Grace Leavitt’s Maine Compass makes a good point. School staff are underpaid. To suggest that it is the cure for all education’s problems is naïve, if not self-serving. We continue to expand funding and the result gets worse.
A major part of the problem is that we do not share a common understanding of the problem. We substitute politics for real analysis. Invariably the solution of the day fails. Remember the rounds of new standards that were going to fix it?
I will say clearly that turning it over to parents is not the solution. On the other hand, their involvement is critical. The most successful inner-city school solutions have focused on partnerships with parents in which they volunteer to be held accountable for supporting their students.
Let me be clear about something else. Fixing teachers is not going to cure students who are not supported at home. Certainly, schools have a role but are only a part of a comprehensive solution.
Like the current discussion of child welfare, the solution is in a systemic analysis and comprehensive plan that includes all the state and local agencies involved with the state’s children.
What are the chances we will do that? About as good as a systemic solution in child welfare.
Dean Crocker
Manchester
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