Mt. Washington Neighbor’s new book about Saving Public Education
Mount Washington neighbor Kalman “Buzzy” R. Hettleman has a new book which has just been published in the last few weeks. The book, as the title - It’s the Classroom, Stupid: A Plan to Save America’s Schoolchildren
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Mr. Hettleman is going to have two local book discussions and signings in the upcoming weeks. The first will be at the Central Enoch Pratt Library, 400 Cathedral Street, on Tuesday, Jan. 26 at 6:30 pm. The second will be at The Ivy Bookshop, 6080 Falls Road, on Thursday Feb. 4, at 6:30 pm.
Following is an excerpt that Mr. Hettleman was kind enough to provide for neighbors to get a sneak peek at the book:
The plight of American public schools seems incomprehensible. Why has the richest, most powerful nation in the history of mankind failed to educate all its children, particularly low-income children of color? Why do we allow this shameful and self-destructive injustice? Who’s to blame? What can be done? And, as I have been asked countless times, is there any hope?
There is hope. The problem is not that Americans, because of racism or indifference to the poor, lack the will. Public school reform has become something of a national obsession. Virtually everyone – from educators to policymakers to parents to your next-door neighbor – wants to see schools improved. Most have a strong opinion about why things have gotten into such a mess and what needs to be done to clean it up.
The rub is that we disagree, frequently disagreeably, over causes and cures. But if truth be told, no one, no matter how expert, knows how to assure that all children will succeed academically. There’s no proven blueprint. In particular, no urban school system has come close to enabling most of its students to meet high standards or to substantially reducing the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and others.
Still, there is hope of great progress if we come to a fresh understanding about what works in school reform and what doesn’t work, and if we uproot entrenched mind sets and management practices that stand in the way. We must probe beneath the false certainties and ideological extremes that dominate public discussion. “The real difficulty in changing the course of any enterprise is not in developing new ideas,” wrote John Maynard Keynes, “but in escaping old ones.”
The major recommendations in the book seek to do this. There are three pillars to the plan to save poor American schoolchildren.
First, the stranglehold of the education establishment over school reform must be weakened. To make this happen, the federal government must exercise more control over public schools and become the national guarantor of equal opportunity and strict accountability for student achievement (the same role it has played in guaranteeing civil rights and basic social welfare protections). To that end, the federal No Child Left Behind Act must be mended not ended. In reality, local control of public schools today is both myth and folly.
Second, local school boards should be eliminated, and mayors put in charge of local school policy. School boards are good in democratic theory and mean well. But in practice, they don’t have the time or expertise to set policy, and too often – elected boards in particular – politicize policymaking, and diffuse executive accountability. Mayors Bloomberg in New York and Fenty in the District of Columbia have shown the way with encouraging results.
Third, outside leadership, featuring non-traditional educators, must be brought in to shake up the establishment and retool and manage instructional support systems for classroom teachers. Baltimore City’s schools CEO Andres Alonso is a national pacesetter in this hopeful direction.
This is the audacity of hope for school reform nationally. It is unconscionable for our nation to waste any more time or young lives before taking such bold reforms.
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