By FULLER ROYAL
Staff Writer

Education has become the drowning man, grabbing at anything and everything it can to remain afloat.

Just when I think education in North Carolina can’t get worse, it does. In their annual – and successful – attempt to prove just how inept they are, the folks with the power in Raleigh have hatched another scheme designed to improve an already floundering education system.

Beginning with the 2008 freshman class, high schools will no longer offer vocational diploma tracks for students.

Instead, the State Board of Education (SBE) has come to the conclusion that the cure for our high schools’ woes is to assume that every child, minus the exceptional children’s population, must go on to at least a two-year school after graduation.

They have bought into the so-called “global community concept” hook, line and sinker. SBE believes that in order to compete globally, every student must graduate with the skills needed to go to college, whether they go or not.

The cold hard reality of life is that not all kids can or want to graduate from high school with those advanced skills. Many can’t. Most kids have no family infrastructure that can ensure that kind of success.

Many of these want to enter the world of work as soon as they have their driver’s license.

To get rid of the vocational or “tech-prep” program is incomprehensible and the idea that every kid needs “global community skills” to compete is pie in the sky.

The kids who drop out of school at age 16 or sooner are not going to compete globally.

Which brick mason in China is going to finish that house on Madison Street? Which carpenter in Canada is going to build your home addition? Which electrician in Ghana is going to wire that business?

We need the vocational track to remain and be strengthened in our high schools so this particular set of students will have the local – I said local – skills needed to be productive members of Columbus County.

We need craftsmen in Columbus County. We also need vocational courses that teach kids how to set up their own businesses, restaurants or services.

Since most of these youngsters are going to remain here in Columbus County, isn’t it better that they have basic skills that will enable them to stay off of welfare and Medicaid?

This new high school concept assumes that additional mathematics, more foreign language, senior projects and portfolios are needed for a young man or woman to build a house, lay brick, stretch wire, run pipe or repair a car.

These occupations are down-to-earth, common sense jobs that make a more-than-comfortable living for the youngsters who strike out on those paths.

The only thing that’s going to happen when a high school diploma becomes harder to attain is 50 percent of high schoolers will never graduate. Depending on which report you read, 25 to 35 percent don’t graduate now.

This new high school concept adds a third math – Algebra II. We can’t get most kids up to speed on Algebra I. We won’t even talk about geometry.

In the early 1980s, we found ourselves in a tizzy because the kids in other nations, especially Japan, were scoring well above ours. What they didn’t tell us is that Japan was testing only its best and brightest.

Education became a hot-button topic for politicians seeking posts in Washington and Raleigh and thus began a litany of school reform programs.

In 2001, Washington, D.C., jumped all over the Texas model for No Child Left Behind, using it to set up a national standard. Now, folks are learning that the success rates and dropout rates in that state were false.

Together, Washington and Raleigh have made education a miserable experience for school boards, administrators, principals, teachers and most importantly – the students.

This misery manifested itself in last Friday’s planning retreat held by the Whiteville City Schools Board of Education.

These retreats are always interesting because board members open up and don’t pull any punches – something they need to do more often.

This school board has a lot on its plate – the aforementioned lunacy spouting forth from SBE, the selection of a new superintendent, the selection of two new principals and all of the baggage that comes with the North Carolina ABC’s of Education and No Child Left Behind.
Here’s my take on several of the points made.

Board member Jim DiMuzio expressed a concern from many parents about having so many ability levels within a single class. He maintains it doesn’t work. School administrators maintain it does. Studies can be found to support both sides.

But common sense tells me that classes with students of mixed ability slow down the faster students and put too much pressure on the students whose skills aren’t as great.

In Scouting, when on a hike, you put your slowest hiker in front. That shouldn’t be what happens in the classroom.

The schools use a pacing guide that tells them where they should be by a certain week in order to comply with the North Carolina Standard Course of study and the N.C. End-of-Grade tests.

