Years ago when I was a newspaper reporter in San Bernardino, Calif., I covered a story at one of the city’s high schools and needed to use the girls lavatory.
Inside the restroom, I found that the stall doors to all of the toilets had been removed. There was no privacy.
What happened, I asked a teacher.
Kids were going into the stalls and using drugs, she told me. School officials removed the doors.
Instead of going after the kids using drugs, the school punished everyone.
So, it didn’t surprise me when I read that the movie “Won’t Back Down” was based on “actual events” that occurred at a school in San Bernardino County.
A couple of years ago, the California legislature passed a “parent trigger” law, which allowed parents to force changes at failing schools. The “trigger” was at least 50 percent signatures from students’ parents or guardians demanding change.
A parent group in the San Bernardino County high desert community of Adelanto successfully used the parent law after they gathered 70 percent signatures. Three-fourths of the students at Desert Trails Elementry could not read or write, according to state test scores.
The Desert Trails Parent Union, as the group is called, wanted to select their own principal who could hire and fire teachers and have more budgetary control.
Olivia Zamarripa, a mother of three, told The San Bernardino Sun that school officials failed to protect her son from bullying. She said that when she asked for more homework to help her daughter, a teacher declined, citing a school policy to limit paper use.
The parent group hopes to convert Desert Trails into a charter school for the 2013-2014 school year. A more immediate change has already taken place: The superintendent has resigned.
“Won’t Back Down” moved its fictional account to Pittsburgh, Penn., but the story could belong in any number of American cities.
In Portland, Ore., where I now live, the school board is asking voters to approve a half-billion dollar capital improvement bond to upgrade school facilities. A small portion will go towards modernizing middle-school science labs, a worthy goal. Most of the money will go for remodeling what are, in some cases, failing schools. The school board seems incapable of substantive change.
What’s really wrong with American schools? In no particular order:
- Political leaders who have used schools as their own playgrounds, promoting social experiments and interfering with curriculum while seeking union endorsements.
- Decades of societal guilt, which has translated into letting some students slide because fate has dealt them a hard hand; it’s not fair to expect them to keep up. This begets more failure when other students see there are no consequences to slacking off.
- Overeducated academicians whose degrees do not translate into teaching skills but give them an inflated sense of their own worth.
- Parents who expect schools to raise their children.
- Drugs, including marijuana.
- Sex. Yes, I know, it’s uncool to bash sex. But here’s what else is uncool: School kids having babies instead of homework. Young girls strutting the power of their sexuality. Young guys who think sex (or at least a blow job) is their God-given right. Middle-schoolers being asked to think about their sexual orientation. Sex can be a huge distraction for a student trying to study.
- Gangs.
- Lack of discipline (related to all of the above).
“Won’t Back Down” doesn’t address any of these. It blames failing schools on teachers’ obsession with pay and job security. The movie gives an easy out to parents and politicians who would rather attack teacher unions than confront decades of bad choices made by everyone involved.
If teachers are focused on pay and job security, perhaps they feel they are owed something extra as a tradeoff for having to accept almost any student who walks in the door. There is no selective lottery to attend most public schools.
“Won’t Back Down” exaggerates the number and influence of bad teachers. During the course of a K-12 education, a child will have many teachers of varying skill levels. A teacher who is considered bad by one student may be a favorite to another child.
Job security – even for good teachers – increasingly will be hard to demand in a country where many people don’t have job security. If teachers’ unions want to hang on to their credibility, they should use their influence to tackle some of the real problems that are ailing schools.
For inspiration and enlightenment they might look to a couple of better films about education: “Dropout Nation” and “The Lottery,” both documentaries and both much more entertaining than “Won’t Back Down.”
In “Dropout Nation,” teachers try so hard to save students that some of the students are not held accountable. One of the students, Marcus (who envisions himself a football star and is convinced of his own charisma) has the gall to contact his teacher at home with her own family and ask her to order him a pizza. This teacher’s overwrought efforts end up adding to the drama in Marcus’s life.
In “The Lottery,” four parents try desperately to get their children into Harlem Success, one of New York City’s best charter schools.
In one of the most disturbing scenes, public school parents – egged on by the United Federation of Teachers – fight to keep out the expansion of Harlem Success. The parents believe that Harlem Success will hurt their public school.
At a public hearing one mother roars, “You are not welcome here! I will fight to my dying day! … It will not happen! It will not happen! Over my dead body!”
Because these are documentaries and deal in the truth, happy endings are not guaranteed. Usual answers are not offered.
“What’s so easy to say – and I’m a Democrat – what’s so easy to say is ‘They just need more money,’” Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, N.J., states in “The Lottery.”
In public education, people are wed to the status quo. For example, he says, in public education time is regarded as a constant, while achievement is a variable. If a longer school day will benefit students, then time should be the variable and achievement the constant.
Booker notes that poor students in some inner city schools are doing better than wealthier, suburban schools.
“It is not just about money,” he says.
True – whether it’s Harlem, Adelanto or Portland.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
One point in your list of “What’s really wrong with American schools”?
“Overeducated academicians whose degrees do not translate into teaching skills but give them an inflated sense of their own worth”.
I need a little time to digest this before I agree or disagree. It just struck me as an intriguing statement.
I suspect many of us do something like that, no matter what our profession.
I think you’re right that people besides academics do this. It lets them feel like they have more to offer. Academics do it more because education is their livelihood. They have to believe the more, the better.