So since I ranted about public schools in the last post, I guess its time to get constructive about solutions for public schools.  This is what came to my mind, but I'm sure there are alot more reforms to be made.

1.  End overcrowding.

In many areas, especially ones with a high influx of new immigrants, schools are becoming overcrowded.  Why not convert unused space in schools to classrooms?

Yes, many urban communities are growing faster than the schools can accommodate them, but surely there are alternatives to converting storage rooms, basements and other miscellaneous spaces into classrooms.  In addition, while the school building may be able to accommodate more students (so long as the fire marshall doesn't find out) it places a drain on the school's resources.  When you jam that many students into a school, you have students having their lunch period at 10:40 in the morning (first hand experience), gym classes becoming optional and hallways so crowded, the student may experience gridlock on the way to the next class. (also, first hand experience)

Can this be a temporary solution? Why not?

Sure.  Should these conditions exist for more than a year?  I think not.  Herding students into these substandard classrooms definitely hurts morale, school spirit and the motivation to learn.  It sends a message to the student that the school doesn't care enough about you to put you in a decent classroom.  Minor as that may seem, even the smallest slight from the faceless school bureaucracy can breed resentment.

What about gifted schools?  Isn't the best thing to do to make selective high schools more accessible to all?

Yes, but to a certain extent.  Selective schools perform well for the single reason that their standards are higher than others.  Therefore, its not necessarily the school that makes them smarter or ambitious, but the fact that the students that studied hard to get into that school are predisposed to such behavior.  HOWEVER, these schools provide the classes and resources necessary to feed and nurture these students and prepare them for the next level of education.  Now, when you lower the standard to allow more students, you hurt every student.  I'm not talking about a "dumbing down" effect but rather a diminishing effect.  Too many students and not enough attention to each student's needs.  Even the gifted schools become college prep factories in urban settings.  The academic departments give the students rudimentary college advising while throwing enough AP classes at them so that a few may rise to the top while many others will sink and may have been better off at their local school.  My old high school, where students were allowed admission through competitive examination started with an enrollment of 4,000. By the time I graduated, it was up to 4,200.  Today, three years after I graduated, that number is 4,900.  Short of stacking students on top of each other, I don't know how the school is safely managing all of those students.

Readers, I challenge you to find an overcrowded school that is still performing well.  If you plan to send you're child to an overcrowded school, reconsider.  It will mess them up.

2.  Hold teachers accountable.

But why blame the teacher?

Sometimes, the teacher is indeed at fault.  There are two sorts of incompetent teachers.  The lazy, and the overwhelmed.

The lazy teacher?

This teacher probably picked teaching as a backup career and is generally resentful of their job, which is reflected in the effort they put toward it.  The lesson plans are vague and nebulous and frequently, the students run wild in the class while the teacher sits at the desk with a glazed look on his or her face.  Often, they are also late for class or engage in irrelevant discussion to kill time until the end of class.  I've had math classes where I've learned NOTHING and that probably reflects the difficulty i had in dealing with math and the sciences (previously subjects I aced) in later years.  When one teacher drops the ball, a link in the chain of education is broken and that child will spend the rest of his time in school trying to catch up.  Enough broken links, and that student will dropout.  Bear in mind, that most dropouts aren't leaving due to economic strife, but rather a frustration with the system and the lack of apparent benefits staying in school would provide over working or doing nothing at all.  These teachers need to be given the boot. 

The overwhelmed teacher?

Very, very common in overcrowded schools.  Especially in my old junior high school, these teachers tried really hard to keep the students under control.  They might be new immigrants themselves, and used to teaching in cultures where teachers were respected and students respectful.  Others may be burnt out and unable to attend to the needs of 30-odd students. Still others, are assigned to subjects that they themselves are unfamiliar with.  I've heard "I'm learning this as you guys are" way too often.  Once they lose the battle for respect with students, the semester is a loss.  The students will take advantage of said teacher to be disruptive, inattentive and downright insubordinate.  The "good students" can't learn in that environment and many of them will be confronted with peer pressure and ridicule by the other students just for trying.  The overwhelmed teacher may try to reach out to these students, but eventually, the environmental hazards make learning impossible.  These teachers, in spite of their good intentions, need to find a different career field.

