Ramon Cortines, the chancellor of New York City Public Schools, who spoke at Dartmouth this past week, is a man who should be listened to. His criticisms of the education establishment are incisive and often right on the mark. Cortines is a man who believes in the value of a solid education and believes in the ability of our society to educate its children.
One of the criticisms that Cortines voiced in his lecture this past week was that "schools have not made parents welcome." This is true not only in New York City, but nationwide. There is a clear anti-parent bias evident in curriculums nationwide.
In his book, "Inside American Education," Thomas Sowell points out many examples of such a bias, including a "values clarification" curriculum in Oregon that asks third-graders "How many of you ever wanted to beat up your parents?" and many curriculums that explicitly instruct students not to talk about any of what goes on in class with their parents.
Parents have a right to know what their children are being taught. Systematic attempts to deny them this knowledge must be fought against. As Cortines said in his lecture, "The parent is the first teacher." In order to increase parental involvement, Cortines has set aside $500,000 of the New York school budget. This is a positive sign.
As chancellor, Cortines has had to deal with massive budget cuts. Having kept the cuts as far away from the schools as possible, he has been fairly effective in dealing with a drop in funding. One aspect of the issue of funding is how it fits into the overall picture. Even if New York City kept pouring money into the education establishment, there would be no progress at all if there were no vision for how it should be spent or if there was no look at the problems that continue to plague public schools.
The lack of standards in schools is the one single problem that must be addressed, according to Cortines. It is important that there are some standards for the local districts to reach for, but these standards can not be imposed directly by a centralized bureaucracy. On the national level, there has also been a push in recent years for standards that schools must reach in certain areas.
Just this past week, a federally-funded curriculum guide was issued for the teaching of United States history. The problem with attempts to articulate standards for schools to reach for is that all too often, ideology is placed above the ability to think analytically.
For example, the women's rights convention that took place at Seneca Falls in 1848 is mentioned nine times while there is no mention of the Wright Brothers or even Thomas Edison. Most of the educators and policy makers who helped shape this curriculum guide would agree that there was a politicization of what they were attempting to do.
Whatever standards may have existed in the past in education have been consistently lowered. According to the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, "SAT scores have dropped nearly 80 points in the past three decades while spending has increased significantly."
Funding alone is not enough to solve the problems of our nation's schools. Standards must be set and they must be high. Parents must play an active role in the education of their children and should be encouraged to do so rather than be silenced, stifled or alienated. Students must learn to read and write at their grade level and analytical thinking should take precedence over ideology.
