While I should be doing homework after working 20 hours this weekend, I find more comfort in discussing the scariest topic of all the problems Cleveland faces - education.
This topic is really difficult and takes many perspectives to wrap your mind around. There are many reasons to complain, many groups to blame, yet it seems like there are no viable solutions in place yet.
So, let's start from the beginning. Cleveland's schools were great in the 50's and 60's. (At least from my dad's perspective). Cleveland was still on the upswing, gaining population, industry, and tax revenue. However, Cleveland remained EXTREMELY SEGREGATED from that era forth. There was a large pool of poor black families and second generation immigrants that lived on polar ends of the city. This idea may sound egregious to my generation, but the truth is segregation still exists. (puerto rican inner southwest, black east and southeast, and white west and outer southwest.
My dad always insisted that once the city started bussing, Cleveland was done for. The city forced equal demographics in all schools across the city and bussed all of "those black kids" (not my dad's words at all, I can't quote, but that's the theory) to the west side schools. Not to mention the HUGE cost of bussing. My dad believed that this was the catalyst for the city's demise, and I basically agree. My grandma took my aunt, who was very young at this time, and fled to the suburbs (North Olmstead?) to escape the revolution in Cleveland's schools. Bussing wasn't the cause, but it seems like it was the catalyst. It combined with low gas prices, new highways cutting through neighborhoods and becoming arteries to the suburbs, loss of jobs in the oil industry to the Mideast, an increase in service industry jobs, and new inventions to making often family interaction less necessary (women working and sending kids to daycare, commercial airlines, highways, and the telephone) combined to promote a white-flight from the city to the sprawl of the suburbs. (I hate sprawl. All planners do. It's the anti-everything our world and country should stand for.) My point is that bussing provided a catalyst for the white flight in our region experienced, which in turn effected our education system.
As bussing "forced" many white families to leave our city, it began to decline at a rapid level, losing population, tax dollars, and most importantly, the families with good students who could find better opportunities in whiter suburban districts. The district has taken hits every year with lower revenue, lower student populations, and a larger proportion of students who are economically disadvantaged.
We've reached a point now where people want to live in Cleveland, yet have two real options when they have four options: 1. Homeschool, 2. Private schools, 3. Move to suburbs, 4. Charter schools
At least that's the way I would look at it now if I had kids.
The goal is for the school district to succeed. Or is it? In a capitalistic world, things that fail should get shut down. "But we can't eliminate a school district!" But can we? This is where charter schools come into play. Frankly, I'm the product of great parents, great talents, and a charter school (gasp!). After an imperfect Kindergarten at Saint Thomas More in such a structured environment, my parents asked me to try a new school (with blocks to build towers!) for one year. Old Brooklyn Montessori School. I ended up loving it, and I stayed there for eight years and got into Ignatius, which leads me to where I am today! OBMS has since undergone a lot of changes that it needed to make to get more state funding and compete better with the state's "Report Card" and national "No Child Left Behind" testing requirements. It's now "Old Brooklyn Community School" and "Old Brooklyn Community Middle School." I'll always wish the school had stayed focused on Montessori (which helped my free spirit excel by letting me take my own initiative) however:
OBCS is annually ranked an "Excellent" school on the state report card.
This is remarkable given that charter schools receive 1/2 the funding of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) and teachers change so quickly with the lower salaries that incurs. A school district receives X amount from the city and Y amount from the state, which accounts for about the same. So charter schools in Cleveland run on 1/2 the funding of CMSD yet receive superior results in cases. Why is that? COMPETITION IN THE MARKETPLACE. Parents can now raise their kids in Cleveland without moving or paying for them to attend good schools. The students that attend charter schools (in my opinion) have parents that care more than the average CMSD parent and are encouraged to actively participate in the school. This recreates that suburban pool of schools, but in the city. Plus, students don't change schools every six months. Just imagine how much MORE successful certain charter schools could be if they received vouchers for students from the city. Teachers could get paid wages more competitive to wages of unionized public school district's teachers, and more resources could get paid into expansion, equipment, and facilities.
My argument here is that if CMSD doesn't change trends around in five years after its recent change in philosophy under CEO Eugene Sanders, we need to promote a strong voucher system and open up competition in the charter school market.
I have faith in Dr. Sanders and hope his plan works, but if if doesn't work we need new philosophies. OUR CHILDREN CANNOT WAIT ANYMORE. Without a decent set of free education options, our region is doomed to failure.
