Captain Sullenberger flies an airplane and Superintendent Skelly leads a school district, both potentially perilous professions. Captain “Sully” became a hero and Superintendent Skelly became a goat. What is the difference that led to these two men being characterized so differently by the media?
In the case of Captain Sully—he clearly believed he could bring down a stricken airplane on the Hudson River as though the river was your average concrete runway. On the other hand, Palo Alto’s Superintendent Skelly implied that it is impossible to eliminate the achievement gap between Asian and white students who score significantly higher than lower scoring Latino/a and black students. Skelly said we (educators) are deluding ourselves if we think we can…it would be “the triumph of hope over experience.”
Well, if Captain Sully thought for a nanosecond that his mission was impossible, he might have faced a totally different plight. Sully obviously came from the premise that bringing down that plane was achievable, and he had the skills to get the job done. He believed in himself and his crew. Superintendent Skelly believes that schools are on an impossible mission.
I think Skelly could learn from Sully.
As a former principal of Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto, I know the achievement gap is difficult to eliminate, but it is not impossible. It requires a village that:
* helps pregnant women with the best prenatal care possible,
* creates the highest quality preschool programs for every child,
* hires teachers who believe all students can learn, just not in the same way on the same day,
* consistently has high expectations for all students in every classroom,
* provides a rigorous and relevant curriculum for each and every student,
* makes certain the best teachers are teaching the lowest performing students,
* utilizes excellent data to drive instructional planning, and
* ensures that all parents are involved in the education of their children
Captain Sully is an inspiration to all of us. Superintendent Skelly can be too. It will be when Skelly is able to use the data to show the achievement gap is significantly closing in Palo Alto Unified, so that at the end of the next decade it will be eliminated.
As our new president reminds us, anything is possible when we believe it can be done.
You need add one more item to your list:
Equality in school funding.
Mr. Skelly’s district spends over $13K per student while a district like Gilroy gets by on $8K.
SteveO,
You are right on target. There are approximately 60 Basic Aid districts in CA out of 1000. The lion share are in wealthy areas and they get to spend, as you mention, sometimes 35-40% more than revenue limit districts per child per year. Equity and fairness should be our goal in CA. Why should children of the wealthest 1% receive the most public money supporting their education. Your example is true and it is in the same county. How repulsive. We can and must do better by our children. Our children are the most precious resource we have.
The higher the property taxes the better the schools are.
#4 frustrated finfan.
Very well said. I agree completely.
#5,
Any of Mr. DiSalvo’s posts would be a good start. He specializes in a division of pseudoscience known as “village dynamics”.
Mr. DiSalvo,
The difference between the ship piloted by Captain Sully and the one piloted by Superintendent Skelly is that instrument readings are respected on the former and denied on the latter. Accepting and allowing for the particular capabilities of an aircraft is what makes a pilot a professional, while doing the same for one’s students is what makes an educator unemployed.
Your belief in the cognitive equality of the races is not supported by science, observation, or history. Anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of evolution understands that the existence of such equality amongst peoples who’ve lived apart and evolved separately is all but impossible. The evidence for separate and unequal is there in every bodily component subject to the forces of the environment, from stature to skin color to digestion to the immune system. To think that the brain, the superstar of environmental adaptation, could remain unchanged is to cling to faith, not reason.
Equality is your religion. You are lucky in that it is also the religion of your profession. But the luck runs out when it comes to the students, who must suffer for your beliefs; who are sentenced to an educational system that is so mesmerized by race politics that, outside of sports, it refuses to treat them as individuals with unique strengths and weaknesses. Because of your beliefs our colleges are crowded with students struggling with 7th grade math, 8th grade English, and wasting time better spent on-the-job in a trade consistent with their cognitive abilities.
Your religion gives you comfort: it allows you to point fingers at the state, make excuses and wish lists, and continue to feel righteous and victimized. You will never stop pointing fingers or run out of wish lists for the simple reason that your beliefs doom you to failure, and your failure is assuaged with finger-pointing and wish lists, the fire and brimstone of the socialized state.
