Historical Tidbits
by DONN BROOKS
What should we make of the decision to imbed charter schools into Austin Independent School District? In East Austin what has gone on has not been working, so it may be good to give the new protocol a chance and learn from the experience. What Austin is trying to rectify are the abysmal results of No Child Left Behind, a controversial and questionable means of measuring school efforts. Austin is concerned about its efforts amidst the accusations that Austin Independent School District has short-changed East Austin.
For the moment let’s retreat to some basics:
• Teachers cannot teach students who are not in the classroom.
• Students who are acting out disrupt the entire learning environment to an extent that neither the miscreant students nor cohorts achieve academic prosperity.
• Students who are retained in grade seldom achieve any better the second time in a grade than they did the first time, but they tend, due to being older, to have inordinate influence on younger students.
Those basics ought to hold us for a while. AISD needs to pin the charter school down and determine just what plan is in place to address these matters. It may all sound simple, but these ideas have confounded the public for decades, and charter schools cannot hope to resolve education problems until students come to school, act properly and do not unduly influence other students.
My opinion, based on a failing public school experience and progressing on to a college professorship is that school must be a place where students do not hate to go. It must also be a place where hard work takes place. It may sound trite, but that is an extraordinary balancing act. With good intentions we eliminated many things that students enjoy. I especially refer to field trips. Let’s face it: learning is hard and boring work and unless a great deal of success is immediately realized discouragement quickly sets in. I would argue that one of the problems we face is that adults simply forget how hard learning is on all fronts. We remember ourselves as better students than we were.
There is some funny logic employed when we value morale for adults and not for students.
For too long we have concluded that teacher technique will resolve all issues of public education. Students who are not receptive to learning will not learn despite the best efforts of teachers and cooperative students will learn in spite of bad teaching.
In education much has been accomplished; much is yet to be done. Schools do not fail. Societies fail. Austin has failed its East Austin students. Gimmickry will not solve problems. Attention to reality offers the best opportunity for success. The recipe ought to have three ingredients: hard work, fun and good behavior.
School districts should watch and learn from the East Austin experiment.
Education sounds simple. It may not be simple, but we should avoid making it more complicated than it is.
