers the freedom to provide the special attention some students need in order to bring their full potential to the fore.

So, rather than addressing the symptoms of poor student performance, let’s get to the cause. We must develop methods for compensating for the endemic problems that create greater potential for poor performance by some students.

Rather than blaming teachers for the problems in our public education system, let’s recognize that they – more than anyone else – know what their children need and they know how to structure programs to meet those needs.

Rather than hiding out heads in the sand and pretending that problems outside of the classroom don’t have an effect on the performance of students, let’s look for ways to make sure every student – no matter where he or she lives – has an equal chance to achieve.

Bottom line: let’s get rid of the erroneous “SSD Formula” for public school reform in America.

John A. Ostenburg is in his fourth four-year term as mayor of Park Forest, Illinois, and formerly served in the Illinois House of Representatives. He retired in July 2010 as the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union after holding various CTU posts over a 15-year period. A former newspaper reporter and editor, he also has been a teacher and/or administrator at elementary, secondary, community college, and university levels. E-mail him at JOstenburg@aol.com.

What if government really ran as a business

out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement

ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity

Tuesday, September 21, 2010 

By John A. Ostenburg

A few weeks ago, a resident in my community volunteered that -- although local property taxes are high -- she thinks residents get a good bang for their buck.

It was an unsolicited remark and therefore one that carried extra meaning for me. As a local elected official, I most often hear comments to the contrary. Residents are much more inclined to protest that taxes are too high and that they're not getting enough back for their investment. 

The complaining types often echo the philosophy of the current "Tea Baggers," in that they claim government runs very inefficiently and should be more modeled on how business operates. As a former small-business person myself, that concept gives me pause. I know first-hand how business operates, and it's not always as efficient as some on the outside might think.

During 14 years of running a small coffeehouse/bookstore, my wife and I often dealt with suppliers who couldn't get our orders straight, with companies that went out of business often within only a few weeks of when we received their promotional marketing materials, and with firms that could care less about the small merchant and instead catered only to those who purchased wholesale items in great quanities.

Imagine if the local police department couldn't get directions straight in responding to a criminal activity in process. Or if municipal parks, swimming pools, baseball fields, etc., all of a sudden were closed down. Or if the local fire department only responded to fires of a certain magnitude or larger.

U.S. government figures show that 25 percent of all new businesses don't survive beyond the first year, that 50 percent don't survive beyond four years, and that 60 percent fail within six years. Imagine if local governments had such a record.

It's not my intent here to bash business, but rather simply to point out that a business model is not necessarily the best one when it comes to the functions of local government. They are two distinctly different types of operation, and therefore cannot be judged based on a comparison of one with the other. Business has problems unique to it, and government likewise has its unique problems. The solution for both is not to try and imitate one another; rather it is for each to develop the very best method for dealing with its own uniqueness.

One very fundamental way in which government is different from business is that government must deal with ALL of the public, and not with selective segments. Government cannot say, "We're just going to focus on the senior segment (or youth segment, or middle-income segment, or high-market segment) of consumers, because that's where our greatest return is likely to be." Business, of course, can do that.

A very good example in this regard can be found within public education, which often is criticized as being less efficient and effective than is private education. But public schools are obligated to take all students, whereas private schools can be selective. Private schools are at liberty to locate themselves in whatever neighborhood they might choose, whereas many public schools must be located in neighborhoods with both high-poverty and high-crime rates. The two systems -- public and private -- are vastly different as regards their flexibility in curriculum, mandates, etc.

Government health care likewise often is criticized as more expensive than is private health care. But again, some of the patients that MUST be treated by the public health care systems are those that the private systems choose not to treat because their conditions are too costly, because the potential rate of success in dealing with those patients and conditions is extremely low, or because the patients cannot pay the cost the treatments would require.

So, the question is, should government continue to provide services to those who have nowhere else to go? Or should government become more selective, just as is business. Doing so probably would increase the overall efficiency of government, and make services much more cost-effective. On the other hand, doing so also would mean that lots of people would not have their basic needs met.

But, to return to the gist of the comment I referenced in my opening, many things provided by local cities and towns are a good deal for the average citizen. Local governments often choose to provide their residents with benefits and opportunities that no one in business ever would offer, simply because there wouldn't be enough profit in it for them. Outdoor concerts are not necessarily money-makers, but they satisfy the internal needs of individuals. Libraries are not money-makers, but they provide enrichment for residents. Parades and festivals are not money-makers, but they create a sense of belonging. All are highly valuable assets, paid for by tax dollars, that no profited-oriented business ever would undertake.

And the costs associated with these services are relatively low when compared to what one would have to pay in a commercial setting. Compare the cost of going to a two-hour municipally sponsored outdoor concert with that of a two-hour movie at a commercial theatre. Or compare the cost of a library card with the purchase of just one book at a local retailer. Or compare the cost of 24-7 police, fire, and paramedic coverage with the costs of any privately operated security system. In every case, the value for the expended tax dollar far exceeds the value of the dollar spent for the commercially obtained products or services.

So why do Americans complain so much about paying taxes but don't scream as loudly about the costs of retail items that they purchase? I think it has to do with our intrinsic desire to be a free people. Simply stated, we don't like having someone tell us what to do. So, we don't like it when government tells us we have to pay taxes. It doesn't make any difference what we may be receiving for those tax dollars. What matters is that we're forced to pay taxes, but we can choose how we spend our money on other things.

Drinking beer? It's a choice. Smoking cigarettes? It's a choice. Going on extravagant vacations? It's a choice. Buying an expensive automobile? It's a choice. Paying taxes? It's a requirement and we don't like it.

Every once in a while, though, some folks stop to think about things the way that resident mentioned above did. When they do, they realize all that they get in exchange for what they pay in taxes. When that satori moment finally arrives, they say what that resident said: "We get a lot for the taxes we pay."

John A. Ostenburg is mayor of Park Forest, Illinois, and formerly served in the Illinois House of Representatives. He recently retired as the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union. E-mail him at JOstenburg@aol.com.

It's time to listen to teachers on issues of education

out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement

ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity

Thursday, September 9, 2010 

By John A. Ostenburg

Why is it that the last people listened to regarding problems in public education are the ones who deal with it on the front line day after day?

 

Chicago's Renaissance 2010 education plan came onto the charts back in 2004. Immediately, classroom teachers pointed out its many flaws. Were they listened to? Of course not. Instead, Mayor Richard M. Daley and now U.S. Secretary of Education -- then Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer -- Arne Duncan pushed ahead with a program that had come not from the educational community, but rather from the business community.

 

Lest anyone forget, that's the same business community that has demonstrated questionable wisdom in the world of finance, ultimately leading the United States into its current economic crisis.

 

When teachers voiced their outrage over some of the proposals contained in the Ren 2010 plan, they were accused by both politicians and the media of being concerned only with selfish interests. Newspaper editorials declared that teachers only were protecting their jobs, only were complaining because they wanted to duck accountability. CPS administrators said "bad" teachers were the problem in Chicago, and so they used Ren 2010 as a way to get rid of seasoned teachers, claiming that the complete "turn-around" of some schools was needed in order to give the students at those sites a quality education.

 

Of course, the Chicago Teachers Union argued to the contrary. "Teachers don't make the decisions that are causing failure in the Chicago Public Schools," then CTU President Marilyn Stewart said in an open letter to Arne Duncan in February 2006. "Rather, those decisions are made by the high-priced, non-educator, bureaucrats who work for you."

 

She could have ended that sentence with "such as you" instead of "for you," as Mr. Duncan himself is a non-educator bureaucrat, given that he's never been a classroom teacher or school-based administrator but rather moved right to the front of the line by being anointed first by Mayor Daley to become the CPS CEO, and then by President Barack Obama to be the nation's education secretary. In developing the Ren 2010 plan, he took direction from a study by the Commercial Club of Chicago, hardly a group of educators.