President Obama identified in his speech to teachers yesterday the need to raise teacher's pay and market teaching as a respectable and rewarding job for college graduates.  I welcome this initiative to turn teaching from a last-ditch resort to a core of motivated and well compensated individuals that have a personal stake in the education of the students.  I also recommend student evaluations of teachers from high school onward.  There is a long list of lazy or ineffective teachers that I know are destroying the future of their students.  Don't increase the pay without taking care of the leeches in the system.

3. Get serious about school safety

More than lazy teachers, lazy and incompetent security guards anger me.  To often they can be found sitting in one stationary location, glaring at innocent students while delinquents roam the halls engaging in vandalism and disrupting other classes.  Worse are the ones that develop cordial relationships with those guards, effectively rubber stamping their ability to move with impunity.  These school safety agents are complicit with turning schools into prisons, where the exits are locked down, but everything that goes on inside is survival of the fittest.  Providing a safe learning environment is the paramount duty for these men and women, and too often they fail miserably at that.  Why is it that 7 out of every 10 fights I've seen were broken up by an assistant principal rather than a school safety agent?

So why pay them more?

The poorly paid Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at the airport share similar problems with school safety agents.  They feel a disconnect with their work and lack a motivation to carry out their proper duties.  They also harass and annoy seemingly innocent passengers as the limited power given to them by the higher ups is the only thing they have that resembles a perk for this job. We need to pay these individuals better AND there needs to be more training.  Current agents can't identify ethnic based bullying nor can the effectively provide for the needs of the students.  Hitting the root of the problem early stops "kids being kids" from becoming a dangerous problem as seen in so many urban schools, and most recently at South Philly High.

4.  Get administration priorities straight.

Why all the belly aching over cell phones?  Yes, they can be used to disrupt class, but so can a ball of paper or a rubber band.  At my old school, nearly 90% of students used the train or bus (and even ferry) to commute to school.  In post 9/11 New York City, that cell phone gives parents peace of mind.  Therefore, when the NYC Department of Education banned cell phones and brought random metal detector checks to my school to enforce it, I was greeted that morning by a confusing sight.  A crowd of a hundred students trying to get into school and one tired assistant principal urging students to remove the batteries from their phones and "hide them".  The resulting delay made students almost 30 minutes late to classes.  Administration priorities are too deeply entrenched in improving test scores and improving the classroom through blanket policies that sound great at their meetings, but are actually very useless.  The students need a tool to appeal directly to the department that have their grievances heard.  Why not ask the student?

Furthermore, the administration typically tries to cover for their mistakes when confronted by the media or advocacy organizations by refocusing the blame or reframing the problem.  This tactic is currently in use by the Philadelphia school system to deny that Asians were targeted due to race and that the problem was "gang related".  PLEASE, take some responsibility and stop trying to silence students that are trying to be heard with LEGITIMATE concerns about their school.  I've heard enough arguments about the violence being a "product of the street" or "society's problem".  I've heard ENOUGH of the school administrators taking a hard line against the boycotting students and heads really need to roll, starting with the superintendant and the principal.  If they we're doing as good as a job as they claimed to be doing, this mass assault would have never happened.

5.  Get the parents involved.

In the same speech mentioned earlier President Obama noted that when he visited South Korea and asked the Prime Minister what the biggest problem in education was, he responded that the parents were too demanding.  This is not the case here.  Although "Asian" educational system of "examination hell" has its critics, the parents are surely very much involved with their children, often to an extreme.  That sort of overbearing parenting is not necessary here, but a little more is necessary.  In spite of the state of schools and education, teachers sit bored at parent-teacher conferences as only a handful of parents show up.  I'm sure that PTA meeting also suffers a similar turnout.  Parents that take time to invest in their child's education ensure that the student makes the best of his education, or at the very least behaves his or herself in a respectful and productive manner.  While it may take a few years to build a new school, involved parents can change the environment and "make the best" of a very difficult urban schooling setting.