|
|
|
Put Up Or Shut Up
|
Business New Haven
2/5/2001
By: BNH
|
George W. Bush wants to be the education President.
Which is good. Public education in the United States has evolved, perversely, from a system designed to serve the needs of students to an ugly, unwieldly bureaucracy whose principal purpose is to protect the privileges of those it employs.
Observing the undeniable inequities in public education across the landscape, President Bush promises to “lift up every child.” The touchstones of such an effort include more testing, increased accountability and enhanced “choice,” a code word for vouchers, which the teachers' unions fear more than death.
All this seems worth a try. But it is important to bear in mind that Connecticut is not, for example, Mississippi. Our public-school pupils already are tested to within an inch of their lives. Our teachers are the best compensated in the nation.
What Connecticut public schools need are not new federal impositions on how local schools should be run, or a nationalized education bureaucracy. One thing Connecticut does need is more backbone in Hartford to ease the way for the formation and support of charter schools and meaningful experiments with vouchers particularly in districts where the school systems are not meeting their mandates.
Another thing Connecticut needs is for business leaders to “walk the talk” of public-education reform. The business sector has been proclaiming loudly (and correctly) that urban school systems were failing to graduate pupils who could meet the minimum skills requirements for even their most menial jobs.
Beyond talk, what can businesses do to help reform the system? They can encourage change with their dollars - for example through the New Haven Public Education Fund, which sponsors grass-roots, teacher-designed classroom projects . They can support charter schools and encourage employees to become mentors and tutors.
Lastly, business people can exercise influence by letting city and town hall know that the present state of affairs is not to be accepted - and that unless changes are made at the top of the schools system, they'll take their business elsewhere.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
