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Roy Romer and Ted Strickland haven't agreed on much while they run against each other for governor, but both say that Colorado's educational system could stand improvement. Unfortunately, they speak in generalities about centers of excellence and how a better educational system will lead to prosperity. In the spirit of public interest, then, I offer some specific remedies:
· Eliminate interscholastic sports in small school districts. Big school systems can afford specialists, but it doesn't work that way in the hinterlands. Here's a typical hiring decision.
Superintendent: Jenkins, the math teacher and head
football coach, is quitting at the end of the year, so we
need to hire a replacement.
Board Member A: We sure do. We were 2-and-6 last
year.
Board Member B: Do we have any applicants?
Superintendent: The woman who won the Outstanding
Math Teacher Award in Nebraska last year has applied here,
even though it means a pay cut, because she likes to
ski.
Board Member C: Anybody else?
Superintendent: The coach at Peetz wants to move on.
He figures he's done all he can in eight-man
football.
Board Member A: He's done plenty. They went 11-0 and
took state.
Board Member D: But he hasn't had a math class since
eighth grade.
Board Member A: So what? He knows how to add up those
victories, heh, heh.
Big schools can hire one person who's good at coaching football and another who's good at teaching math. Little districts must find one person to do both, and never has a good teacher been hired over a successful coach. If we eliminated the sports programs, we'd also eliminate one temptation to set stupid priorities.
· Eliminate teacher certification.
I have encountered certified science teachers who didn't know that water boils at a lower temperature at higher elevations. There are certified English teachers who don't know how to make subjects and verbs agree, certified mathematics teachers who have trouble making change, certified computer teachers who don't know a byte from a register. Thousands of certified teachers can make the process of learning, which ought to be interesting, into an experience as miserable as it is boring.
Certification doesn't come close to insuring that a
teacher knows his subject or knows anything about teaching.
But when you complain about a stupid or incompetent
teacher, the school board will tell you that the teacher
is certified by the state, so there's nothing we can do
about it.
Getting rid of certification would force school districts to join the real world and be responsible for the quality of the help they hire.
· Encourage the formation of fundamentalist academies.
It's difficult to teach science if you get an argument, and then a visitation from a concerned Bible-toting parent, whenever you mention that the Rocky Mountains are about 70 million years old. There are Colorado taxpayers who insist that the world started at 9 a.m. on Oct. 23, 4004 B.C. and they don't want their children to hear any real geology or biology.
When it's time for English, any real literature contains references to the occult, poor role models, substance abuse and other inducements to immoral conduct. As long as the fundamentalists send their children to public schools, and our democratic system tries to be sensitive to their beliefs, there won't be anything honestly describable as education.
But if all the fundamentalists pack their children off to private schools, then the public schools will be free to teach real geology, biology, literature, etc. Colorado will still be full of halfwits, but at least those halfwits will stay busy teaching and learning penmanship, glossolalia and apologetics in drafty church basements. They won't have time to harass and intimidate the public schools.
Although I'm a firm believer in the separation of church and state, I'm willing to argue that dollar for dollar, we'd get the most improvement in our public schools if we spent tax money to insure that the fundamentalists had their own schools.
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