If a teacher is teaching, for instance, proper noun-verb usage and only two-thirds of the class grasps the concept, does she hold the achievers back until the rest catch up? Or does she move forward, leaving those who haven’t grasped the concept to figure it out on their own?

That’s not how it should be in a classroom. I don’t think there is single elementary or middle school teacher out there who hasn’t suffered some level of early burnout from having to deal with so many ability levels.

And it’s not politically correct to question this practice. Teachers are mum.

Multi-level classes are perhaps the number one reason parents are so rabid to get their children in the academically and intellectually gifted (AIG) program. The AIG classes don’t have mixed levels and are able to fly through their objectives.

Parents will have their children tested over and over, again and again, until their children somehow make it into AIG. I don’t blame them. The city’s AIG students have access to resources and programs that the rest don’t. And while I’m on that subject, if your child fails to make AIG because of an IQ test administered in the second or third grade, have him or her retested – at your expense – by a private counselor.

Students who fall just short of being classified as full AIG are put into small-group clusters within their existing multi-level groups. Depending on the abilities and workload of the teacher, these clusters are questionable in just what they accomplish for students.

Multi-level classes have also made some teachers more dependent on computers and computer programs such as Accelerated Reading and Math. Students not receiving instruction directly from a teacher are put on a computer to work. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just reflects what teachers are going through.

Board Chairman Carlton Prince asked rhetorically “Are we satisfied with education?” And then answered his own question with a “no.”

Prince was questioning whether the Whiteville City Schools was being driven by the state and federal government and their myriad accountability tests or by the local administration.

I believe that, despite the best efforts of our city and county administrations to the contrary, our school systems have had to relinquish too much decision making to the state. And the state has no idea what it’s doing.

Raleigh has bent over and is letting the federal government have its way.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Washington, D.C., sir. What can I do for you next? A tap dance? How about a song? How about I create a set of unattainable goals for our teachers? Will that do? Good!”

The state in turn has taken almost all decision-making power away from local school boards. School boards have become little more than employment agencies. They can hire and they can fire and that’s about the extent of it.

Oh, yeah. They can also pick who’s going to put the 15th new roof on a dilapidated 80-year-old school building.

Statewide, school boards are so weak that they can’t take a stand against Raleigh, even when grouped together under the umbrella of the North Carolina School Boards Association.

We are teaching the tests. Everything is test-driven. Everything is data driven. It’s become a conveyor belt. Students are widgets and cogs and we want to them to all be just alike. Individuality has been thrown out the door. Teachers, despite what they are told, must think inside the box. What will raise test scores? Test scores are the only thing.

Colleges and universities have become lazy. All they look at are SAT scores. I look around at the highly successful men and women in this community and nearly all of them would not have high enough SAT scores to earn admission to any state university today.

The truth there is that the state’s universities have not kept up with the population growth and there are more people wanting to go to college than available space.

Board member Greg Merritt asked for a way to give local students an elective course for SAT studies. There’s clearly not enough reading going on by students. Reading builds vocabulary. There’s not enough writing by students. Most students, frankly, can’t write. If you don’t read, then you can’t write. If you don’t read, then you have a limited vocabulary.

There are more than 600,000 words in the English language. Someone better get started.

I was glad that Larry Hewett brought up the high school’s block scheduling – four 90-minute classes per day.

I have always believed that was a mistake. Teachers must cram a year’s worth of material into 135 contact hours. With the six-class day, all year long, that same teacher has 165 hours with time to soak in that knowledge, reflect on it and discuss.

For many other reasons as well, it’s time to return to the six-period day. That would be a step in the right direction.

In the entire history of the world, no civilization has ever successfully educated all of its citizenry. Schools can’t be all things to all people. Teachers – good teachers – are leaving. Principals are quitting. It’s becoming tougher to find applicants for superintendent spots.

Does anyone have a lifejacket for education? Are there some really good ideas out there?