Fin Fan said ” it refuses to treat them as individuals with unique strengths and weaknesses.” Boy is that the truth! Our educational system has a cookie cutter mentality. No wonder there are so many high school drop outs!
4. frustrated finfan. I’m trying to collect examples of pseudoscience. Could you provide a reading list?
Closing th achievement gap can be done. It starts with a brave, “courageous conversation” about race.
It’s about teachers educating themselves about race, history, and the lives of students.
It’s about looking at one’s teaching practices through the eyes of our kids of color.
It’s about teaching the true history of the United States, and giving students of color pride. Giving them a sense of pride because of their brave anscestors who endured through great injustices.
It’s about empowering those who feel powerless. That is just a beginning.
#9-Tina,
Well said and RIGHT ON GIRL!
Joseph-
Your words are right on the mark. Coming from a former PAUSD principal adds relevance to your remarks. Minority teachers struggle to implement your suggestions. But we fight a tide of prejudicial remarks and attitudes. Do you have any advice for us too?
Believer,
As you can see from the variety of posts to my column it is an uphill battle to defeat the insidious nature of lowered expectations for minority students. All you can do is continue to make a difference by your beliefs, expectations, and attitudes for the students that pass through your portal. It is like the starfish story…you made a difference for that one.
Joseph Di Salvo
#11- Fin Fan,
I think you’re being pretty harsh and unfair here. Tina has some excellent points and I feel you are twisting them out of context. Every teacher should take courses in differing cultures to ensure that they have some grasp of that student’s background. I, as a mediator, do because a handshake is acceptable in one culture and is not in another, and so on.
Secondly, I never learned much in the way of “real” history, but I did in college. When I was in high school, I never learned much past the three Rs! I think it is very valuable that students learn about the accomplishments of people of color through out history, as it does empower kids of color to strive harder, and to understand the struggle of over coming racism is possible.
Kids today do see things very differently from we older folks, and it is very important to be able to reach them, and by understanding their perspective on the world and how they see it, we can better educate them. As a mediator who works with youth, I watch MTV and other programs so that I am up on the new slang, etc. I also take skills enhancement courses on youth today, as well. It is no different than understanding nature and how to build green properly.
“It’s about teachers educating themselves about race, history, and the lives of students.”—
What, exactly, does it mean to educate oneself about race, history, and the lives of students? You spout off as if there exists a definitive body of work on those subjects that educators can study and master so as to indemnify themselves from the mindless accusations of excuse-makers. But of course there exists no such work, just as there exist no such experts, nor any credible certification process. So what you’ve cooked up here is quite simple: an impossible to meet standard for school teachers that insures that if there is a fall to be taken—if certain groups continue to fail (a certainty), that it will be the educators who will take it.
“It’s about looking at one’s teaching practices through the eyes of our kids of color.”—
The underlying assumption of your statement is that only “kids of color” have needs and experiences so unique as to be beyond the perspective of a teacher. That is a profoundly racist assumption. What, do you think that teachers have a user’s manual for White and Asian students? Is that the way you see those students, as indistinguishable members of an opposing group? In this city our teachers have taught Asian refugees who’d spent years in camps, White immigrants who’d fled the Iron Curtain, and foster kids who’d experienced trials and tribulations of infinite variety. The success or failure in our school system of those students was never a matter of group performance, they succeeded or failed as individuals, and our valley has no doubt benefitted from their successes and paid for their failures.
That you want our teachers to adopt a different perspective for Black and Hispanic students suggests that there exists a perspective that has led to those two groups performing academically in a public school at a level equal to that of Whites and Asians. Please share it with us. Since I know they’ve been looking for one for decades, I’m sure it will be immediately adopted.
“It’s about teaching the true history of the United States, and giving students of color pride. Giving them a sense of pride because of their brave anscestors who endured through great injustices.”—
Our schools were designed to provide an education, not soothe emotional wounds or boost students pride in their particular heritage. Your concern with such nonsense is a perfect example of the coddling approach that puts the victimization carrot within reach of even the laziest students. By the way, the self-esteem correlation with personal success never stood up to academic scrutiny (there’s plenty of self-esteem out there, even in a prison yard).
