Failure Of Our Public High Schools

The Failure Of Our Public High Schools

by Roy D. Follendore III

May 3, 2006

The next time that you have a free moment, take a close look at your teenager. Now take a good look at your Public High Schools that is supposed to represent the needs of teenagers. I am sure that you will see opportunities for improvement in both of them. One way or the other all teenagers are full of themselves. They are full of life as much as they are ignorant of it. They have a justifiable reason. They simply have not had enough time and opportunity to understand it. As a general rule they think that they are immortal and that adults are the people who made the world the way that it is. They do not intend to make our mistakes. They intend to be different. Of course in their difference they become just like us. They may climb on a different part of the wave but they soon are floating around on the surface of the ocean like the rest of us. This is where Public High Schools come into play.

High Schools are suppose to be there to help students successfully deal with problems that our ocean of life throws at them. Young people who might get a decent job opportunity in Kansas need to know where Kansas is just as people who are ordered to fight another pointless war in Afghanistan need to know where that is and why it has often been invaded by major armies but never truly defeated. We easily forget that High Schools are continuing social experiments within our local society. There was a time not really so long ago when teenagers were not required to go to High School. They worked on coal mines, farms and in factories just as soon as they became proficient enough to become useful. As the American society became more advanced the practical reality is that as parents began to become more affluent and spend more and more time at work in factories and businesses the High School became a convenient place to 'park' their teenagers. The notion was that keeping kids in school until they become young adults reduced local crime while supposedly improving the opportunities of the individuals and their class. Over a surprisingly short period of time individual High Schools began to spring up, often out the sweat of the parents who contributed to the construction of the schools. It was natural that the community High School was an essential part of the community reflecting all of the ignorance, racial and class bias of the community.

The seeds of failure and collapse for the community oriented Public High School were sewn well before racial desegregation became headlines in Little Rock Arkansas. They were sewn as Public High Schools were came online as institutions. There never was a true comprehensive and unified plan for Public High Schools so the imperious for racial equality seemed like the right place to start. The local communities ignored the fact that what they called the 'negro' schools were not receiving equal funding and they attributed the poor upkeep as part of the inherent ignorance of the black race. To be fair to the teachers of those schools, the thing that most people probably do not know these days is that beneath the crumbling unpainted walls of those black public high schools there must have been some serious teaching taking place. To the grumbling complaints of students who were brought up to be white racist, I witnessed results of this fact when the top students of one such school took top honors when they were integrated.

The moment when the Federal Government took steps to integrate High Schools, they immediately lost the community support of the parents who had been providing a significant amount of voluntary services and support so that regardless of the positive justification of the changes that were with out a doubt necessary, a vacuum was created into which the Federal and State Government stepped in with cash. At the same time, Private High Schools began to compete with Community High Schools, taking with them the crème of the student and teaching elite. The reality was that the problems with racially classed High Schools did not go away, it just was shifted. Public High Schools became the place where teenagers went when they could not afford to get into a private High School and to this day this is the way that many if not the majority of parents feel. If they can many parents continue to reject Public High Schools if for no other reason than they do not wish to subject their children to the conditions of inadequate education, violence and social inequities that the Government sponsored lower classed school systems imply.

In concert with all of this, the last decade a new wave of change in the Public School High School has completely overtaken the Public High School systems. As local High Schools began to look for ways to improve the problems the unfettered bureaucratic economists began to step in. Their reductionistic notions of community viewed High Schools as an inefficient waste and the optimal way to improve conditions competitive terms began the trend toward the consolidation of schools. The 'genocide' of the Community High School had begun and the creation of 'cleansing' of the image of consolidated new area High Schools revolutionized the notion of public school systems. In many cases, because parents chose to simply endure the four years necessary for their children to get through Public High School, this system of management silently grew in the community background.

Local taxes for schools have been slowly increased in order to support the overhead of centralized operations and loans that were put out for the construction of massive new High Schools. Today many county school systems exercise the annual budget of small countries and their administrators systems weald tremendous power and authority. Under the pretense of improved economic facilities the centralized Public High School buildings were constructed as gigantic factories of education. In much the same manner that one might go about designing a 'widget' factory, the most efficient way of moving the most product through the tightest packed classes became the ideal model. In this case however, the hallways became the conveyer belts and the High School students became the widgets. Just as factory floors are littered with lost and abandoned widgets, students within mega schools also regularly get lost in this system. The most lonely place to be is in the middle of a crowd of strangers.

