Tomorrow we citizens of Forsyth County will have the opportunity to vote for a $250 million school bond. Of the $250 million about $125 million will be used to build seven new schools, $90 million will be used to renovate 14 schools and $4 million will be used for wireless internet connections in all 74 schools. The school system is growing and there’s a rampant fear that our students will be increasingly educated in trailers.
The NAACP is against the proposal because they see it furthering the supposed segregation that the school system has developed since neighborhood schools were introduced back in the mid-90s. Their argument is that schools with a high percentage of minority, low income students are underperforming and that it is an inequitable situation. They feel that we need to return to forced integration of the schools so that there is an equal demographic balance in the schools.
Here’s my take on the situation:
First, I absolutely agree that school buildings need to be safe, clean and sanitary so any necessary renovations to old buildings should be made. On the other hand there are many worse environments in which you can learn than an air-conditioned trailer, and I’ll bet that if you asked a student if he’d prefer a clean, warm (or cool), dry trailer or a leaky, drafty, dirty bricks and mortar building he’d take the trailer any day. And you have to ask yourself is a state of the art, brick and mortar building the most critical component of providing a good education?
Second, most of the schools are segregated by demographics because the parents, rich and poor, minority and white, choose it to be that way. Are you really going to tell them they’re wrong? If they don’t want their child bused halfway across town in order to meet the system’s ideal demographic breakdown then you have to respect their position. You also have to ask what you’re truly trying to accomplish by integrating the schools. Is it to bring up the poorer students’ academic achievement by associating them with richer, better students? If that’s the case aren’t you just as likely to bring down the richer, better students’ academic achievements? Instead of looking at forced busing don’t you think you should address the core issue, which is sub-standard academic performance by the students?
To me, the solution to my first question, "Is a state of the art, bricks and mortar building the most critical component of providing a good education" and my last question, "Instead of looking at forced busing don’t you think you should address
the core issue, which is sub-standard academic performance by the
students" is more teachers. We should spend every dime we can on recruiting and retaining more teachers and keeping the student-teacher ratio as low as possible. I’d rather build a trailer village of education with a 10-1 student-teacher ratio than a castle of learning with a 30-1 student-teacher ratio.
The Journal had a feature story about the school bond that addressed the segregation issue and in it they mention that the new high school, Carver, in the poor part of town was set up as a magnet school with all the latest, greatest equipment but no parents from outside the district want to send their kids there. My argument would be that instead of worrying about getting other kids there you worry about educating the kids that are already there. You don’t throw money at the hardware, you throw money at the talent. In other words, forget the fancy equipment and double your teaching force. Make sure each kid gets tremendous individual attention and do it in the schools that need the help most. Before long you’ll have kids achieving beyond imagination and you’ll probably have to set up a lottery system to deal with the parents clamoring to get their kids in the new school. That’s when you start doing the same for all the schools.
Unfortunately this school bond is continuing the trend of spending money in the wrong place. I’d like to see more money spent on talent and less on hardware. Spend the $90 million on renovations, but take that $125 million and expand the existing schools and vastly expand the teaching ranks. Also look at more creative thinking. For instance:
- Why not use some of the empty commercial space out there for classes?
- Why not get more active with online learning initiatives?
You’d think that with three kids in the school system that I’d be a rubber stamp for the bond initiative. I would be if I thought they were spending on the right things, but they’re not so I won’t vote for it.
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Befuddled 
Jon, what is your take on the bond issue in regards to the “education” lottery and the rumors Easley wants to replace school funds already allocated with lottery money? And then they want to throw in bonds?
I am against the bonds, perhaps partially because we homeschool, but mostly because I agree that the money will not be spent on what is needed.
My wife taught in the government schools for several years, even winning “Teacher of the Year” once. She would have loved to have reduced those 25-to-1 ratios she experienced. I think the lowest she had was 19 students one year.
We don’t have a fancy school here in the home. The dining room serves as our school and the Dell gaming system doubles as our school PC along with my wife’s laptop. The school cafeteria is the breakfast nook and, rumor has it, it’s the best school food around.
We’ll be voting “No!” tomorrow.
This is a scary thing and totally against American education but it does distinguish between my parents’ education and my own. It used to be (they’re now copying Western education methods and the overall numbers are actually falling) that Asian schools were all up to yourself. You want an education, you fight for it. There wasn’t individual treatment because there’s 1 teacher for every 60-100 students.
