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Schools shuffled without full deck
(by Dave Lange - January 13, 2010)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Schools shuffled without full deck
The bold "transformation plan" announced by Cleveland schools Chief Executive Eugene Sanders last week for the city's beleaguered school system was hailed as being on the leading edge of educational reform.
According to the plan, 18 Cleveland schools will be closed down, including some into which millions of dollars have been poured for recent physical upgrades. That's pretty bold, even though the district's imploding enrollment should dictate the operation of fewer buildings. Some schools and programs will receive new freedom to improvise, while others will be shifted to different buildings, which is about as innovative as shuffling cards without a full deck.
Some building principals will be out of their jobs, and some teachers could have to reapply to keep theirs, even though their union will have something to say about that.
It is such a privilege to teach in the inner-city schools that their pay scale is lower than those of most suburban districts. Cleveland teachers are so dedicated that they show up for class every day, even though few of their pupils do the same.
Jobs are hard to find these days. College-educated young people may be dying for an opportunity to teach in a place where 16-year-old sixth-graders are itching to slit the throat of anybody who attempts to impose some discipline on them.
"I think teachers are absolutely vital to the success of this transformation," Dr. Sanders said, after excluding those who actually do the educating from the planning process.
Some people claim that teachers are the most important ingredient to a good education, or at least pay lip service to such a notion.
But that's not true. Students are the single most important ingredient to their own education. If they don't go to school, they can't graduate. The Cleveland schools' graduation rate is just 54 percent. Parents and guardians are the second most important factor. If they don't encourage their children to study, do their homework and yearn to learn, teachers can't force them to do so. If children don't get fed in the morning or even get sent to school in time for the free breakfasts that are provided -- you can do the math.
Environment is the third most important factor in education. When children join gangs and carry guns for self-preservation in their own neighborhoods, where drugs and crime are cool and education is uncool, the schools don't stand much of a chance.
If Cleveland's teachers traded places with the teachers of Chagrin Falls, Chardon, Kenston, Orange, Solon and West Geauga, the suburban districts would still be graded excellent on Ohio's contrived report cards. Cleveland schools would remain on academic watch or academic emergency, because the report cards tell much more about demographics than about education.
Dr. Sanders, who said he intends to get all of his schools off of academic-watch and emergency status and boost the graduation rate to 90 percent, is the latest in a long line of hot-shot education bureaucrats to walk through Cleveland's revolving door with big talk, big hopes and big plans. His predecessors have slinked away with big bucks but left behind nothing but big disappointments.
Cleveland has been on the "leading edge" before -- with school vouchers, charter schools, the mayoral takeover of school leadership and various other gimmicks in a growing stack of bureaucratic failures. Has anyone told Dr. Sanders that his check's in the mail?
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