Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 10, 1995 TAG: 9504110069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
At Dann C. Byck Elementary in Louisville, Ky., a parents' group mails child-care pamphlets to the families of new neighborhood babies, then lends them books, toys and games as the babies grow.
And at Jackson Elementary School in Everett, Wash., students monitor the water quality of a nearby polluted creek, learning biology and chemistry while also prompting the city to install a new storm drain.
These are among the thousands of American schools that do things right each day, a new study from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching says. And it's time for other schools to learn from them.
``We don't need another model project,'' foundation President Ernest L. Boyer said last week. ``The examples are out there. We just need to replicate them.''
The study from the Princeton, N.J., group echoes the thinking of a government-sponsored education reform summit last week in Washington, during which educators proposed moving from ``a decade of research and development'' to action on reform.
The Carnegie study says elementary schools should be the focus of that action because they are ``less rigid'' and more open to creative ideas.
It says good schools must do four things:
Agree on and teach children a core of math, science and language, and then test to measure results. ``You can't expect a nation to continue putting in billions of dollars unless you have some way to measure results,'' Boyer said.
Create a sense of community, stressing discipline and caring to children while reaching out to parents and local business. ``An effective school absolutely has to have parents as full partners,'' he said.
Provide health, counseling and other services to children, and find a way to provide resources such as books, maps, plants, computers and phone lines.
Teach children ethics along with academics. Schools are often hesitant to do this because of ideological controversies and the nation's constitutional separation of church and state, Boyer noted.
``But the result is we're leaving students confused about what behavior and conduct is expected,'' Boyer said, ``and, sadly, the vacuum is being filled with negative signals.''
Although public schools can't teach religion, they can teach about religion's powerful influence throughout history, he notes.
While it found many good things, the Carnegie study also pinpointed severe school problems - lack of money, heavy teacher workloads and societal problems like drug addiction, poverty and abuse.
But the most crucial problem is ``the loss of confidence in this country, not just in school reform, but in the very idea of public education,'' Boyer said.
by CNB