Former New York City Public Schools Chancellor Ramon Cortines spoke last night to a crowd of more than 80 people in 3 Rockefeller Center about the public's responsibility in educating the country's children, particularly urban students.
Cortines, who resigned as Schools Chancellor in 1995, is currently the acting assistant secretary for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the Department of Education.
"I believe education is a public responsibility," Cortines repeated throughout his speech.
After more than 40 years of experience as an educator in such diverse systems as New York, Pasadena and San Francisco, Cortines said he still has hope for the future of urban education.
He said he thinks the United States is doing a better job educating its youth than ever before.
"When I first started 41 years ago, there were no records," he said. "We didn't know what a dropout was -- if someone didn't show up to school, no one noticed."
Cortines said he thinks the public has lost sight of the mission of education -- academic achievement.
"I believe that all children can learn," he said.
Cortines said all too often the "strawmen of ethnicity and socio-economic problems" are proposed to explain the problems many youngsters have in urban schools.
"The problem is not with the children, it is with the adults," he said. "America needs a commitment to education and its youth."
One of the problems Cortines addressed was the lack of continuing and proper teacher education. "We haven't invested the kind of money we need in teacher preparation," he said.
"Being empathetic is not enough to teach children to learn how to read," Cortines said. "Teaching reading skills is a scientific process."
He also pointed out that while the Unites States is constantly comparing its schools to those of Japan, one fundamental difference often overlooked is that Japanese teachers spend almost half of each day on professional development.
Knowledge of content of instruction is the key to effective teaching, he said. If you know your content, you are able to challenge students no matter what grade or reading level.
"It is the same material, just packaged differently" for students of varying reading abilities, he said.
"Evaluation and accountability are necessary" components to improving urban schools, Cortines said. He said these are the only ways to determine if students are truly internalizing the knowledge they are acquiring in schools.
Cortines said even fourth and fifth graders should be able to explain, share and defend topics they have learned about in front of a group of peers.
Working in the improvement division of the Department of Education allows Cortines to oversee "hundreds of millions of dollars [which] are given away for educational research," he said.
He said he has been disappointed with educational research because "generally it has been in a language that I can't understand."
"It has been written by researchers for researchers," he said.
Many people in last night's audience would not be entering the education profession and Cortines said, even as a community member or parent, the most important questions a person can ask are, "How come? Why not? and What if?"
"Too often decisions are made on how we feel rather than based on contemplative thinking," he said.
The 35-minute speech was followed by a lengthy question and answer period that covered such diverse topics as desegregation, bussing, poverty issues and teacher preparation.
Cortines said he once thought that entering teaching was a "lifetime commitment," but now thinks that is no longer the case.
"Give me your best two years," Cortines said. "Give me your best three years. Then if you want to leave, then do so by all means."
One of the most important things in being a good educator is remaining in contact with what occurs in the classroom, he said. Cortines referred to some of his visits to schools in New York City that he closed once he realized how poor their conditions were.
Education Professor Robert Binswanger put Cortines' experience in New York City in perspective when he told the audience that Cortines needed a full-time body guard to escort him around the city, as well as a police driver.
Binswanger added that, while chancellor, Cortines was in charge of more than 150,000 employees, a $6 billion budget and the education of 1.2 million children.
In the Department of Education, Cortines is responsible for bringing together experts in reading and math to establish national voluntary tests for fourth and eighth graders, he said.
