A Breath of Fresh Air

Brian Crosby is a veteran high school English teacher from Southern California who has written a very interesting new book called Smart Kids, Bad Schools: 38 Ways to Save America's Future. It's a fairly quick read and many of his ideas for improving government-run schools are eminently sensible. Some of his suggestions that I fully support include:

• making schools' physical appearances and policies less like prisons
• having larger class sizes with higher quality teachers in high school classes
• having K-8 schools rather than separate middle schools or junior highs
• not selling junk food or beverages on campus
• having daily PE and a strong arts program
• having high-quality vocational education for non-college bound students
• merit pay for teachers
• eliminating tenure
• paying teachers in hard-to-staff schools and specialties more than others
  
• ending social promotion
• bringing back the teaching of basic civility, personal responsibility, respect for and consideration of others, and other virtues
• more rigorous classes for gifted students
• more field trips
• incorporating community service
• empowering teachers to actually do their jobs instead of being micromanaged by administrators and bureaucrats
• less standardized testing
• improving teacher preparation programs at the nation's colleges of education
• having a career ladder for teachers
• better fiscal management so that schools get more bang for their educational buck
• requiring parental involvement
• expelling chronically disruptive students
• ending frivolous lawsuits by parents
• placing caps on out-of-control special education spending

Other of his ideas I believe have merit for certain students but I'm not convinced should be mandatory for *EVERYONE*:

• a year-round calendar. This should be an option available to those parents who want it. Research also suggests it may be beneficial for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. But middle-class families who prefer a traditional calendar should still have that option.
  
• a longer school day. Ditto for what I said about a year-round calendar.
  
• full-day kindergarten. Ditto. 30 hours per week is a long time for young children to be in an institutionalized setting away from their families. 15 hours per week may be much more appropriate for many five year olds.
  
• charging parents for the cost of textbooks plus a flat tuition of $200 per child. I like this idea but believe it should be done as a sliding scale depending on the family's financial circumstances. Also, families should be permitted to substitute their own labor in lieu of a monetary contribution if they wish to do so.
• abolishing homework. I agree with this for the lower grades where there's no evidence that assigning homework actually raises student achievement. In high school, however, I do believe that students should be expected to complete a reasonable amount of non-busywork assignments.
  
• outlawing teachers' unions. I agree with Mr. Crosby's assertion that teachers' unions typically stymie educational reform. I'm not sure that I'd go as far as banning them outright, however. That seems a bit anti-democratic (note the very important small "d") to me. Sensible campaign finance reform would go a long way in reducing unions' role in blocking good ideas through political influence.
  

On a handful of issues, however, I feel Mr. Crosby is totally off-base. I'll discuss those in a future post.