“It’s about empowering those who feel powerless.”—
A Black man just elevated himself to the presidency by empowering himself through education. There is no evidence that any of his teachers, or any of his schools, had attempted or achieved any special understanding of his very unique racial and family background. He did the work. Learn from it.
Kathleen,
I twisted nothing. In fact, your use of that particular term is ironic, given that it is the Tina Herrera’s and Joseph DiSalvo’s of the world who, for lack of any factual basis for their beliefs, must twist things so that they might continue chanting their egalitarian mantra with their eyes shut tight to the obvious. When one considers that what’s at stake in this issue is the operational integrity of our public school system, the continual support of a discredited belief system—no matter how warm and fuzzy, cannot be honorably defended.
You bring up your experience as a mediator to assert something I never denied, that being the existence of differences across cultures. You did this seemingly in support of Tina’s insistence that teachers do what is clearly impossible, that is to gain familiarity—to a level sufficient to the needs and desires of every conceivable critic—about the various cultures of their students. Tell me, is that how you mediate a problem, by tasking one side with the impossible in order to relieve the other of all accountability? Do you really believe that it should be incumbent upon a grade school teacher to be familiar with the ethnic and religious cultures of every one of his/her 35 students? Besides being impossible, it’s nuts.
I was educated in schools in which Hispanics were the majority. The teachers we had were skilled and dedicated, but what I saw was that no matter their Herculean efforts with the slow, or the resulting neglect of the smart, the slow kids stayed slow and the smart kids stayed smart. The kids were what they were no matter if it was in the classroom, the neighborhood, or on the playing field.
I would guess that upwards of 80% of the kids in my school were below average, with at least half doing work two to three years behind grade level and losing pace with the top kids every year. In other words, the closer we got to high school, the closer those kids got to academic dormancy. Where they belonged was in vocational training, not because of race (some were white) or socioeconomic factors (all were poor), but because they were born with cognitive abilities best suited for hammering-out fenders or manning an assembly line.
But, according to Tina Herrera and Joseph DiSalvo, it wasn’t the cognitive abilities of my classmates that sealed their destinies, it was their unfeeling, unprepared teachers, and the racist educational system that is but a reflection of a racist society. And the way to solve that problem, you might ask? More money, of course! More money for bilingual classes, remedial this and that, and education experts—so that we are never at risk of running out of creative excuses for our many dull minds and lazy spirits.
In the years since I was in school a fortune has been invested in pre-school education, free lunches, ethnic studies, self-esteem workshops, and a host of other nonsense programs. The result: students, when viewed by race, are performing exactly the same. The only thing that has changed is that the credibility of the blank slate theory (behind which egalitarians hoodwinked this nation for fifty years) evaporated with the arrival of sociobiology and its firestorm of genetic discovery.
Performance differences amongst the races, no matter if it is on the playing field or in the classroom, are the result of tens of thousands of years of adaptation and specialization. They are here to stay, no matter that some might want or need to believe otherwise. However, should we make the mistake of waging war against our genetic heritage—by obsessing over group differences and disproportionate results, rather than obsessing over the talents and abilities of each individual, doom awaits.
Fin Fan,
First let me say that we agree, our educational system is in dire need of change, throwing money at the problem, and creating programs that are wasteful is not the answer. We can also agree that Joseph is not in touch with the realities of what needs to be done to address the problems our kids face in the classroom today.
I see Tina’s assertions differently than you do. I see her simply stating that things need to change and that understanding the racial differences of her students is a component of the kind of change needed. May be I just don’t see what you see in her statement.
Look, when I was growing up and going to school, there just wasn’t the kind of influx of immigrants in my schools as there are now. It must be extremely overwhelming for teachers to keep up with the demands that this kind of integration requires.
I have friends, and family members whose children are falling behind in school because immigrant kids who don’t speak, write, or understand English are garnering more attention from their teachers, and from the education system than I think they should. If you throw in budget cuts, and low wages for teachers, then the problem gets worse.