The deal with charter schools is that if they fail after Z many years, the state shuts them down. Fair enough, no?
In case you're confused, I'm going to explain various viewpoints involved with the CMSD and it's problems.
CMSD (Cleveland Metropolitan School District) runs into problems in five key areas: Demographics, student motivation, parent motivation, teachers union, and teachers approach.
I've already documented the demographics. We cannot force bussing, which the district repealed a few years ago if I remember correctly, but we have to leave it an option to certain specialty schools (particularly high schools for the arts, technology, science, etc.). We need demographics to improve (bring families with good students and care about involvement in the education process into all areas of town. However, this attraction needs to occur with some incentives such as a better education system, which is redundant, or a great lakefront, community center service, close to jobs, safe, etc.
I should've mentioned this earlier if I didn't, but EDUCATION IS THE SINGLE BIGGEST KEY TO OUR REGION'S GROWTH. Turning the region and school district around involves all of the topics I'm cataloguing, but without good schools we will never succeed in producing good workers, entrepreneurs, or attract new industry.
Parent participation to their child's education is critical. If a parent doesn't push their kids to do well, connect them to resources to help them, use the library system to read to kids when they're growing up, and challenge kids to grow, a kid doesn't obtain the necessary skills or motivation to succeed in life. There are always anomalies in this situation however part of the blame goes on parents of kids. Parents who were raised in the system and may or may not have had their first kid in high school and there's no dad and the "blaming" goes on and on and on....
Simply, the city and schools need to try everything they can to encourage parents to read to their children, encourage them to do well, connect them with resources (libraries) and help out at school. I made an 18-page proposal a month ago about how to do this. If you'd like a copy please let me know. It involved a bunch of changes including using $200 of the $14,000 per student CMSD spends on incentives for grades, attendance, good behavior, graduation, participation, etc. I determined it to be impractical and scrapped it, although I'm sure I'll revisit it sometime.
Kids motivation is key, but when you're young and are faced with odds against you such as parents who don't care or bad teachers, you have little chance of making it in life.
Cleveland Teachers Union. Oh boy. Let me premise the ravaging I'm about to do by saying I believe Unions should be a great place to foster ideas, living wages, and promote activism in the city. I'm not anti-union. I'm pro-union to a certain extent.
HOWEVER THIS UNION HAS GONE TOO FAR.
Problems: High wages, low results.
THEY SHELTER BAD, REALLY BAD, TEACHERS WITH OLD SCHOOL APPROACHES AND LITTLE IMPACT WITH THEIR SENIORITY.
They're way too powerful and spend resources on special interest groups at the federal level as far as I understand.
They're focused way more on their well being than that of their students. Which is Wrong. If the teachers don't care about their students as a whole, and worry more about themselves, we're doomed to failure. Their jobs will be such much better if they work more to turn the system around and change policies to promote growth instead of stagnation.
CMSD CEO Dr. Eugene Sanders has attempted to work with the unions to change some of these policies, but the unions still aren't budging. Seemingly every three years they're laying off hundreds of young energetic teachers at the expense of the students so that teachers with seniority keep their fat paychecks. This is unsustainable. I'm hoping Sanders wins his push to change the unions. If not, we need to threaten the union's existence by strongly promoting charter schools and vouchers in the city. If the school district disappears and the city is not growing, unions have no one to serve.
UGH. This is really scary folks. It's one of the nightmares about Cleveland.
New teacher approaches such as positive reinforcement are needed, but I've got too much of a headache now to expand upon that. Plus, I'm no expert in that area.
SO, my plan:
1. CMSD should be the city's #1 priority.
-Union needs to scrap seniority
-New teaching methods need to be implemented
-Parents need to be well informed and active in child's education
-Every student needs to have opportunities to "make it"
If Cleveland's Transformation plan doesn't result in significant changes by the 2015-2016 school year, the flood gate needs to be opened on CMSD with charter schools flooding the district. Families need options. If CMSD is doomed to fail, the unions die with it. And from there maybe a fresh start can begin.
At this point I'm rambling. And that's what's scary about the education system. You can't do much unless you're in charge and have power to negotiate with the unions and can influence parents' motivation.
I'll revisit this topic again eventually when I understand it a bit better
Happy Halloween!
God Bless,
-Ken
No comments:
Post a Comment