 

Operating from his Washington base, Mr. Duncan has continued to spread his erroneous gospel that schools will improve when (1) they are completely dismantled and then "turned-around," or (2) replaced by privately operated charter schools. The decision on schools to be turned-around or replaced is based on test scores. But the results of the Duncan experiment in Chicago seem to be showing some flaws in his gospel message.

 

Now along comes a couple of major news items that seem to indicate that the classroom teachers weren't so far off base as it seemed back when they were warning that Ren 2010 really wasn't addressing the true problems within public education, especially big-city public education. A recent analysis of Renaissance 2010 by Catalyst magazine makes clear that one of the cornerstones of Ren 2010 -- charter schools -- is showing no educational improvement over traditional schools. And now, on the heels of that study, CPS itself has issued a report card on its schools, asserting that 48 percent of its elementary schools and 68 percent of its high schools deserve a grade of "D" at best. This after six years of the Renaissance 2010 "reform."

 

The national trend that began in Chicago and has been replicated in other major U.S. cities -- most notably in Washington, D.C., under that city's school chief, Michelle Rhee -- is destined for dire consequences, according to one leading national education figure.

 

Dr. Diane Ravitch, author of the highly acclaimed The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education published earlier this year, makes the following observation about the future of American schools, given the current direction.

 

"The search for higher scores is likely to promote a significant narrowing of the curriculum, cheating, teaching to the test, and other negative outcomes," she recently wrote on an education blog. "To the extent that our students learn less history, science, civics, geography, foreign languages, and the arts, their education will be far worse than it is today."

 

Dr. Ravitch, it should be noted, is neither wild-eyed liberal philosopher who thrives on attacking the establishment, nor an entrenched corporate decision-maker such as those who designed Renaissance 2010. Instead, she's a highly regarded professor of education at New York University and served as an assistant secretary of education under former President George H. W. Bush.

 

The underlying premise of Ren 2010 and similar programs is that low test scores are caused by a deficient teaching staff. To prove the point, public school critics find one or two examples of poor teaching and then portray them in the media as the rule rather than the exception. A new documentary movie on public education, Waiting for Superman, illustrates this point in its use of a couple of examples of bad teaching -- one 12 years old -- without any mention of the quality teaching that's much more prevalent.

 

But here are some reality-check points.

 

(1) Where are so-called "bad" schools most often found? Clue: not in wealthy upper-class and middle-class neighborhoods. So what's the common denominator? Can you say "poverty"?

 

(2) Kids in poorer-performing schools often are the ones whose parents have the lowest levels of education themselves, who often have parents who barely have reached adulthood themselves, who often come to school hungry, who often do not have in-home educational enhancements such as computers, home libraries, etc. Is it any wonder they do less well in the classroom?

 

(3) Teachers of kids in poorer-performing schools often are exerting far more energy to achieve lesser results than are the teachers of kids in better-performing schools. The kids in the better-performing schools many times achieve on their own as much as they do under the tutelage of their instructors.

 

(4) Teachers of kids in poorer-performing schools often are the only stabilizing element in the lives of those children. Firing those teachers, and replacing them with someone brand new to the neighborhood, cannot be beneficial to the educational process.

 

(5) Effective community programs that help children escape the woes of poverty will prove a thousand times more successful at improving education than will the "turn-around" of their schools.

 

No one denies that problems exist within many of America's public schools today. Nor does anyone deny that improvements must be made if children in America are to learn at a level consistent with the demands of society for a well-educated workforce. The point of the argument is who decides what is the best approach to educating our young. Haven't we been leaving that decision to bureaucrats and politicians long enough? Don't we see sufficient evidence that their decisions have not proved effective?

 

Let's let teachers teach. And let's let them decide the best methods for achieving success in our schools. In every other profession, it's the professional who makes those kinds of decisions. Why are things so different in public education?

 

John A. Ostenburg is mayor of Park Forest, Illinois, and formerly served in the Illinois House of Representatives. He recently retired as the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union. E-mail him at JOstenburg@aol.com.