When I went to school, before dragons disappeared, my parents didn’t have to pay for my books, my Drivers Ed, my lunch, and we had vocational programs like woodshop, auto mechanics, etc. We had art and sports too, and my parents didn’t have to pay for that either. Things are very different for children today. I have friends who are teachers. They absolutely hate the way our educational system is run, and are often times depressed at the lack of input they have in this crisis. Yes, crisis.
Our kids today are not educated enough or equipped enough to perform many of the jobs they need to have to be successful and self-supporting. Our schools are failing these kids, and our society by refusing to make the necessary changes needed to ensure that these kids can go out into the world and work force armed with skills and knowledge needed to perform good paying jobs. My God, you don’t have to be Einstein to operate a computer, or to fix one! But you do need to know how to read and write to do so.
If you throw in over crowded classrooms, school closings, parents being less educated than their children, peer pressure that says getting good grades just isn’t cool, an educational system that depends on State and Federal funding based on attendance, yet passes illiterate kids on to the next grade, college tuition no one born here in America can afford, and parents who let their kids drop out of school to pump out babies, or work at Mc Donald’s to support their families, what do you expect is going to happen? Hence, one of the reasons large companies are bringing in educated, and highly skilled workers into the US, or outsourcing jobs that American people don’t know how to do. More to the point, why aren’t high schools, or City Colleges collaborating with these companies and providing vocational, or training courses to keep our citizens employed, and our country strong? I fear it is because our elitist educational system is being led by folks who are grossly out of step with the needs of our world, and think that a BA, or Masters Degree is somehow more impressive than a certification course in a special field, or profession.
Fin Fan,
One point I would like to bring up is the HB1 Visa’s that Companies used to lobby Congress hard on (to increase the number allowed in our country). I haven’t followed this issue since our economy took a nose dive. Companies these days don’t want an employee who will learn the job, or grow into it, even though many of these hiring managers got their start that way. They do not want to have to train an employee to do the job. They want an employee who was doing that exact job somewhere else (preferably with many years of experience doing that job), so they can “hit the ground running” so to speak. So companies bring in these highly skilled employees from other countries on HB1 Visas.
Another point I want to make is that some people are not cut out for college. That is not to say they are dumb, or can’t do it. Some people just have a different path in life – they are not cut out to be a CEO, or the Mayor. They would be content to do a job that doesn’t require a degree, like an Auto Mechanic, or work in Food Service. Our educational system should account for these students as well.
Kathleen,
There is much about which we agree; I too would like to see a reemphasis on vocational training, as there are significantly more young people, especially here in California, who are cut out for the trades rather than the professions. But having been here to witness, first hand, the destruction of our school system at the hands of radical liberals and resentful minorities, I believe the solution lies in putting an end to politically-correct excuse-making and finger-pointing, not feeding it more tax dollars. Remember, this discussion was originally about Mr DiSalvo’s goal of closing the achievement gap amongst groups, a gap that science tells us is the result of thousands of years of evolution, and a goal that will hurt bright students, one that has the dollar-devouring potential to bankrupt public education.
There are smart kids from all groups, just as there are kids from all groups with mechanical abilities, artistic talent, and personality gifts. These kids deserve to be viewed, assessed, and educated as individuals, and safeguarded from the politically-motivated machinations of outsiders.
Christian,
You make valid points, and I would like to direct your attention to a book by Charles Murray (I included a snippet from the description):
Real Education—Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality
Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Real Education reviews what we know about the limits of what schools can do and the results of four decades of policies that require schools to divert huge resources to unattainable goals.
Too many people are going to college. Almost everyone should get training beyond high school, but the number of students who want, need, or can profit from four years of residential education at the college level is a fraction of the number of young people who are struggling to get a degree. We have set up a standard known as the BA, stripped it of its traditional content, and made it an artificial job qualification. Then we stigmatize everyone who doesn’t get one. For most of America’s young people, today’s college system is a punishing anachronism.