Three Dispatch news stories about education kept my eyebrows
elevated this week.
The first, published Tuesday Aug. 22, detailed some of the
disciplinary problems common in GUSD schools.
Three Dispatch news stories about education kept my eyebrows elevated this week.
The first, published Tuesday Aug. 22, detailed some of the disciplinary problems common in GUSD schools. The second, published Wednesday, related how more GHS sophomores than ever before passed the California High School Exit Exam on their first try. And the last, published Thursday, revealed the district’s solution to the perceived problem of parents who send their kids to private school: hire a PR gal.
Perhaps it is just because school is starting, but I found myself thinking of these stories in literary terms. Specifically, if these news stories were plays, how could they be described, compared, and contrasted?
All three share a common setting: public education in Gilroy, California. They vary in form. If the first were a play, it would be a tragedy. Kids act up, learning suffers. Unhappy ending. The second would be, in dramatic parlance, a comedy, by virtue of its happy ending. And the last would make a terrific satire.
All three have a common theme running through them, a theme highly appropriate for any work of literature: the theme that actions have consequences.
This theme is most obvious in the first story, because consequences are so obviously related to discipline. Indeed, the terms consequences and discipline are often used as synonyms for the simple operant conditioning that works so well on octopi, dogs, and children. If a behavior is rewarded, the behavior increases. If it is punished, the behavior is extinguished. The more timely, consistent, and appropriate the punishment, the quicker the behavior is extinguished.
One wonders, reading the news story, if there is any punishment doled out for deliberately kicking a teacher, and, if so, how quickly it is administered.
The relationship between consequences and GHS’s improved pass rate on the CAHSEE is less obvious, but I think I can make a case for it.
Last year, for the first time, seniors were realio trulio required to pass the CAHSEE in order to graduate. Freshmen, sophomores, and juniors were treated to a close up view of what happened to their slightly older peers who failed to master the 8th grade material on the CAHSEE.
It seems likely to me that in consequence of seeing their peers struggle and sweat, more sophomores decided to take their schoolwork seriously enough to master the material. I hope that those sophomores will now decide that paying attention and learning is not overly painful, and will therefore decide to make good use of their next two years.
The CAHSEE story gives me great hope for public education in general and GUSD in particular. That hope is immediately dashed by the third story.
Opinions differ as to why most of the elementary schools, two of the middle schools, and our only high school have such low test scores. One thing is not open to debate: the scores are bad; they are worse for fourth grade than for second, worse for seventh grade than for fourth, and far, far worse for eleventh grade than for seventh.
Since the state now posts test scores on the web, it is impossible to hide the naked truth about our test scores. Possibly as a consequence of our poor test scores, some people send their kids to private schools.
So: does GUSD identify a better math curriculum that will be easier for our teachers to use and enable our students to master the skills they so desperately lack? Does GUSD take the $60,360 and split it six ways as bonuses to the district’s six best math teachers? Does GUSD use the $60,360 to run after school homework centers so that at risk students have a place and time to do their neglected homework, staffing said centers with people who know an improper fraction from a hole in the ground?
No. GUSD hires an ex-teacher to write PR puff pieces, because, as Superintendent Edwin Diaz says: “We feel like we need to market what we offer more widely and aggressively.”
We need to improve education in GUSD. We do not need to spend scarce district funds on a spinmeister.
