The news that two teachers at Miramonte Elementary School are accused of lewd acts with children in their classes sent shock waves throughout the working-class South Los Angeles neighborhood. Reacting to parental outrage, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy moved swiftly to announce that the entire staff of the school will be temporarily transferred with full pay to a school under construction for the balance of the school year ("Staff of Miramonte replaced pending sex abuse inquiry," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 7). Their places were filled on Feb. 9 by teachers and other staff members from a rehiring list at a cost of $5.7 million for the remainder of the school year ("L.A. Unified faces hefty costs from Miramonte School scandal," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 9).

Deasy claims that he had no other choice for his unprecedented action under the circumstances. He justified his decision by saying that his primary responsibility is the welfare of the children. But transferring en masse the entire faculty and administration when no charges have been leveled against them is overreacting. The president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation, a Las Vegas-based advocacy group, said: "It's the most severe action I've seen taken by a school district." Little wonder. Because of Deasy's strategy, the education of children will be disrupted by the disappearance in the middle of the school year of familiar teachers who know their abilities.

Moreover, his plan to assign a psychiatric social worker to every class and interview every student who attended Miramonte is risky. By doing so, Deasy sets the school district up to repeat the same mistakes committed in the infamous McMartin Preschool case in Los Angeles County that made headlines from 1983 to 1990 ("McMartin preschool trial," Wikipedia). What seemed at the outset to be a clear case of sexual abuse of toddlers turned out to be casebook hysteria. The defendants were ultimately found not guilty in the longest and most expensive criminal trial in this country, but their lives were ruined.

One of the most important lessons learned from the McMartin witch trial is that young children are highly suggestible. Several hundred children were interviewed by Children's Institute International. Videotapes of the interviews were later reviewed by Dr. Michael Maloney, a British clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry who is considered an expert witness in cases involving interviewing of children. He concluded that the techniques used were coercive and tendentious, violating the guidelines in California for the investigation of children. It's important to note that one girl at Miramonte has already recanted her accusation that she was fondled ("Second accused South LA teacher fired, charged," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 8).

None of the above is intended to detract attention away from the despicable acts allegedly committed by the two teachers. The safety and well being of children must always be paramount. But great care must also be taken not to allow concern for children to run roughshod over the reputation of other teachers who are innocent in this appalling matter. It's a delicate balancing act that demands fairness for all concerned. But don't count on that.

Posted by Walt Gardner at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The college admissions frenzy in the U.S. is at a fever pitch even though tuition and fees have skyrocketed 439 percent since 1982. The trend is expected to continue despite evidence from England that there is a limit to what parents and students will pay for a coveted sheepskin. While it's always risky to apply the lessons from abroad to these shores, a few caveats emerge.

When the House of Commons approved a bill allowing universities to increase undergraduate tuition in England to more than $14,000 a year, the effect was reflected in an overall drop of 8.7 percent in the number of applicants - the steepest decline since records began ("Teenagers turn their backs on a university education," The Independent," Jan. 31). This resulted in 43,473 fewer applications for the upcoming fall semester than there were last year.

Until now, colleges and universities in the U.S. have seemed immune to similar pushback. That may be because in 2011-12, 44 percent of all full-time undergraduates attend a four-year college whose tuition and fees come to less than $9,000 per year. Compared with what undergraduates in England will have to pay starting this fall, the price is decidedly a bargain. But for the 28 percent of students who attend a private four-year college full-time, it's a different story. Tuition and fees there are more than $36,000.

Yet the demand for admission continues to exceed the available seats at marquee-name schools. In fact, they report significant increases in the number of applications received. For example, Princeton recorded a 98 percent increase in applications over the past seven years. Regardless of what elite schools charge, those seeking admission seem willing to pay full freight.

Part of the reason is that Americans, unlike the British, have blindly bought into the myth that a college degree is indispensable for a bright future. In this regard, the Brits are far more realistic about the value of a college degree because college is merely the most convenient place to learn how to learn. It is not an absolute determinant, as John Keats presciently pointed out in The Sheepskin Psychosis (Delta, 1963).

Nevertheless, higher education is increasingly seen as an indispensable commodity. This view was on display in President Obama's State of the Union address when he proposed ranking institutions according to cost, graduation rates and future earnings. He said nothing about whether students are actually learning, instead warning that if colleges can't or won't control the soaring cost of tuition, they won't receive federal aid.