The lack of basic empathy in responding to the needs of students in a crowd is the true monstrous underlying reason why the Columbine massacre occurred. The truth is not spoken is that massively centralized High Schools fail students in many silent ways for much the same reasons that the social experimental practice of Communism fails citizens. There is a critical point where it becomes impossible to centralize decision making without taking away the identities, opportunities and rights from individuals. Where the racist Public High Schools of the past once epitomized the centralized notions of basic notions of unjust and inequitable rights in education, the centralized Public High Schools are now epitomizing the unfair, inequitable individual rights of public education. The icing on the cake of our Public High Schools came from the conservative flavor of White House politics. At the grass roots level, the George W. Bush administration was elected in part on the theme of 'No Child Left Behind." Most teachers will privately tell you the title of this 'educational' program was a stroke of genius even though in practice the concept is academically chuck full of holes.

One of the basic outcomes of the program is mandatory uniform testing of everyone, including the teachers. Since access to Federal money for Public High Schools has been directly tied to absolute standards for testing, testing rather than delivering the necessary and appropriate education that regions of individual students need. It is the bureaucratic notion of test taking and not the actual teachers notions of education that has become the primary focus of Public High School administrators and teachers. The universal 'code word' for teachers who are being graded on their ability to deliver students who conform to national testing standards is something called the 'rubric.'

Rubrics are being given to students as a means of letting them precisely know things and means upon which that they are to be graded. Of course in the test oriented philosophy of the 'No Child Left Behind' regime the notion of the rubric is of paramount importance. To the average student a rubric means that out of one hundred things that are taught, perhaps only one or two things will be actually important in subsequent testing. We are teaching our Public High School students that if they memorize the one percent solution they become geniuses. The fact is that while many individual students are memorizing the things that are expected to be on tests, they are individually learning less than they could learn. Teaching students well is really about reaching students by teaching them in individual ways that they learn best. It is about teaching them things that they need to know and it also about teaching the relationships of information that come together to form useful knowledge.

Testing has come to be really all about statistical collections of data points and that data is really not useful knowledge. Testing is no longer really about individual students. The way that we consider testing flies in the face of the fact that connections of data and information that form knowledge are references that crucial to the practical application of knowledge and that these connections are important to the relational cognitive anchors for long term memory. The reality of contemporary education is that we have been existing in an age where our ideologies have been more important to us than our practices. Our mechanisms for testing currently being practiced under the religion of 'No Child Left Behind' values facts over the necessities of individual teachings. In short it is a convenient expression of political propaganda; an easy way out that has come on the coat tails of reductionistic practices and ideologies that arise from notions of centralized administrations.

Reducing the number of Public High Schools did not reduce the problem of successfully teaching individual students and the reduction of individual facilities did not reduce the economic costs of our educational systems. Instead, the influence of massively centralized High Schools consolidates authority and administrative power which becomes the reason why we are only teaching binary facts that are either right or wrong, instead of ways of working through difficult problems and following the problems to their resolution. All of this and all of the statistics brings us back to the sober fact is that our High Schools students are simply not being taught what they need to know. It is not by accident that a political party seized upon the opportunity to use the momentum of such a flawed philosophy of education. One might reflect that in a sense, this ideology has been the true cost of massively centralized secondary education.

This 'invisible academic hole' that any enlightened teacher can drive a yellow school bus through revolves around the simple fact that teaching to a test teaches nothing except how to take a test. The consequences of why we are teaching our Public High School students the way that we are is changing our nation. Because of the way that our academic leaders have allowed themselves to be swayed by factors that are indirectly related to one on one teacher student education, the United States Public High School is emulating Middle Eastern and Asian systems of memorized learning. As Americans we can easily see the results of this kind of educational system and it isn't pretty. Some might say that the success of our nation has been patterned on good old fashioned know how. I say that that it is time that we admit that the success of our nation is based on teaching good old fashioned know why. Our Public High Schools need to be instilling in our students the reasons why answers that they give on tests are true, not simply that a particular answer is true. Ultimately the fundamental reality that Public High School systems face is that each student learns differently and the true public educational experience is in the process that takes place between the teacher and the individual student, not some standard test key.

The other big Public School experiment that has been taking place is the continued specialization of these giant High Schools. We now are seeing megalithic High Schools that are oriented and dedicated to such things as Technology, Business, International Baccalaureate and Science. The problem that is now occurring within Public High Schools is that the confluence of testing methodology and specialized orientation is creating conditions that are both racially and culturally biased. The tremendous influx of Hispanics who are undocumented means that they are not willing to argue or protest with the decisions of the school board on community matters. The majority of wealthy white students are congregating in one huge centralized High School and the 'others' are in other schools. Apparently the 'new' view in some communities is that this is OK. I believe that what we have actually been doing through the aggregation and consolidation of Public High Schools is depersonalizing the student in favor of consolidating power. In doing so we are returning to the basic problems that once existed and once again sewing the seeds of failure within our Public High School System.