High school dropouts a major issue in U.S. education system

out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement

ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 

By John A. Ostenburg

On any given day, 7,000 high school students will stop going to school -- permanently. That number mounts to 1.2 million students who each year constitute a new graduating class of "dropouts."

In his book, Raising the Grade, former West Virginia Governor Bob Wise -- also a former congressman and now the president of the Alliance for Excellent Education -- notes that every day "Before the last school bus pulls away from the westernmost school in Hawaii, almost 7,000 students will have dropped out of high school, effectively disappearing into a social and economic netherworld where there are few good opportunities and many bad outcomes."

Fifty years ago, students could drop out of high school and still find a good job. Today, that's almost an impossibility. Certainly a handful of exceptions will find worthwhile employment in family businesses or in a small number of areas where sheer talent is the principal criterion, such as art or music, but the vast majority will struggle for years to come in the effort to find an adequate income.

Instead, members of the dropout population most likely will move from job to job without the benefits of health insurance, pension, paid vacations and the like. Many will turn to unsavory endeavors and eventually find themselves imprisoned. Their inability to provide adequate lifestyles for their family members often will result in succeeding generations that also will struggle to gain a foothold in society.

In today's world, stopping the educational process at the time one receives a high school diploma in itself is hardly the best course for gaining meaningful employment. Increasingly, some level of post-secondary education is becoming a necessity for successfully fulfilling the new technological requirements of virtually all employment fields. Lots of high school dropouts eventually realize this reality and seek to gain a GED certificate as an equivalent to a high school diploma; they then move on to a community college or even a university to play catch-up on their education. While an advisable course for those who have dropped out, the far better course would have been to stay in school in the first place.

The challenge for educators is to make high school appear meaningful for students at the time they are still in the classroom. The vast majority of dropouts confess later in life that they erred in leaving school; it's a major task for educators to make those individuals aware at the time of decision-making that staying in school offers far greater possibilities than does leaving.

Organizations such as Governor Wise's Alliance attack the problem from a global perspective by analyzing the impact that high school dropouts have on the nation as a whole. For example, the Alliance has statistical data that shows an additional $335 billion in salaries would have been part of the national economy in years to come if just the dropouts from the Class of 2009 had stayed in school. The Alliance report, "The High Cost of High School Dropouts: What the Nation Pays for Inadequate High Schools," provides extensive research on the various ways in which the economic condition of the nation is adversely affected by the large number of students who fail to complete their secondary educations.

Over the years, career education has been put forward as the best possible answer for the dropout problem. Educators have felt that they could keep kids in school if it could be demonstrated to them that the learning they were receiving would be a direct pathway to employment. Today, however, with statistics that show the average worker changing jobs approximately seven times during his/her working lifespan, training for just one career path could end up more of a detriment than an advantage. As a result, career education is not as appealing as it once was, since the guarantee of permanent employment no longer is as effective a selling point.

However, if the career path onto which students are directed could be shown as one where the employment potential will increase rather than decrease, then perhaps students would have a higher level of interest in traveling down it. One place where this appears to be the case is in training for technological positions in job classifications related to the "greening" of the nation. Given the current projections on the impact that global warming will have on the climate, jobs in both high-tech and low-tech energy-related industries appear destined to be good marketplaces for the job-seekers of tomorrow. Given the right training today, many high school students in career curricula programs could find themselves job-ready upon graduation.

In Chicago, the effort to provide that kind of future-oriented career education can be found at Austin Polytechnical Academy, a high school in the Chicago Public Schools system that's operated by the Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council (CMRC). Austin Polytech benefits from the coalition of organized labor, the business community, government officials, educational leaders, and community organizations that has been put together under the CMRC umbrella. The school is designed to help fulfill the CMRC mission of making the Chicago region a hotbed for the kind of manufacturing that is necessary for a more energy-efficient future.

Because of its success, Austin Polytech has received wide acclaim, even from President Barack Obama, and CMRC officials now are preparing for an expansion of the concept into more schools, some even beginning in the lower grades as a better preparation for student success at the secondary level. And while the emphasis at Austin Polytech may be on manufacturing, its curriculum is focused both on the student who may be desiring to become employed immediately upon graduation and on the one who intends to go on for a college education that will enhance his or her technological understanding. In either case, the students are able to visualize how what they are learning in the classrooms of Austin Polytech will position them for success in the future.