Not that pedigreed schools need it. They can do whatever they want. Their lavish endowments mean they can reduce tuition to the point that they would be less expensive than their cash-hungry public counterparts, or they can continue to ratchet up what they charge. But for other institutions whose endowments are modest, the threat of the loss of government funding, coupled with pressure from middle-class families could eventually force them to respond to demands for affordability. In England, the latter are called the "squeezed middle." They're neither able to absorb the higher cost of college like the rich nor qualify for financial aid like the poor.

Then there's the matter of student-loan debt. According to The Wall Street Journal, it now exceeds America's credit-card debt. Is a degree worth $200,000 in tuition, fees, books, room and board? In the past, the median annual earnings for holders of a bachelor's degree was $46,000, compared with $30,000 for those with a high school diploma. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that seven of ten employment sectors seeing the largest gains in the next decade will require only on-the-job training.

The cachet of a degree no doubt initially opens doors in a highly competitive jobs market, but it's what students have learned during the four years that determines if they remain employed. Based on results from the Collegiate Learning Assessment, which measures critical thinking, complex reasoning and written expression, the answer is not much. As Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa reported in Academically Adrift (University of Chicago Press, 2011), many students are only minimally improving their skills in these areas.

Will these and similar results serve to cool down the overall college application mania in the U.S.? I seriously doubt it. We're still laboring under the delusion that college is for everyone.

Posted by Walt Gardner at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The term adult education will undoubtedly conjure up images from history textbooks of rows of immigrants being taught English and citizenship in night school. Although this perception is still partially true, it fails to convey the full menu of options, including acquisition of high school diplomas and career skills.

That's why the announcement that the entire adult education division in the Los Angeles Unified School District is slated to be eliminated because of lack of funding is disturbing. In December, the school board was presented with a proposal to ax the program, which in the past was budgeted at $120 million ("Adult education on L.A. Unified's chopping block," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28). Thousands of students 18 years or older who have benefited from the classes offered were blindsided by the news.

Yet they shouldn't be surprised. The fact is that they have always been the most vulnerable because they lack defenders in Sacramento. Adults are not considered a priority. In a way, this view is akin to the practice of triage in medicine. Attention is given first and foremost to those in greatest need. With state budgets already strained, legislators understandably focus on K-12. They just don't think adult education is important.

In the late 1960s, I was asked to teach English at night to adults at the same high school where I taught English during the day to students in grades 10-12. I was immediately impressed by the appreciation expressed by the adults who ranged in age from about 24 to 52. One of the questions I asked was their reason for choosing a night class in a high school setting rather than a night class at the local community college. Their response has relevance to the possibility of eliminating adult education: They felt less embarrassed and intimidated when surrounded by others in the same situation on campus.

I don't think we fully understand what it takes to attend adult school and hold down a full-time job at the same time. Not only is exhaustion a consideration but so is awkwardness. That's why I think the proposal to eliminate adult classes is counterproductive. It will send the wrong message to adults who still believe in taking responsibility for their own future.

Posted by Walt Gardner at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The ratings game that has triggered fierce opposition from teachers is about to apply to doctors. Medicare intends to open its files to insurers, employers and consumers so that they can prepare report cards on individual doctors ("Prescription with side effects," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 30). The announcement has doctors up in arms for reasons that are uncannily similar to those expressed by teachers.

What stands out in both professions is that neither doctors nor teachers are miracle workers. Doctors who practice medicine in communities where patients become partners in health because of their backgrounds stand a much better chance of posting successful outcomes than doctors who treat patients in inner cities or in rural areas. For example, Loma Linda, Calif. is overwhelmingly populated by Seventh Day Adventists. They shun alcohol and smoking, and consume healthful diets. The National Geographic in 2005 identified Loma Linda as one of the world's healthiest towns, with many of its residents living into their 90s and past 100.

When McDonald's announced that it was coming to the town of 21,000, a group of preventive health professionals responded by considering putting a measure on the ballot to ensure that fast-food restaurants are kept to a bare minimum ("McDonald's proposal divides healthy Loma Linda," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 22). It's little wonder, therefore, that doctors there say they have a dream practice. In contrast, doctors in Watts wage an uphill battle because liquor stores and fast food franchises are ubiquitous and supermarkets are rare.

By the same token, teachers who teach in schools where parents are deeply involved in their children's education and possess the resources to provide enriching experiences in the form of summer camp, vacations and the like have a dream assignment. On the other hand, their colleagues who teach in schools located in impoverished areas are forced to attend to a host of factors that their students bring to class before they can begin to teach subject matter. In medicine, it's called performing triage.

