Selected Comments From Speakers at the Forum in Indianapolis
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Comments The following are excerpts from some of the addresses made at the National Forum on Excellence in Education. The forum was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and held in Indianapolis earlier this month:
Terrel H. Bell, secretary of education: "Schools have tried to do too
much and, as a result, they have not been doing well that which is
their prime responsibility. ... I suggest that the first
priority--taking precedence over all else that we do--is to concentrate
on the attainment by every student of the highest possible level of
literacy, so that each student will have reached the outer limits of
his or her ability to read with comprehension, write and think
systematically and logically, and to speak with clarity in a manner
that is articulate, precise, and reflective of an intelligent,
well-educated individual. This priority should be number one, and the
schools of this nation must make a fully unambiguous commitment to its
attainment."
Cecil Mackey, president, Michigan State University: "Universities
should not, to any significant degree, be in the business of furnishing
remedial education to admitted students. It is an invidious distortion
of the concept of fairness to lower the academic expectations of the
university. Instead, colleges and universities, in conjunction with the
public schools, should develop admission schemes that admit students to
begin study on a part-time basis in those subjects where they have the
necessary prior achievement. Then, that same student could continue to
progress toward other necessary prior-achievement levels in
adult-education classes in a contiguous public high school."
Robert Graham, governor of Florida: "Education is not a federal
responsibility. Education is now and always has been a state
responsibility. But if the federal government would assume its own true
duty--by paying the whole bill for income-maintenance programs--it
would free the states to do a better job financing their primary
responsibility--education. Today, the federal government does not bear
the full burden of Aid to the Families of Dependent Children and
Medicaid; it picks the pockets of the states as they struggle to pay
the bill for schools."
David P. Gardner, chairman of the National Commission on Excellence in
Education and president, University of California: "Education has much
to learn from endeavors such as women's gymnastics and dance and other
fields where explicit judgments as to the quality of performance must
be made with skill, toughness, and knowledge if the performance is to
have meaning for the athletes and artists involved and for the endeavor
itself. ... Failure to distinguish clearly and forthrightly between
performance that is excellent as contrasted with performance that is
not diminishes the regard in which a discipline or profession is
held."
Richard G. Lugar, Republican senator, Indiana: "If there are dangers of
elitism in the encouragement of excellence [in education], there is
surely a far greater elitism in pretending that standards make no
difference--when we all know that they do. Is it fair to a poor,
unemployed youth to pretend that his inability to command the English
language is of no hindrance to him? This pretense is really the
province of those who have already 'made it,' and it is as far from the
hungry desire for learning that characterizes people who are striving
to better themselves as anything could be."
Benjamin H. Alexander, former president, University of the District of
Columbia: "America owes no person the right to attend a four-year
public university. ... We are keeping too many students in universities
who are not university material and at a great cost to the nation."
Fred C. Davison, president, University of Georgia: "We have diluted our
[teacher-training] resources by spreading them too thinly among too
many institutions of higher education and too great a variety of
teacher-training programs. We should decrease the number of
teacher-training institutions and concentrate budget and personnel
resources in centers of excellence. Where there are 50 institutions [in
Georgia] training teachers, perhaps there should be only 10."
Senator Lugar, Republican of Indiana: "We are able to appreciate the
need for endless calisthenics, weight training, wind sprints, and any
other preparation needed to outrun or outplay an opponent at a Friday
night high-school game, the nfl, or the Olympic Games. But as a nation
we have not grasped the significance of the sheer drudgery, the
repetition, and the discipline [needed] to read, to speak, and to write
in clear sentences, to master foreign languages, to analyze economic
and social relationships, and to master higher mathematical
skills."
Mary Hatwood Futrell, president, National Education Association:
"Today, we are deeply concerned about that partnership of government
that is necessary to help our locally controlled schools and colleges
achieve excellence. Today, we witness a key partner--the federal
government--moving away from the partnership. Away from taking sound
... actions to help our states and local communities achieve the
excellence we all seek. A few years of neglect threaten to undermine
decades of progress."
Governor Graham of Florida: "The number-one priority of every
principal, every superintendent, every school-board member should be to
support good teachers. To make that support meaningful, I propose the
following short agenda:
1. Pay teachers more. We can't afford teachers who work cheap, because we can't afford to entrust our children to the care of teachers exhausted from working two or even three jobs to supplement a salary of $11,400 a year.
2. Show teachers we care about them in indirect ways. Today, if there's a piece of art in a school, it's probably in the principal's office. Our schools require more than a coat of paint, but bright colors and pleasant surrounding would represent change in too many of America's schools.
3. Give teachers upward mobility within their profession without abandoning what they do best. I submit that the highest-paid individual in a school system ought to be the best and most experienced teacher in that system.
4. Free principals from quelling fights, scheduling buses and ordering floor wax and get them back in the business of educational leadership. Every school needs an educational leader--not a reluctant bureaucrat who couldn't get a decent raise and stay in the classroom. Teachers need inspiration and the principal is the person to provide it.
5. Make the teaching profession more professionally varied. A lawyer can move from private practice to government service to business and back--and still be a lawyer. In education, we hang a label around someone's neck, called 'primary teacher,' or 'professor of education,' and never change labels for 35 years. Our retirement and certification systems punish the adventurous and reward the timid.
6. Finally, give teachers a sense of fellowship within their discipline. A chemistry teacher at Leon High School in Tallahassee should feel a sense of academic brotherhood or sisterhood with a chemistry professor at Florida State University across town and with a research chemist at nasa headquarters."
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