Education
Education
Stop blaming schools
Recent articles in WHT have stated that a number of Hawaii’s public school students are not doing as well as required. The normal knee-jerk reaction to this is funneling more money to those schools in some misdirected effort to improve student scores. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t in the past and it won’t in the future.
First, it needs to be recognized that in Hawaii public schools, with extremely rare exception, the teaching staff is highly competent and very dedicated. They know what needs to be done and how to do it. Second, the equipment they use is, for the most part, adequate in number, of good quality, and meets the needs of the students. There are exceptions to this, but they are minor in scope and can be corrected relatively inexpensively. (An exception to that is vocational training. Here Hawaii needs to expend considerably more money to bring its vocational program up to even modest standards.) And third, for those who like to compare, the mere fact public schools are just that and not permitted to be selective of their student population, they will always have overall score averages somewhat lower than those of private schools. However, these scores are not reflective of the ability of the public school teachers, nor the school’s physical environment, but are reflective of both the culture in which any public school must function and the home environment in which many public school students struggle to achieve.
With all this said, let me again state public schools have the programs and the teachers necessary for their students to excel. In fact, those students who participate in the AP and honors courses in our public schools compete favorably with any student from any private school. But it is necessary for the parents to first be aware of these programs, understand the value of what the school has to offer, then see their children take those courses that will best assist them in their academic endeavors; and then continuously encourage their children by taking an active interest in their achievements.
To further understand any discrepancy that may exist between public and private school scores, it is important to recognize that private schools, even beyond their student selectivity aspect, have higher scores primarily because of family involvement. Parents who send their children to private schools have expressed, both physically and monetarily, their interest in their child’s education by enrolling them and writing a check to cover the costs. When parents are willing to lay out many thousands of dollars per year to educate their child they tend to want and require results, both from the school and their child. Their commitment of a substantial sum of money is indicative, at least to some degree, of their interest in their child’s education, and so they give the education of their child the attention at home their child, and every child, needs and deserves.
In contrast, many of the most serious problems in public education do not lie in the teaching, the schools, or the system, per se, but are frequently found in the home environment of the students. With rare exception, every successful student recognizes, and later on in life will finally admit, that their academic success was the result of parental involvement in their academic endeavors. The emphasis in their homes, in studying hard and achieving good grades, the pressure (if you will) put on them by their parents to do well, was perhaps not the sole factor, but certainly it was a major factor in their academic achievements.
In Hawaii there are many students who grow up in an environment where the parents themselves may have limited formal education, where the emphasis placed in school may be more on sports than academics, where “just getting by” is considered an acceptable form of success, and where there are limited assets in the home (no computers, books, magazines, newspapers, etc.) for the student to utilize. The home may not even have adequate space for the student to be able to quietly concentrate on his studies and the TV is the sole means of learning anything. If you add to that the probability of a single-parent home, or a dysfunctional family, or the negative effect of alcohol or drugs that may exist in the family, and the number of young students whose grades are negatively affected because of their home environment can be considerable. Throwing more money at the schools for equipment or a “nicer classroom environment” isn’t going to improve the achievements of these students, because it simply doesn’t help improve the environment that is causing the student to accomplish less than their potential. A different approach is required. It is time to think out of the box. Traditional remedies and efforts to improve scores are not working as well as they should, if they are working at all, so what I am proposing here is a radically different approach, but one that has worked well elsewhere.
Recognizing the sensitivity of what I am now about to propose, and knowing that some might object on very personal reasons, I strongly believe that a system needs to be established that provides an “outreach program” to work closely with the poorly achieving students to improve the academic home environment; especially inclusive of the parental participation, by ensuring their day to day involvement in their child’s education. Recognizing the sensitivity involved, this outreach program must be voluntary on the part of the parent(s).
In this “outreach program,” when a teacher perceives a student that is doing less than what he or she is clearly capable of, then an investigation into “why” needs to be undertaken. That starts with a highly trained “outreach” staff person talking with the students teachers, then visiting the home, discussing the child’s school work with the parent(s), looking over the home environment in which the student lives and studies, and making suggestions and recommendations as to how the home environment can be improved to help the child do better. Essentially that means getting parents interested and involved in what the child is doing and how they personally can help by showing more interest, providing sustained encouragement, and also by letting the parents know the assets available at school, the various programs, etc. In the long run, doing this — taking the school and academic concepts into the home and improving the learning environment there — will prove to be far more productive than the customary way of asking the parents to come to the school. For, unfortunately, continuing to do it the traditional way (having the parents come and chat with the teacher or counselor at school), whatever there is in the home environment that might be causing or adding to their child’s scholastic problems is seldom (if ever) revealed in these at-school meetings. If you really want to see an improvement in the academic achievements of these students you have to help create in the home, as much as possible, the same sort of environment that most successful students enjoy in their homes. I believe the majority of parents will do whatever it takes to help their child succeed, and this, while a bit radical, may be necessary and will assuredly help.
The dominant factor for success in school, be it public or private, remains in the home and with the parent(s), so stop blaming the schools, stop throwing away scarce funds on things that really don’t matter or help, and start looking in the mirror and around the home, for the home is where academic success is nurtured and brought to fruition, or allowed to languish.
John P. Ackert
Kailua-Kona