Doctors know that treating the sickest patients will unavoidably have a negative effect on their report cards because Medicare's new strategy does not take into account the patients they see. Likewise, teachers who are in schools serving large numbers of disadvantaged students from chaotic backgrounds will be penalized because they cannot produce the results that teachers in affluent suburbs routinely post. Unless report cards in both fields take into account these factors, doctors and teachers will avoid working with those most in need of their respective services.

The value-added metric is supposed to credit teachers who demonstrate progress with their students, even though they haven't reached proficiency. But I wonder if it can ever capture the complexity of the task facing teachers whose students bring huge deficits in socialization, motivation and intellectual development to school through no fault of their own? Doctors have long known that the status of patients with factors beyond their control largely determines outcomes regardless of their professional expertise. Why are teachers treated differently?

Posted by Walt Gardner at 7:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Tuition at private day schools in large cities has been slowly creeping up over the last decade, forcing many parents to question whether their disaffection with neighborhood public schools is enough to overcome sticker shock. To put the matter in concrete terms, elite private schools in New York City now charge more than Harvard's $36,305 ("Bracing for $40,000 at City Private Schools," The New York Times, Jan. 29). From every indication, tuition will top more than $40,000 in the next year or two.

Why do parents decide to write a check for this staggering amount? There are several obvious reasons: small classes, state-of-the-art facilities, impressive course offerings, and carefully selected teachers. Yet I believe that underlying their decision is the assumption that once their children are accepted, their future is guaranteed. That's why parents work themselves into a frenzy to get their children into private preschools, which can run more than $30,000 a year. From a toehold there, it's on to private elementary, middle and high school. Ironically, it's now easier to get into a pedigreed boarding school than into a private day school in many cities.

Whether the effort is worthwhile, however, is debatable. Public schools at all levels range in quality from abysmal to outstanding. I don't blame parents one bit for avoiding the former. No matter how democratic they are in principle, few parents are willing to sacrifice their children on the altar of an ideology. Yet in their panic, they jump to the conclusion that private schools are always superior to their public counterparts. That's not at all true. Even in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is notorious for its appalling dropout rate, students can still get a quality education. For example, schools in the district have won the national Academic Decathlon competition 11 times since 1987, more than any other school district in the nation.

In the final analysis, parents make their choice for reasons known only to themselves. Convincing them that they may be overlooking a quality education at their neighborhood public school while saving a king's ransom in the process is a tough sell. But it's still worthwhile trying.

Posted by Walt Gardner at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The repercussions from closing persistently failing schools are about to be felt by tiny Premont, Texas, which is located about 150 miles south of San Antonio. The town of 2,700 is bracing for the shuttering of the Premont Independent School District by the Texas Education Agency because of poor academics and a high truancy rate ("Texas district cancels sports in hopes of improving grades," Fox News, Jan. 21).

In a last ditch attempt to avoid what seems to be inevitable, officials are eliminating sports this spring and next fall to save enough money to keep the district's schools open. Although school districts across Texas are dealing with about $4 billion in state-aid cuts, rural districts are particularly vulnerable because they have limited local tax bases. That's why the situation in Premont serves as an invaluable case study.

Like so many rural school districts, Premont's enrollment is shrinking. It presently has 570 students compared with about 800 five years ago. Poverty is rampant, and truancy is high. The average daily attendance is 88 percent versus a statewide average of 96 percent. Parents are not sufficiently involved in their children's education. The plant is outdated and in disrepair.

All of the above factors combine to make the PISD a prime candidate for closure in the eyes of reformers. They argue that students are not receiving the education they deserve. Therefore, the district should be annexed into another district because there's no sense in continuing to fund a district that has been unable to turn itself around despite repeated warnings. (Five other school districts in Texas have been closed in the past 15 years.)

I understand the appeal of this argument. But it's important to follow it through to its logical conclusion. In Premont, as in so many other small districts, the school is the centerpiece of the community. That will mean little to residents elsewhere, but it cannot be minimized. As Linda Darling-Hammond correctly noted, school closings are severely disruptive. Students are forced to travel long distances to other schools if, in fact, they are accepted at all. Others simply drop out ("Why Is Congress Redlining Our Schools?" The Nation, Jan. 10). A school in a small town is also a major employer. When it closes, jobs are lost.

Further, there's the question of whether school closures deliver what their proponents promise. I wrote about this issue before ("Closing Failing Schools," Dec. 7, 2011). Based on the experience in Chicago, New York and the District of Columbia, the answer is no. Supporters of closing failing schools will maintain that it's too soon to draw any definitive conclusions because the practice is too new. Fair enough. But I think that even after the strategy is given a longer trial, it will prove to be a disappointment.

