Posted on: Tuesday, August 27, 2002

ISLAND VOICES
DOE needs accountability

By John C.N. Shen
Community college associate professor of biology

The Aug. 18 Focus commentary by Walter Novak detailed some of the worst-case scenarios in terms of non-compliant, aggressive and arrogant "students" in public schools. They tie up so much of a teacher's classroom time that the rest of the willing students in the class wind up losers.

Mr. Novak's article gives the public a peek into the dynamic (or lack thereof) that exists between the teachers and their administrators, both at the school level and, presumably, above. When teachers are faced with recalcitrant students — juvenile delinquents, in an earlier era — some of them do not have the support of their principal or vice principal.

What the DOE apparently lacks is accountability at all levels of bureaucracy.

• Accountability with regard to administrators who would rather perpetuate a mediocre status quo than bite the bullet and actually enforce standards and support their front-line troops, the teachers in the classroom.

• Accountability with regard to teachers and their classroom performance.

• Accountability on the part of the Board of Education, which has to set guidelines for student performance and end the practice of social promotion of undeserving students, regardless of what irresponsible and well-meaning parents might say.

• Accountability on the part of parents who have to set standards at home to be sure that their children understand and value a good education and who have to be sure that their children do their homework first, before engaging in their all-important recreational activities.

The result of the lack of accountability at all levels and the perpetuation of the status quo is evidenced by the headline article that "50.6 percent of 183,000 public school students in the state require services beyond the norm."

I understand that the financial situation of many of the parents is a serious problem. I understand that guidelines for Felix Consent Decree special-needs students are incredibly onerous at the classroom level. I understand that there are a significant number of students for whom English is not spoken at home.

But I also understand that there are students graduating from public high schools who should not be getting their diplomas because they simply don't qualify.

I am a community college instructor starting my 26th year in the system. I'm the one who has to try to "teach" those students who graduated from public schools and who can't read the 10th-grade level of the textbook I use, despite the fact that it's the most "reader friendly" textbook in the field for students taking an introductory-level course in microbiology.

I'm the one trying to be sure that aspiring nursing students (and existing nurses, in some cases) actually understand enough basic principles in microbiology that they don't wind up doing some serious harm once they are actually placed into a clinical situation dealing with patients.

I think the DOE has to begin using some good old-fashioned common sense:

• In dealing with disruptive, antagonistic, non-compliant students at all grade levels.

• In terms of standardized tests to be used in promoting students to the next grade. If every student could read and do math at their prescribed grade level when they are promoted, then the teachers in the next grade level won't have to "waste" time doing remedial work with those students who were socially promoted and teachers could actually use their class time teaching what they are supposed to be teaching.

• On the part of the HSTA, which has to develop some sort of non-threatening oversight system to monitor its own members. Disaffected and dissatisfied teachers should be encouraged to leave the system and seek new careers more in line with their personas or dispositions.