Meanwhile, though, general education at the secondary level needs an even greater shot-in-the-arm than what simply will be provided by re-focusing the emphasis for career education. Frankly the major problems that result in high dropout rates have been festering for a long, long time prior to the actual act of a student turning his back on the schoolhouse door. Many of these future dropouts have become disenchanted with education while still in the elementary grades. For some reason, they begin dreaming of the earliest possible date when they can say "good-bye" to the classroom for good.

And what could be some of the reasons behind that kind of thinking? I'd like to posit that the current preoccupation with tests and test scores may be a major one. When testing -- rather than learning -- becomes the projected outcome of education, failure is bound to result. Testing ideally is simply a measurement of what a student has learned, so the teacher then can work to fill in the gap and take the student beyond his or her current level of achievement. The current emphasis on testing, by contrast, instead labels a student as a "success" or a "failure" based on his or her test score. In this latter case, testing no longer is an educational tool; rather it has gained the status of being the educational outcome. For those who do well on the test, that may be no big deal; for those who do poorly, however, it's a solid reason to begin hating school. This is especially true when politicians and national media continually harp about the "failing" American education system. Who really wants to continue being a part of a "failing" anything?

Increasing meaningful technical education and decreasing the emphasis on testing throughout the school system may not be the perfect solution to all the problems that lead to high dropout rates, but I believe they may be two effective steps in that direction. And -- what the heck! -- even one step in the right direction is a lot better than no steps.

I think we can take our cue from Governor Wise. "The ultimate goal of school transformation is to promote a support environment in which students can acquire the knowledge and skills they need," he notes, adding, "There are many ways to accomplish this."

So let's just decide on one or two ways and get the process moving.

John A. Ostenburg is mayor of Park Forest, Illinois, and formerly served in the Illinois House of Representatives. He is the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union. E-mail him at JOstenburg@aol.com.

It's time to deal with the real enemy of quality public education

out·post, \ˈaut-ˌpōst\, noun: an outlying or frontier settlement

ob·serv·er, \əb-ˈzər-vər\, noun: a representative sent to observe but not participate in an activity

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 

By John A. Ostenburg

Shadow-boxing is supposed to build the muscles in advance of a boxer facing an actual opponent. After a certain amount of movement around the ring, throwing punches at no one, the fighter moves into true combat with another boxer and the real contest begins.

So, after so many years of shadow boxing with an imaginary foe on the education issue, isn't it time for policy-makers to begin throwing some punches at an actual opponent?

For years, teachers have been blamed for the sub-standard quality of a large number of students coming out of public schools in the United States. The "solution" has been millions of dollars being diverted over the last decade or more away from traditional public schools and into privately operated institutions, variously termed as charter schools, contract schools, or the like. In Illinois, this has been going on for about 15 years now, and the public's still to see any significant results from the experiment.

The greatest number of charter schools created in Illinois since the charter school law was adopted by a Republican-dominated legislature in 1995, and subsequently signed into law by a Republican governor, are to be found in Chicago, where that same legislature in the same year gave control of the schools to a Democratic mayor widely recognized as a political deal-maker. When the legislation was adopted, citizens were told that the charter school experiment was intended to come up with creative solutions to various problems in public education and that those solutions subsequently would be replicated in the traditional public schools, thus raising the level of educational opportunity for all students in the system. That was the sizzle that was sold to the public because the quality of the steak itself was a little less than palatable.

The charter school concept is not in itself a bad one. When proposed by the late Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, it was supposed to be a path to school improvement through innovation and experimentation. A group of teachers, parents, and community leaders would get together and propose a new approach to instruction. It might be more inter-disciplinary. It might be more hands-on. It might reach beyond traditional classroom boundaries. It might involve teams of teachers all working together to instill a greater love for learning among their students. Then a charter would be drawn up as a type of contract between the innovators and traditional public school policy-makers and that charter would be the basis for a new school coming into being.

Somewhere along the way, however, anti-union forces saw charter schools as a chance to undermine the collective bargaining rights and opportunities that public school teachers had won at the negotiating table and on the picket line over a period of 30 to 40 years. They turned charter schools into privatized institutions with the opportunity for a handful of folks to make lots of money. The less that they paid to teachers for their classroom work, the more they could reap for themselves, either as private business persons or as high-paid executives of well-connected "non-for-profit" groups.

The political power of these educational entrepreneurs is obvious in the success they had in inspiring elected officials to give them everything they desired. They received large allocations of public funds for their various enterprises. They have been given new or newly renovated school buildings for leases of as little as $1 per year. They have been allowed to by-pass various teacher certification standards that are fundamental requirements for persons who teach in the traditional public schools.

A major argument for the type of change engendered by the charter school movement was that public education was the pits. That public schools failed to graduate adequate numbers of students. That American education is lagging behind education in the rest of the developed world. And -- by the logic of these critics of public education -- it all was the fault of the presence of teachers' unions in the public schools. Thus the drive to create non-union charter and/or contract schools as a public education option.

In truth, however, the critics of public schools really were talking only about the schools that are found in urban areas that often have high degrees of poverty. They were not proposing such changes for the public schools found in rich suburban areas, where many of the critics themselves lived. In fact, they convinced many inner-city parents that their kids could have the same educational opportunities as suburban kids -- if they were to go to a charter school.

But, in fact, do the charter schools achieve what has been promised? Perhaps a select few students do receive a better opportunity because they have the chance to escape their neighborhoods briefly each day for snippets of an alternative education. But what about the vast majority of kids who attend traditional public schools? Is anything better happening for them? To date, few if any of the innovative changes supposedly present in the charter schools have produced any programs that subsequently have been introduced into traditional public education.

And that's where the shadow boxing comes in: instead of doing battle with the true enemy of public education, which is the extreme poverty endemic to so many big city neighborhoods, these self-proclaimed educational reformers continue to fight an imaginary villain. And who is that imaginary villain? The teachers' unions.

A common opportunity given to charter school students is a personal laptop computer. Meanwhile, students in traditional inner-city public schools may have to do with just one computer to be shared by everyone in a class. At the same time, students in suburban schools might have had access to computers in their homes from the time they were pre-school age. Equal opportunity for all? Hardly. Yet, we expect consistent results from all of those students and blame teachers if the kids with less opportunity don't achieve at the same levels as their counterparts.

Kids in high-poverty neighborhoods often have to struggle to gain the same nutritional balance in their meals that are commonplace to their fellow students in suburban settings. They often have to deal with violence in their neighborhoods that makes study more difficult for them when compared with kids living in quiet suburbs.  Their schools often lack the up-to-date textbooks and other teaching aids that suburban students take for granted. Are any of these conditions the fault of their unionized teachers?

Quite to the contrary. In fact, many times their teachers are the most stable element in their young lives. I know lots of teachers who take funds out of their own pockets to pay for their students to go on field trips, or to get them new clothing because what they're wearing to school is ragged and soiled, or to allow them to take a bus home rather than walk down dangerous streets. These teachers are not the enemy of quality education. They are not the ones with whom politicians should be boxing.

Instead, political leaders need to be giving the knock-out punch to poverty. That's the real culprit. Clean up neighborhoods. Give families an adequate income. Provide opportunities for healthy living. Get drug-dealers and thugs off the streets. But, please, keep those good and dedicated teachers in their classrooms.

Focusing on the true foe will bring positive results; struggling with an illusion will bring nothing more than illusory results. Just as no boxer is going to win a title by punching away at a shadow, no education reformer is going to bring about any positive change by scapegoating unionized teachers.

John A. Ostenburg is mayor of Park Forest, Illinois, and formerly served in the Illinois House of Representatives. He is the chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union. E-mail him at JOstenburg@aol.com.