The fact that our Public High School students are now jam packed in classrooms of huge central buildings half way across the county from where they live is not a modern mark of educational success. It is an indicator of our failure. The community based Public High School system simply did not need to be eliminated, it needed to be rejuvenated, supplemented and reinforced by the community. Excellence in education was never a matter of optimal decentralization or centralized facilities, it has always been a matter of finding the optimal formula for reaching the evolving segment of every community. The overhead of all of this centralized planning needs to be dramatically cut and that money needs to be going into the hiring of new teachers and improving the infrastructure of human assets such as improving the pay and benefits of the substitute teachers which allow the existing infrastructure to continue to operate.

The school systems do not want to recognize the fact is that many of the lowly 'retired' substitute teachers are far more experienced in running large organizations than the Principals and Superintendents. They are often retired senior executives and scholars who are substitute teaching because they want to contribute to their community. In the Washington D.C. and Northern Virginia area, they can be former heads of Federal agencies and Senior Scientists. These 'subs' often hold multiple degrees from distinguished Universities and their degrees include Masters and Ph.D.'s. Many of these subs have been reaching out with experiences which represent enormous gifts to High School students who must go out into the world. The barrier to translating these gifts into reality has been the sad stat of the educational system which refuses to recognize this gift. The sad fact is that the way that things now stand, Public High Schools are so hierarchical and rigid that they are unable to benefit from what substitute teachers have seen, must less the educational opportunities that they represent. The failure to notice the contributions of substitute teachers is demonstrated by the fact that as 'outsiders' they are not allowed to participate in administrative decisions which affect them and the students that they teach. Even though they have had the unique opportunity to see the cross section of teaching there is no process for simply debriefing substitute teachers and getting their opinions when they leave. The false reality that substitute teachers are expected to exist in is that real teaching only takes place with 'real teachers.' It should be regretful that the substitute may be considered the teaching candidate, the hired temp, the uninvited leftover, the hired gun, the last minute baby sitter, the non participator, and the left out; Substitutes are represented as anything other than the full fledged teachers that they are.

Substitute teachers are often superior teachers and we should be treating them with the same professional curtsies and benefits as any other teacher. If substitute teachers are going to be properly utilized they need to be provided better orientation and feedback as well as opportunities to teach. Because substitutes teach such a variety of classes for so many different teachers they witness the problems of the High Schools first hand. The fact is that High School substitute teachers are often abused by the students and professionally ignored by the faculty almost as reject teacher volunteers or baby sitters for teenagers. There is no true and reliable infrastructure to support what these educators do. Without prior notice a High School substitute teacher may be sent into a class of advanced students working through calculus and the next period in a room filled with kids who are emotionally or learning disabled. Many times a classroom will have a particularly disturbed student who exhibits unusual traits.

Given the size of the population of students in the classrooms, the odds are that some of these students may very well have a history of emotional or learning problems and there will be no way that the substitute teacher to know. Substitute teachers are not given access to student records even for attendance and do not have any actual way of knowing who students are or who is in a class that should not be there. The reality is that when substitute teachers are sent into classrooms it can often mean that the teacher is on sick leave and there is not an adequate lesson plan. Substitutes feel lucky when they come in to have found any lesson plan with an attached attendance sheet. Some problematic students in Public High Schools know that they will not have to deal with the ramifications of abusing substitute teachers. Why should students respect substitute teachers if the school system doesn't seem to? Of course there are tremendous untapped opportunities for Public High Schools with respect to substitute teachers that is being completely wasted. Moreover, the opportunities of learning by the students are wasted.

Finally there is the essential issue of action.... Instead of sitting on all of these transparent problems that we know exist we need to relieve the pressures placed on our systems of secondary public education before it is too late. we need to make education relevant and accountable to the students that school systems serve. The systematic orientation and policies of these giant pressure cooker, cook book, zero tolerance, swat team bureaucratic school policy makers needs to be replaced with normal educated human beings who know how to deal with issues of common sense. The problem is that within a centralized school system it becomes difficult for individuals to stand up and speak the truth. School systems can not possibly be charged with task of keeping students perpetually naive and obedient. High School students learn best when they are at school to be changed by their own violition. This means that there is a necessity for intellectual tolerance but this does not mean that there is no intellectual discipline involved. We must come to consensus that our American students and not their parents, are there to be taught, to be provided with knowledge and opportunities for success from which they can choose and which they must be free to accept or reject. It is up to the school systems to provide High School students with beneficial alternatives as well as the means to integrate students back into the mainstream of the academic population. Maybe if we simply choose to do some things that are right instead of what is expedient or politically attractive for a change, our educational system can be brilliant.

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