But the ingenious methods of Asian education is that they don’t wait for anyone. You fall behind, you find a way to keep up. While this is terrible for that one struggling kid, it also promotes kids to study hard since there are so many slots.
I can say from having had one of the best public educations in Washington State, I could have used more forced discipline like my parents.
School bonds are great, but I think that the whole educational system needs to be changed a bit.
In any case, it’s the other side of the coin. Look at overall international scores and find out how the stronger schools do it. It’s how people compete in national university rankings so I don’t see why that method wouldn’t work in K-12 either.
Go figure that, I just took education and applied business tactics on it. 😉
Hi Joe,
My take on the lottery is that the rumor is probably true and it’s no surprise. The “education lottery” made the lottery politically feasible and it was only a matter of time before it just became “the lottery.”
I’ll bet you have the best cafeteria school ever! When I think about the schools I remember my high school experience. Freshman year was spent in a public school (trivia: Sandra Bullock was two years ahead of me at Washington-Lee in Arlington, VA) and then I transferred to a Lutheran HS in the basement of a Lutheran Church. We had 80-ish students in 7-12 grade. I think the average class size for me was about 10 kids. We didn’t have a cafeteria (brown bag every day until senior year when we could go off-campus for fast food) and our science lab was a closet. Some of the chairs and tables were designed for elementary school so we had to literally squeeze in. But there was no skipping class (how could you not get caught?), and they hammered the fundamentals home. I’ll take that any day over a fancy building and getting lost in the shuffle.
I ended up graduating with seven guys (all the girls transferred after our Jr. year to go to “real” schools) and of the eight of us I know that one went to the Naval Academy and is a senior officer in the Marines, one went to college and runs the state level political operations for “Right to Work” and the rest I lost touch with. But I do know that at least five of us graduated from college. Pretty good % I’d say.
DM,
I’m all for holding the students (and their parents) as responsible for their education as the schools/teachers, but my argument would be imagine how much stronger the Asian system would be with even more teachers and the same tough standards! Also, internationally there are alternatives to traditional education (i.e. trade schools) if a student doesn’t want to go the university route. I think we need to do the same.
But you’re main point about promoting more personal responsibility/accountability is right on.
Interestingly enough, in college I had a writing exam where all juniors had to take and pass or else you’re doomed with another English class. I passed in the top 10% of my class.
The subject was: “If the American school system is one of the most well funded in the world, why does it rank so poorly? What can you do to make it better?”
I’d love for the money to go to talent. But the whole educational system would have to change. That means that administrators would have to change. Do you think that’s even possible? I don’t. It’s like trying to change the bureacratic machine. Too many people that want their cushy jobs.
But in any case, in the above essay, I pushed for year-round school. While the Japanese take it to the other extreme (push their kids to the point of suicide much of the time) it’s interesting how much better they do. They do have trade schools like you said, and like my parents had as an option if they didn’t keep at it.
Of course, we push ourselves also. Caltech also has one of the highest student suicide rates in the country.
It’s tough with Yankee ingenuity going for it. I truly wish that people spent more time focusing on the majority steaming ahead instead of the NCLB stuff. Seriously. If I were a parent of a student that was struggling, I’d find it as my duty to help them achieve. Maybe that’s just the Asian in my talking. 😉 I want the best of both worlds here.
I got an email from someone that was upset that I referred to Carver High School being in a poor part of town. She asked if I’d ever been there, and implied that if I had been I’d know it’s not in the poor part of town. She’s right that I’ve never been there, so I don’t know whether it’s a “poor” part of town. I inferred that Carver was in a “poor” part of town based on how it was described in the article, which is wrong to do. And of course ‘poor’ is in the eye of the beholder, so I stand corrected. If nothing else I should be more careful in my use of adjectives, and it would have been more accurate if I’d confined my comments to the demographic breakdown of the student body.
In my reply to the emailer I said that I still stand behind my belief that all students, no matter the school or their economic status, would benefit from more teachers regardless of how nice the facilities are. By all accounts the facilities at Carver are the best and whether or not the school system can attract a more diverse student body to Carver, as they seem to want to do, they should spend more time figuring out how to get the student-teacher ratio down.