Posted by Walt Gardner at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If public schools don't already have enough to contend with today, a new law in New Hampshire has the potential to make their situation worse. The state Legislature earlier this month overrode Gov. John Lynch's veto to give parents the right to object to any course material in their child's curriculum as long as they provide a reasonable alternative that the district approves, and pay for any associated costs ("New NH law allows parental objection to any course material; educators wary of potential consequences," Nashua Telegraph, Jan. 22).

Although the law applies only to public schools in New Hampshire, it could become a model for other states because the defining characteristic of an open educational marketplace is treating parents as consumers. This trend is already on display in California, where the Parent Trigger Law that was passed in 2010 allows parents at low-performing schools to petition for new programs as well as to demand conversion into charter schools.

The trouble with the consumer movement as embodied in the New Hampshire law is that it makes public schools vulnerable to the whims of fringe groups. Unlike private and religious schools that enroll students whose parents share similar values, opinions and philosophies, public schools must enroll virtually all students who show up at the schoolhouse door. As a result, their parents constitute a heterogenous group. It's clearly impossible to satisfy all of them. In the past, parents for the most part accepted what schools taught. They could, of course, always request that their children be excused from objectionable material. But an entirely different precedent is set if parents are permitted to demand alternatives to fit their individual definition of acceptable.

The ability of fringe groups to get their way, however, is not limited to K-12. The Koch brothers already have done so in Florida. According to Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, "The Koch brothers have paid tens of millions of dollars to get their point of view instilled in classrooms, amongst faculty members and in students. Programs they start tend to be one point of view only" ("Are the Koch brothers teaching you?" OpEd News, Jan. 24). If those with deep pockets can use their vast wealth to buy what is taught, it calls into question the entire principle of academic freedom and independence.

I wonder how long it will be before the Koch brothers and their ilk turn their attention to K-12. Let's not forget that other billionaires are presently involved in transforming public schools to their liking ("Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools," Dissent, Winter 2011). What makes the situation there far more dangerous than in higher education is the lack of maturity of the students who are subjected to the agendas of billionaires.

Posted by Walt Gardner at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I was brought up to believe that education is the single most important factor in upward mobility. But Winner-Take-All Politics (Simon & Schuster, 2010) by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson calls the assumption into question by contending that the huge differences in wealth in this country are instead the result of a campaign designed by powerful players in Washington and on Wall Street.

In other words, education alone does not explain the enormous gap between those at the very top of the income mountain and everyone else. Wages in the U.S. are at an historic low as a percentage of the economy at the same time that the richest have more wealth than ever before. The change just didn't happen by itself overnight. It has been going on for the past 30 years. And it is not strictly the result of globalization, as propagandists for the ultra rich want the public to believe. Other affluent democracies face the same challenges from abroad, but they do not have America's gross inequities.

If education is the key to upward mobility, then how do we explain the following? In 2008, when 29.4 percent of the population held a college degree, the bottom 90 percent got less than 52 percent of the national income, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. But in 1970, when only 11 percent of the population had a degree, the bottom 90 percent got 67 percent of the national income.

To put these numbers into human terms, unemployment lines now consist of many college graduates who thought that their education insulated them from such insecurity. The usual retort is that in the long run earnings for college graduates exceed those for high school graduates. However, the data supporting this view do not take into account the fields of specialization. Those who major in science, technology, engineering or math, for example, earn more on average than those who major in the humanities. Moreover, when laid off college graduates finally find jobs, they almost always take a cut in pay ("Not all jobs are equal," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 24).

For-profit colleges serve as another example of the delusion. They are promoted as providing a way for those traditionally underserved to acquire the knowledge and skills that lead to upward mobility. But this has been challenged by the government. The Justice Department and four states filed a multibillion fraud suit last August against Education Management Corporation, the nation's second largest for-profit college company, charging that it was not eligible for $11 billion in state and federal financial aid it received ("For-Profit College Group Sued as U.S. Lays Out Wide Fraud," The New York Times, Aug. 8, 2011). It's interesting to note that Education Management is 41 percent owned by Goldman Sachs.

How did things get so bad? Hacker and Pierson explain that the rich employ armies of lobbyists to do their bidding. There is little that the rest of the populace can do to combat their power. There was a time when unions acted as a counterforce. In fact, it's more than coincidental that the growth of the middle class coincided with the growth of unionism. But with unions on the defensive, I expect to see further erosion in the number of Americans in the middle class. In education, teachers unions are under siege, accused of protecting their members at the expense of students. Yet students in states with strong unions, such as Massachusetts and Minnesota, post the highest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, while students in states with weak unions, such as Mississippi and South Carolina, perform poorly on NAEP.

