Education Law

What Works?

A commentary by Leonard Pitts, Jr. caught our eye recently. In case you're not familiar with him, he created a column called What Works in the Miami Herald that examines many facets of America and, of course, what works. Much of what he focuses on is black America and his ideas on what can be done to improve our country, especially focusing on the young black boys in our schools. In his final What Works column, he writes about how to help our schools, and a few of the successes he saw firsthand. He asks, "You want to know what works?"

Longer school days and longer school years work. Giving principals the power to hire good teachers and fire bad ones works. High expectations work. Giving a teacher freedom to hug a child who needs hugging works. Parental involvement works. Counseling for troubled students and families works. Consistency of effort works. Incentives work. Field trips that expose kids to possibilities you can?t see from their broken neighborhoods, work.

Indeed, the most important thing I?ve learned is that none of this is rocket science. We already know what works. What we lack is the will to do it. Instead, we have a hit-and-miss patchwork of programs achieving stellar results out on the fringes of the larger, failing, system. Why are they the exception and not the rule?

If we know what works, why don?t we simply do it?

And there it is--the question that's a 1000 pound gorilla in the room, the pink elephant everyone wants to ignore. We're not trying to make light of this. These are tough issues and as important as any other issue facing our country today. When you think about the media coverage schools get in urban areas, are you thinking of positive or negative stories? When was the last time you heard about success in large city school systems? The fact is there are many districts that need help. Dozens of excellent ideas are out there to guide all of our schools, including the ones that are failing.

Is Pitts alone in seeing these programs work? We doubt it. We teach children to work together in teams and remember our own group projects that forced us to collaborate, even when we 'strongly disliked' the other kid in our group. But that lesson stuck with us. Collaboration is the key, and we need more of it if we can ever change the districts that are struggling. It's not just for our schools, but for our country in the long run.

BoardBuzz does hold out hope, though. How could we not when we have resources from NSBA's Council of Urban Boards of Education available to us? Check out the surveys of urban student, parents, and teachers and administrators and see what's on the minds of the folks in urban school districts.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on July 22, 2008 (boomark / email).