Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201240361
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SHIBBOLETHS HOBBLE EDUCATION SYSTEM
Daniel Schneck's Dec. 20 editorial in your paper, "Education System's Failures are Due to Families' Demise" is simplistic and the education system's self-serving excuses for failure. It is a fact that part of the education problem is family oriented; however, to lay the whole blame for the education system's failure outside the system is ridiculous.The argument ignores the archaic structure of the educational system, the plethora of privilege of the personnel and the substitute of trappings of success for success. Discipline among the whole administrative and teaching staff as well as the students is the most vital problem of the system today.
The claim of underfunding is an article of faith of the inhabitants of the system. The system is top-heavy with facilitators, administrators, directors, implementers, coordinators, expediters, supervisors, assistants, deputies and costly trappings of personal days, work days, seminars, in-service training and rule by VEA and a bloated bureaucracy in Richmond.
They have never considered a zero-based budget to view the programs and eliminate the dead issues. They say they prepare the budget according to the form required by the state board. Perhaps so, but with the dozens of computers available it can be categorized for management review and clarity. They don't want the budget understandable or intelligible to any but the few who make it.
Let us intelligently modify the certification travesty that prevents retired professors of math or chemistry from teaching in the county schools. Let us void five-year contracts for the superintendents and make them accountable to the board every year. Also let us cut out the inane requirement of having the superintendent be a Ph.D. and hire managers for our systems. Educators we can hire by the bus load, but good managers, especially in the Ph.D. group, are rare as hen's teeth. These shibboleths of the system hobble it.
There are big problems with some students' backgrounds, as the vice chairman stated, and there is a further schism due to the nature of the population of Montgomery County. We have an adversarial "class complex," as witnessed by the band-uniform charade. This is a serious split between the members of the higher education community and the longer-term citizens of the valley.
The solution of the monumental social problems the vice chairman alluded to, and which we are heir to, will require [help from] the families, the churches, the courts, we the people and the schools.
The vice chairman is copping out for the inert, hidebound bureaucratic, archaically structured system. Lamar Alexander is on the right track. If we used script at schools of our choice, the public system would have to improve or go out of business and they know it. A self-righteous insulated super class of bureaucrats is most difficult to reform.\ Bob Anderson Blacksburg