ALLIANCE HEARS SCHOOLS IMPROVING, BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 19, 1992                   TAG: 9202190054
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
DATELINE: DUBLIN                                LENGTH: Medium
ALLIANCE HEARS SCHOOLS IMPROVING, BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH
People who listen to Willard Daggett talk about education often come away with the idea that he thinks schools in this country are doing a poor job.
Not so, says Daggett, who addressed Pulaski County's school-business-community alliance Monday night on educational challenges of the 1990s. Since the "Nation at Risk" report in the 1980s, he points out, schools have raised graduation and test requirements and reduced dropout rates.
He said graduates from the nation's schools in 1991 were the best-educated in history - but also were the worst off because the world has changed so much faster than the educational system has.
"American schools are not failing, contrary to the popular feeling and the media blitz," he said, but "American schools do not have the capacity to do what the American public wants them to do."
They are doing an outstanding job of giving students the same educations their grandparents got, he said, but something else is needed to meet today's educational needs. Other countries are moving to meet those needs, he said.
Daggett gained fame in educational circles when he restructured the occupational education program in New York state. He is now director of the International Center for Educational Leadership, and what he says about education tends to make people uncomfortable.
Pulaski County School Superintendent William Asbury told the business and government leaders at the gathering that discomfort was not a bad thing if it led to progressive change.
"We're kicking off what is probably one of the most exciting eras in our county's history," Asbury said. "We're going to share the beginning of a vision with you . . . a vision for our public schools."
Asbury said he "didn't come here as your superintendent to sit on my hands" and continue to use only yesterday's techniques of education. "And Bill's exactly right - we've got to start with the problem."
Joy Colbert, the school system's research and development director, said this was the first time a cross-section of the community was being involved in looking at where county schools should be at the start of the next century. Business-education teams also were formed recently to look at two-year and six-year goals.
The Futures Task Force, looking a decade down the road, will be meeting periodically during the year and submitting its report back to all the groups in the school alliance next January, she said.
Daggett noted that the United States has the shortest school year among industrialized nations and even its increased graduation requirements fall far short of those elsewhere. He said talk of this country being No. 1 in teaching math and science by the year 2000 was only rhetoric, unless the capacity of schools to teach is increased much more.
He suggested not worrying so much about what courses to teach and starting with an awareness of how to help students function in the world. "What is it you want a graduate to be able to do?" he asked. "What are the skills, knowledges and behaviors you need?"
Students should learn to read for information as well as for pleasure, he said. He defined the difference as the way someone reads a VCR manual compared with a novel.
But schools teach only the latter, he said. "So what you've said is what the students use least, you teach most. . . . I don't think for an instant that you should give it up. But please tell me why that's all you teach."
Daggett said 70 percent of high school graduates never use the algebra and geometry they learn in school. But they could use logic, probability and measurement systems every day if they had learned those.
They often need to work as a team on the job, he said, but are told in class not to talk to each other and to work alone. "They're the new poor and it's a crime, because they aren't dumb."
Daggett said inefficient computer keyboards - actually designed to slow down typing because early typewriters had keys that would get jammed if punched too fast - show the rear-view mirror approach to education in this country. "Focus on kids, not adults, and you will change American education," he said.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB