All-American education: Does it make the grade?

By Helyn Trickey
CNN

(CNN) -- Joel Enge tires of hearing people say our children are the nation's future. The bilingual elementary school teacher from Tyler, Texas, doesn't buy it.

"Saying that is like saying we can defer our investment somehow," he says. "They aren't our future, and they aren't even our present. Children are our very next breath ... and we just don't invest our money in them."

Enge teaches fifth graders at T.J. Austin Elementary School how to multiply numbers, divide decimals and what the lifecycle of a star might look like. T.J. Austin is designated as a Title I school, meaning it is a lower-income facility that qualifies for free-lunch programs and other initiatives to improve disadvantaged students' academic performance.

"To be effective, schools must concentrate on their fundamental mission of teaching and learning. And they must do it for all children. That must be the overarching goal of schools in the 21st century."

— Diane Ravitch, educational historian and author of "Left Back -- A Century of Battles Over School Reform"

Working with his students, many of them poverty-stricken, requires great reserves of patience, Enge says. It is an attribute he says he sees little of in the general public.

"When we invest in children, the return is not immediate," he says. "But we want to see the results immediately."

The public's rising impatience over educational issues may be due, in part, to accelerating market pressures on an old institution, says author and educational reform historian Diane Ravitch, who served as assistant secretary of the United States Department of Education and oversaw education research from 1991 to 1993.

One-hundred years ago, she says, most children finished their formal education at the eighth grade. Moving those standards up by four years -- expecting students to finish 12 years of schooling -- was raising the bar to unprecedented levels, she says.

The level has consistently risen since then, too. In the last 20 years or so, Ravitch says, rapid globalization has shown that kids who don't have top-notch educational skills cannot compete in the intense world market.

"At one time you could make a good living with low-level skills," she says. "You can no longer lie on your back and get greasy and make a decent living. Most parents want their kids to not be unskilled workers, and so kids must be literate ... and they must be able to learn new things on the job."

Stumbling blocks to success

"Success," says 16-year-old Julia Klee, "is being pleased with how hard you worked to get what you want."

A junior at Hoover High School in North Canton, Ohio, Klee says her school is preparing her very well for a future career -- in some ways.

"A lot of people complain about the workload, but I think that is preparing us for all sorts of stuff in real life," she says. "You have to be flexible, and it helps you prioritize."

Yet Klee does fault her school, claiming it has inadequately imparted life skills such as mutual respect and moral boundaries. She also finds failings among the school's staff.

"I think it would help if teachers really wanted to teach," says Klee, who estimates that only half of her instructors actually want to teach. The effective teachers, she says, are those who really love their subject matter and focus on how many students are really absorbing the material.

"It's very necessary for me to be bilingual," says teacher Joel Enge. "When (parents) hear me speak Spanish they just open up ... they know I have taken the time to learn their language." Find out what else Enge says about education issues

Klee's observations are uncomfortably close to the mark, says Ethel Wells, a Chicago-based teacher and trainer. Some teachers may show up every morning for class, she says, but their hearts may not be present for roll call.

"Teachers are not leaving physically, but they are checking out emotionally," she says. "And young teachers are not being paid enough to be a teacher, social worker, ... all the things you need to be when you cross the threshold."

Wells has been teaching in the classroom for 25 years, and currently works as a facilitator helping other teachers learn how to identify and help students at risk.

"Teachers aren't equipped to deal with some of the issues they face in schools," she says. "We need training in how to deal with a crisis."

When a student approaches her with a problem in the classroom, Wells says, she literally mimics taking off her "teaching hat" and replacing it with her "social worker hat," her "nurse hat" or any other figurative headgear her changing roles might require.

Asking teachers to take on so many roles dilutes their ability to impart wisdom, Ravitch says.

"There are certainly problems on the academic front, but there are problems on the social front as well," says Ravitch. "Would we ask any other institution like a hospital to teach kids to read? No, we wouldn't."

"The homeschooling movement and the charter-school movement is a signal of something. There is an effort in the educational establishment to stop it, but I think it is going in a direction that can't be held back."

— Diane Ravitch, educational historian and author of "Left Back -- A Century of Battles Over School Reform"

"When other institutions fail, schools pick up the slack and teachers are not trained to do all of this," she says. "To train them (teachers) is to train them to be parents."

That's why teachers at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, Louisiana, recently voted to give up half of an academic teaching position, freeing those funds for a full-time social worker, says principal Thomas Tews.

The school's faculty also voted away another full-time teaching position in exchange for a third full-time school counselor to focus on preparing students for college, he says.

"We are not a residential treatment center here," says Tews. Bringing counselors into the school, he says, has freed educators to perform the tasks for which they were hired - teaching.

For Simone Monroe, a mother of two school-age girls in Oakland, California, getting to know her children's teachers personally is the best way to ensure her children get the most out of school.

"When you show your teacher that you are there to support (him or her), then they will do a good job for you and your children," she says.

Testing the teachers

Another measure of a job well-done is the test.

In Chicago, says Wells, school children learn quickly that they will be tested. And they will pass or repeat a grade.

They teach this lesson at least three times -- when students take standardized tests in the third, sixth and eighth grades.

"It is not a good lesson, but it is the lesson," she says. "In life there are rules and regulations and things you must do before you proceed."

It's a lesson some instructors also struggle to fathom, says Enge, the math teacher in Tyler, Texas. Some of his peers don't understand the purpose and motives behind standardized testing, he says.

As he sees it, a school has failed when its teachers, who know they will be judged on how well their students perform, limit their instruction only to test information.

"It's high stakes," he says. "Our jobs depend on it, and we pass the pressure on to the kids and subtly we begin to teach the test."

"I think school helps you manage your time, and that is what you have to do in real life," says high school junior Julia Klee. Read more of Klee's perspective on education

"We've got to come to understand that if we give these children a meaningful learning experience, they will pass the test," Enge says.

Ravitch agrees. Teachers should not limit their instruction to the questions on standardized tests, she says.

Nor should they operate without national testing as a general measuring stick of success or failure, Ravitch adds.

"A lot of the objections (to standardized testing) are from teachers who don't want to be judged and don't want an external measure," she says. "But without them ... how do we know the changes we have made are good changes?"

Standardized testing is something student Julia Klee sees in abundance at her school.

"The whole thing about the standardized testing really bothers me because it doesn't test your intelligence," she says. "Some people are smart, but (some) are really rotten people and you need more than that to get somewhere."

Grassroots movements signal change

What does the school of the future look like?

Today, teachers and parents are restless with the idea of educational bureaucracy, says Ravitch.

She predicts that the way public-school systems are run will change dramatically. Schools will be tailored more closely to different types of students, Ravitch says.

"The home-schooling movement and the charter-school movement is a signal of something," she says. "I think it is going in a direction that cannot be held back."

In fact, by the spring of 1999 an estimated 850,000 students were being home-schooled nationwide, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

While some parents cited religious reasons for home-schooling their kids, most surveyed said they felt they could give their children a better education at home.

Ravitch predicts parents will have greater choices in how and where their children are educated in the future.

"On the one hand we want better schools, but we also want the school to do everything under the sun," Ravitch says. "If we focus on schools that the public wants, then we will get schools that teach our kids the basics."

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