No One Asked Me But… (May 25, 2011)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… In the film Shawshank Redemption Morgan Freeman says something to the effect that “its time to either get busy live’n or get busy die’n”. One can easily apply this to the state of American Education.

It is hard for the people of Moapa Valley to identify with a federal study designating several urban schools in Las Vegas as “dropout factories.” In the worst of these schools only thirty percent of those who begin their high school education finish.

Moapa Valley schools, on the other hand, are an outstanding example of what public school education should be. What is the difference in the Moapa Valley schools and the urban schools in Clark County designated as “dropout factories”? Is it the curriculum? No. The curriculum is standard throughout the district. Is it the faculty’s education? No. The Moapa Valley faculty has the same education as those in the inner city schools. Maybe it’s the facilities, but, no many of the “dropout factories” are newer and more modern than the facilities in the valley.

I believe community involvement in the schools is a major part of the answer. There is a feeling in this valley that these are our schools and they are here for us, and our children. Our community is committed to the success of our schools.

I further believe that teacher commitment to students beyond the requirements of the classroom is imperative. A central office administrator, reacting to the internet misconduct of a teacher in Las Vegas, stated; “No teacher has any business having contact with any student outside the classroom.” This philosophy is the educational equivalent of the brick walls that isolate neighbors in Las Vegas.

I would contend that contact outside the classroom is what makes the classroom happen. Teachers who work with students in extracurricular settings have better relationships with students in the classroom. The teacher who knows the student and his/her parents in the community, outside the school setting, is more than a mere teacher; he/she is a mentor. Teachers and administrators who see students and parents in a community setting deal with students in a much different manner than the teacher and administrator who arrives in the community at 7:00 a.m. and goes home to a different community at 2:30 p.m.

Real educators understand that student commitment to education is imperative and this commitment comes when students interact with teachers who love the subject matter but even more importantly love the students to whom they present the material.

What is amazing is the central administration of the Clark County School District continues to work hard at making Moapa Valley schools more like the urban schools rather than making the urban schools more like Moapa Valley Schools. Where inner city schools have been successful they have done everything they could to create the physical, social, and economic conditions similar to those our youngsters inherently have and take for granted.

These oasis’ in the desert of urban education generally take place in charter schools where the teachers and administrators take on the role of surrogate parents. Students and parents identify with the school as something they value and to which they want to belong.

I was at a state track meet where our team had won a state championship; track members, students and community members gathered and sang the school song. Some of the Las Vegas 4A school athletes were mocking our kids when a track coach from an inner city school stated; “Don’t pay any attention to them. They don’t even know they have a school song.” In successful schools the teachers, administrators, and community members have developed a school atmosphere that tells the students they are valued as individuals and education is important.

As educators stand around and chant, “O, my, what can the matter be…” most of them know but don’t want to deal with it. It is so much easier to give another test and then blame the students for not passing it.

Educators are very good at pretending they don’t know what the problem is because it can be politically incorrect to talk of economic and social factors. They state it is not the job of the educator to cure the ills of society. While I agree with this statement, I truly believe it is the job of educators to do what is necessary to educate.

What I find interesting is when dealing with the ills of the “dropout factories” the very people who insist the program is broken challenge any attempt to fix it. Rather than center on the areas of inadequacies, those who attack education paint the whole system with the same brush. Instead of surgically removing the dead tissue, they use a radiation treatment that attacks the good with the bad.

Why not leave successful schools alone and work on programs for the “dropout factories”? Why not attack those areas with radical reforms. If they fail, are you going to be any worse off than the seventy percent failure rate you now have in the worst of these schools?

When one suggests new methods the general reply is; “We don’t do that around here, they look so nice in rows”.

Oh, and by the way our education system is failing these students so we will institute programs that place a greater burden on successful schools, to a point of where they will become less adequate. Tell me the logic of that argument.