Despite the bleak evidence, Hacker and Pierson believe in the ability of democracy in this country to reform itself. I don't see how this is possible as long as money plays an overwhelming role in political campaigns. For example, when the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was passed to close loopholes and make the tax code more equitable, lobbyists immediately went to work to write many of the same loopholes back into the tax code. Mitt Romney's tax returns reveal how the highest earners benefit ("How the wealthy get tax breaks," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 24).

Lobbyists are now hard at work trying to privatize education. Slowly but surely, they're convincing voters that public schools are failing. If they eventually succeed in achieving their goal, the country will be even more polarized than it is today. But it's hard to counteract the effects of the propaganda machine.

Posted by Walt Gardner at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's clear by now that the high school dropout rate has implications far beyond what is immediately apparent. A front-page story in The New York Times sheds new details on the problem ("In New York, Mexicans Lag in Education," Nov. 25).

According to the census, 41 percent of Mexicans between the ages of 16 and 19 in New York City dropped out. No other major immigrant group there has a rate higher than 20 percent. (The overall dropout rate for the city is nine percent.) Since Mexicans constitute the fastest growing major immigrant group in the city, the situation is causing great concern.

Yet the news was not entirely unpredictable. A study in 2009 by the University of California at Berkeley found that although children of Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, start life on an intellectual par with American children, they begin to lag behind in linguistic and cognitive skills by the age of two.

The difference cannot be explained by poverty alone because the drop off is steeper than for any other impoverished group. The most likely explanation is that Mexican mothers have less formal education than black or white mothers. Moreover, they have large families, which means they often cannot devote sufficient attention to their children.

Given short shrift is that Mexicans lack academic role models compared with blacks. It's not that Mexicans do not value education. On the contrary, they come to this country to give their children the education they never received. But their inability to speak English and their unfamiliarity with the school system act as deterrents to becoming involved.

It's here that recent events in Arizona have special relevance. John Huppenthal, state superintendent of public instruction, ruled that Tucson's Mexican- American studies program violated state law ("Arizona withholds state funding over ethnic studies," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 7). He cited the prohibition of classes designed to "promote resentment toward race or class."

But these classes have been found to engage students. If so, their existence has to be weighed against the cost to society of high dropouts among Mexicans. Nevertheless, the program was dismantled by the Tucson Unified School District on Jan. 10 in order to avoid a cut in state funds.

Posted by Walt Gardner at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Whenever the subject of failing schools arises, the usual suspects are rounded up. I don't doubt for a second that teachers should be at the head of the list. After all, they are the most important in-school factor in learning. But what about students? Aren't they also responsible for their education?

I thought about this once again after reading Will Fitzhugh's "The End of Failure" (The Concord Review, Jan. 18). As he wrote: "We like to think of a student in our schools as if under anesthesia on a classroom operating table, being operated on by our surgeon-teachers who are wholly responsible for the success or failure of the operation." Notice the adverb "wholly" in the metaphor. It totally absolves students. Yet teachers know that no matter how much time, thought and energy they put into their lesson plans, they will not be successful unless students are willing to do the same.

Unfortunately, reformers avoid the issue because they know it is political suicide. Yet if we continue along the same path, public schools in this country will never be able to compete with those abroad. I'm not making excuses for incompetent teachers. They do exist. Therefore, they need to be identified early in their careers, given an opportunity to improve in a reasonable period of time and be promptly removed from the classroom if they can't. Instead, I'm talking about good teachers in schools where students refuse to do the work assigned to them because they believe they are entitled to a passing grade regardless of their record.

These students are not found only in inner-city schools. Suburban schools are just as likely to enroll them. One recent variation on the entitlement theme was the SAT scandal involving students in the affluent community of Great Neck, N.Y. ("20 Students Now Accused in L.I. Case on Cheating," The New York Times, Nov. 22, 2011). Their privileged backgrounds convinced them that paying a former graduate to impersonate them was acceptable. In a way, therefore, their actions were predictable because they have never been held accountable.

If the problem were limited to schools alone, it would be troubling enough. But attitudes do not disappear when students graduate. They bring them to the workplace. What happens too often is a belated and rude awakening to reality. There will always be mitigating factors, but sooner or later former students will find out they are ultimately responsible for their success or failure. It's a hard lesson that they should have learned in school.

Posted by Walt Gardner at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend