Phil Robbins
On April 25, I emailed a message to the Oregon State Legislature and many in education commenting on an article in the April 21 issue of The Oregonian by Scott Learn about how the Ways and Means Committee wants Oregon educators to actually show results for $260 million dollars that they were about to receive. It read as follows:
Education Funding Now Demands Results
On April 21, 2007 The Oregonian published an article by Scott Learn entitled "Plan ties strings to extra funds for schools." The education community and their lobbyists are up in arms about having to show measurable results for $260 million dollars received. Apparently, Senator Kurt Schrader and Representative Mary Nolan of the Ways and Means Committee had the audacity to propose that educators actually produce results for the money received. Bob McKean, Superintendent of the Centennial School District, said, "It was a bit of a shock."
One might want to consider the possibility that this is not "attaching strings" but merely requiring the education community to uphold its end of the contract between it and the taxpayers. After all, most education money winds up in salaries, and there is no reason why the legislature should enhance educators' standard of living while lowering that of people who pay taxes. Don't misunderstand me: those in the education field are entitled to fair compensation as determined by the labor market like everyone else. Additional compensation should be based on concrete results by solving the many problems facing education today.
We have a large segment of our graduating high school seniors, who cannot read, cannot write and cannot think analytically, that goes on to college only to take remedial (pre-college-level) courses, a costly situation for students and colleges alike.
A solution to this problem calls for better management methods at all levels. Principals and superintendents should know what is taught and how it is being taught in all classes under their authority. They should know if students are meeting the established performance standards. They should know if all kids know phonics, can read, can perform arithmetic functions and are studying all the content subjects in elementary school. In high school they should know if college-bound students are well grounded in writing, grammar and punctuation. Impossible? Hardly. All it requires is a very simple management tool--biweekly or monthly activity reports that are passed up the line. Corporations do it; no one thinks anything about it. It's merely Management 101. This is the only way for management to know what is happening in the organization--in this case each classroom.
Since then, I have set up a real blog and wanted to include this message because it is a subject that has very real direct and personal financial consequences for parents and students contemplating college which can amount to hundreds or thousands of dollars depending upon the college or university involved and how deficient the student is in the basic skills--reading, writing and math. And for the money spent, the student gets no credit toward a degree or certification. In short, the student goes to college but does not get a college education.
How does this happen? Let's examine the process. When a student enrolls in college, he takes placement exams to determine his ability to do college-level work in reading, writing and math. If he passes each of these areas, he is deemed capable of doing college work and is enrolled in regular English and math. courses. If he fails, he must take a remedial course, often euphemistically called a developmental or pre-college-level course, in those areas where the school considers him deficient. All the while, the student or his parents pay full tuition and fees and usually run up student loans, without receiving college credit. Many schools will allow this only to go on for a year after which the student is dropped from enrollment.
This situation has be growing steadily worse over the years and is now approaching a crisis with over 50% of incoming freshmen winding up in remediation at some schools. See http://www.illinoisloop.org/college.html or search "college remedial courses" on Google or Yahoo to get a complete picture of the problem. Not only that, there are several trends that one should keep in mind. Many four-year colleges want to make remediation the responsibility of two-year community colleges. Increasingly, colleges and universities are holding K-12 schools responsible for the lack of college readiness preparation. Colorado and a few other states have even considered charging K-12 districts for the cost of remediation. There is also a growing interest in aligning high school curriculum with the needs of post-graduate schools.
What can parents do? Check with teachers, principals, superintendents and school boards to find out what specifically is being taught in classrooms at all levels and demand that the basics receive emphasis. This means a strong phonics program in first and second grade; grammar is taught at all levels; higher math is available for all college-bound students; and strong expository composition training including the writing process, style principles, idea development methods, pagination, and report formats is given in high school. Emphasis on creative writing such as poetry, short stories and the like will not help with the type of report writing demanded in college.
