As I fly home on Monday evening to SJO I wish to share some thoughts from two inspiring days at the National School Board Association’s conference in Chicago.
• Public education is in crisis not only in California, but throughout the U.S. Continued cuts in essential personnel is making this the scariest of times. We can no longer afford any more cuts to visual and performing arts education.
• Delegations from Tennessee and Delaware received a muted ovation for being the only two states to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in Race to the Top funds. I wondered as I sat with thousands of delegates whether California will apply for round-two funding.
• Bold and courageous leadership is needed now more than ever. Before leaving for Chicago, Nick Driver, Vice-president of the Charter Schools Association of California said to me that he will make his decision on whom to vote for in the CA State Superintendent of Public Instruction on June 8 by deciding who will be the boldest.
• There is a severe shortage of qualified principals to lead schools and superintendents to lead districts. North Carolina said they will be 5,000 principals short in the next five years. Eighty-five percent of principals must be replaced in the next five years.
• Saturday keynoter and PBS talk show host Charlie Rose advised the audience to “beg for forgiveness instead of asking for permission,” and opined that “students must have the tools to write their own successful stories.” Rose spoke eloquently about creating an informed and curious global community through our public schools. Schools, he said, “must feed curiosity.” Rose used his new IPad as a prop to underscore how thrilling it is to be alive today. He said we should judge people by the questions they ask and not by their answers. Preparation gives you the opportunity to be spontaneous, Rose asserted. Schools, he said, must build the capacity of students to listen critically. He ended his topical address with a clip from his PBS interview with actor Morgan Freeman as Freeman recites the words from Invictus, “I am the captain of my fate, the master of my soul”.
• Anthony Mullen, National Teacher of the Year, said he is fortunate to have the opportunity to read each student’s story and help author new stories in their “life book.” Mullen exuded pride in his chosen career. His talk made me feel proud to say that I began my career as a teacher.
• The NSBA president-elect said do not be afraid to go out on a limb, for that is where the fruit is. He told the delegates this is the time to be courageous.
• Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, asserted to a standing-room only audience on Saturday that she had been terribly wrong about merit pay, charter schools, and accountability. She said too often today we have framed the debate about public schools not by school officials, teachers or other educational professionals, but by large foundations, the Bush and Obama administrations, corporations and think tanks.
• Sunday’s plenary session speaker, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, said this nation has had an ill-conceived focus on only math and science education while the arts are being dismantled. “Ultimately, arts give us culture and makes us into one people,” Marsalis said. “Singing gives us community and purpose…music has given us races of people together in practice and helps us find the frontier of our collective soul.” He implored the audience to rebuild our dismantled arts education.
As I fly home I am fired up once again about my role on the County School Board. I will endeavor to make the most from the trust the voters placed in me on November 4, 2008 for all students, teachers, and administrators in the county.
“SJO” is Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose Costa Rica. Do you mean SJC?
Hugh Jardonn,
Thanks for the correction. Not sure why the “O” instead of “C” came out of my fingers. I was did fly in and out of SJO last month for vacation with my wife in Costa Rica. Perhaps that is my excuse.
Joseph Di Salvo
Would that folks would understand that our school systems have not changed much over the last 100 years. About all that has changed is the abdication of parents, leaving the schools to raise their children.
Many parents won’t devote even a minute to ensuring that homework is done. Too, many will not lift a finger towards providing nutritional meals. And, finally, many will leave the behavior and socialization of their children to the school systems.
What hasn’t changed is the idea that we need two school districts because a river or a wheat field stands in the way of children getting to schools in just one, consolidated district. How ridiculous is that?! I seem to recall that we have a couple of dozen districts in our Valley alone. And some have only one school within the district. Is that assinine… of course it is.
When will our educators rock the boat and do something about the structure of our school districts? I might agree that more funds are needed to guarantee our children a good education. But not until the bureaucrats do something about the duplication and waste perpetuated by those within the system, who are comfortable with doing nothing.
Too many school districts means too many highly paid bureaucrats who contribute little or nothing to the education of our children.
And with SJ Unified alone having students who speak a hundred or so languages/dialects, how can you hope to succeed? Costa Rica has few paved roads outside the few large cities; but they have a 94% literacy rate. One reason is one language.
[“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.” — Mark Twain]
> As I fly home on Monday evening to SJO I wish to share some thoughts from two inspiring days at the National School Board Association’s conference in Chicago.
I’m not surpised that one would board an airplane to Costa Rica after such a soul-deadening experience as the “National School Board Association’s conference”
GAAAAACKKK!! What a horrible way to spend two days of one’s life. Nonetheless, probably a deserved punishment for a life-long educrat.
I gather that the “conference” was a non-stop parade of stale cliches:
“Bold and courageous leadership is needed now more than ever.”
“beg for forgiveness instead of asking for permission,”
“When will our educators rock the boat …”
It’s not clear to me that anyone with a decent sense of self-esteem would ever admit to attending the National School Board Association’s conference, let alone actually boast about it.
“I will endeavor to make the most from the trust the voters placed in me on November 4, 2008 for all students, teachers, and administrators in the county.”
Goof grief! Find out who those voters are and give them some counseling.
Joe: how much did your little junket cost the taxpayers?
JMO,
I understand and I am sympathetic to your point. I hope my attendance will help inform my work to be wiser about issues that confront the Board. As a new Board member I feel I have gained information that might help save taxpayer money. It will always be my intention to use each dollar of public funds prudently.
I would have confidence in DiSalvo’s efforts if institutions that were once at the forefront of training educators were not in such states of complete decline and academic irrelrevancy such as San Jose State. How can teachers be trained when they cannot even afford to attend a state university? Given the recruitment of politicians like the hapless Larry Carr instead of academic leaders for management positions and the attack of the CSU leadership on diversity, how can potential teachers be mentored as SJSU is fallen into an abyss of intellectually challenged efforts. Voter registration and activism are rare happenings at SJSU while bureaucratic enuchs like Verrill Phillips and Richard Kelley work to dumb down student leaders.
Who payed for your trip?
I would publicly support Professor DiSalvo’s efforts if he and others would take a stand against the continued slide of San Jose State into a cesspool of mediocrity. How can any progress be made in education when one of the institutions that served to train teachers has declined to sad shell of its former viability. Vice Presidents like Larry Carr are politicians and gophers not educators. How can we reform education when Carr and others have turned a teacher’s college into a hostel for bureaucratic eunochs.