MARXIST ROOTS OF STW \doc\web\97\09\connel.txt Date sent: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 07:34:35 -0500 To: education-consumers@tricon.net From: "Daniel R. Connell" Subject: Schools Under Fire Some may find my Op-Ed piece appearing in today's (November 12) edition of the Kingsport (TN) Times-News of interest. My thanks go to Bruce Crawford of California for the information related to state Dept. of Education staffer salaries, and to Jeanne Donovan of Texas for drawing my attention to the NCRVE publication pertaining to former Soviet and GDR vocational education. The Op-Ed follows. Dan Connell Kingsport, TN ================================================================================ SCHOOLS UNDER FIRE FOR GOOD REASONS By Dan Connell Copyright 1997, Kingsport Times-News Some people take issue with whether today's public education should be criticized, and many of their arguments are correct. Dissatisfaction with public education has been around a long time. Moreover, many parents value their children's education and, appropriately, applaud their teachers for jobs well done. That parents should devote more time to helping kids at home is a given. But are critics of today's public education misguided, prone to overstatement and open to criticism themselves? From my perspective, I see reason for questioning the effectiveness of today's public education. To assume that all is well is, in my view, naive on the one hand and self-deceiving on the other. It feels good to feel good, but there is ample reason for parents, taxpayers and, for that matter, teachers and school administrators to question whether today's schools are doing as well as they should. Those of a liberal bent and prone to defend today's public schools should realize that President Clinton and the Department of Education have it right when projecting that up to 40% of today's fourth- and eighth-grade students likely would fail the first year of reading and math tests the administration has proposed. Those opposing the proposed standards and testing also have it right when they observe that the government's offer of funding only the first year of testing could result in yet another unfunded federal mandate. Local taxpayers would be picking up the tab and finding themselves supporting standards they neither agree with nor control. The National Education Association and its various state counterparts make a big deal of treating students as customers -- all part of the Total Quality Management approach to teaching today's kids. But who are the real customers of public education if not the ones paying for it and supplying the students: the adult public? Some teachers might be surprised to learn that a recently leaked survey of staff salaries at the NEA's state affiliates discloses earnings far beyond those of the average teacher. According to the Western Journalism Center, the 1995 study conducted by the NEA shows that the professional staff members of state affiliates earned considerably more than the $36,744 average teacher salary that year. In Tennessee, the average staffer's salary was $60,304. The NEA average was $82,720. According to Tennessee's commissioner of education, who would like to see achievement testing for grades K-12 watered down, Tennesseans pay $30 million a year in higher education for students to take remedial and developmental courses in two- and four-year institutions. We think taxpayers are paying twice for what they should get from high school, the commissioner, Jane Walters, has said. Business executives, the governor and others supporting a move toward school-to-work in Tennessee -- renamed Education Edge for more palatable public consumption -- should see a publication I have. Funded by a $4 million federal grant, this tome, written by a University of Minnesota professor and published in 1990 by the National Center for Research in Vocational Education at the University of California at Berkeley, is one of three advocating an early drive toward enhanced vocational education in today's public schools. The entire 51-page study is devoted to touting the Marxist-Leninist polytechnical education programs and supportive planned economies of the now-defunct Soviet Union and German Democratic Republic. In his final chapter, the author observes that the Soviets seem determined to make some degree of productive skill a goal of compulsory general education. In the United States, he laments, we have not done that. Some critics of programmed vocational instruction in our public schools would add: not yet. Dan Connell is a former federal executive who lives in Kingsport. His e-mail address is dconnell@preferred.com. EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE