BE ALERT AND CHECK PUBLIC SCHOOL CLAIMS

BE ALERT AND CHECK PUBLIC SCHOOL CLAIMS  

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

Min national polls most Americans believe the job congress is doing is horrible. Yet when it comes to re-election of their own local establishment congressional representative they usually overwhelmingly win. Their own congressman is doing an excellent job but all the others are not. This defies mathematical odds.

The same phenomenon happens with people concerning their child’s school. Their child’s school is a high functioning one while others in the district are less than adequate. This happens even when the national polls demonstrate that according to the public, US education is in deplorable shape as compared to the US education system in the 1960s or even currently developing countries.

The reality of the state of our local schools is much harder to determine today than ever before. The sheer enormity of our school districts and individual schools make them truly difficult for parents to assess. In the past teachers were recruited from the neighborhood. Parents knew their child’s teacher and the administrator both inside and outside the school. Many of the principles were the same individuals who were in charge when they were educated. People were more stable and accountable to the local people in the neighborhood.

Fast forward, we now live in a mobile society. People are transient, have few roots in the community. Teachers and administrators have more impressive titles but little power and no direct accountability to parents and students. No one is directly in charge. A bureaucratic committee is running our public schools. Our schools are so large they have to have numerous administrators. The principal has not only one vice principal but several of them. The clerical staff is no longer a couple of secretaries but an entire department of specialists assigned to various sections including public relations. This group controls the news flow by massaging the school district performance data. Citizens have been lulled into not believing their own eyes. The sugar coating of our public schools has become a super con art.

The principal has to directly answer not to the parents, rather to the local school district office of various level bureaucrats. The head superintendent of schools is an elected or appointed political position directly responsible to the local board of education. Each school board member is supposed to represent a division of the entire district. The school board is accountable to enforce state mandates and regulations that are formulated by bureaucrats in the state capital and the State Department of Education.

Federal and state intervention in our local schools has hurt, not improved our students’ education and our teachers’ ability to create a safe and stimulating learning environment. President Obama’s administration devised the “Promise Program.” This program, like most federal ones, used grant money to entice school districts to participate in the program. The stated purpose was to  “reduce the schoolhouse to jailhouse pipeline.” The result has been to ignore sociopathic students to lower negative statistics in order to receive the additional funds. This policy was a major factor in keeping Nikolas Cruz from getting needed help. It has kept dangerous students in school without any consequences all over the nation.

On the local school district level it is currently almost impossible to determine the actual effectiveness of the individual school. Almost every power broker in the district would like to attract new perspective businesses to the area. Chambers of Commerce need high functioning schools to close the deal to bring new business and to maintain established businesses in the community. It is in the vested interest of the local establishment to elevate the reputation of the public schools. These mainstays of local business have many incentives to sell the school district’s reputation to the surrounding counties. Public relations department reports sugar coat assessment results that highlight dubious elements and conceal blatant statistical shortcomings of the district’s performance. The school’s public relations department makes the local businessman’s pitch easier by providing snippets of assessment results to create an illusion of positive results.

When today’s high school graduates have less academic proficiency than high school graduates in the first half of the 1900s, no amount of today’s grade inflation can hide student’s deficiency in academic skills, knowledge and reasoning ability from discerning parents. The media interviews with college students from the most prestigious universities in the nation are impossible to dismiss. It is a stunning example of the pathetic state of the US education. It is a maze of confusing bureaucratic layers with citizens having practically no voice.

Our educational system has to be radically revamped or America will lose its prominence as a world leader. This can only be accomplished by reestablishing direct accountability to parents in the local school district for actual comprehensive education of their children. Immediately we should end state and federal mandates, which serve only political interests not that of our student’s education.

Domenick Maglio, PhD. is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. Dr. Maglio is an author of weekly newspaper articles, INVASION WITHIN  and a new just published book, entitled, IN CHARGE PARENTING In a PC World. You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.blogspot.com.