Governors Work to Improve H.S. Education

AP

The nation's governors offered an alarming account of the American high school Saturday, saying only drastic change will keep millions of students from falling short.

"We can't keep explaining to our nation's parents or business leaders or college faculties why these kids can't do the work," said Virginia Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, as the state leaders convened for the first National Education Summit aimed at rallying governors around high school reform.

The governors say they want to emerge Sunday with specific plans for enacting policy, weary of statistics showing that too many students are coasting, dropping out or failing in college.

At least one agreement is likely. Achieve, a nonprofit group formed by governors and corporate leaders, plans to announce Sunday that roughly 12 states are committing to raise high school rigor and align their graduation requirements with skills demanded in college or work.

The high school summit drew at least 45 governors from the 50 states and five U.S. territories, along with top names in U.S. industry and education. The leaders broke into groups late in the day to debate ideas, and planned to do the same through Sunday.

Most of the summit's first day amounted to an enormous distress call, with speakers using unflattering numbers to define the problem. Among them: Of every 100 ninth-graders, only 68 graduate high school on time and only 18 make it through college on time, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
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Once in college, one in four students at four-year universities must take at least one remedial course to master what they should have learned in high school, government figures show.

The most blunt assessment came from Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who has put more than $700 million into reducing the size of high school classes through the foundation formed by him and his wife, Melinda. He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college, with classes that are rigorous and relevant to kids and with supportive relationships for children.

"America's high schools are obsolete," Gates said. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools _ even when they're working as designed _ cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."

Summit leaders have an ambitious agenda for every state: to raise the requirements of a high school diploma, improve information sharing between high schools and universities, and align graduation standards with the expectations of colleges and employers. Governors say they're in a position to unite the often splintered agendas of business leaders, educators and legislatures.

But such changes will take what Gates singled out as the biggest obstacle: political will.

Requiring tougher courses for all students, for example, could face opposition from parents and school officials, particularly if more rigor leads to lower test scores and costly training.

Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., said the most reliable predictor of success in college is a student's exposure to challenging high school courses _ and that governors know they must act.

"This is an issue that transcends all those typical things that cause people to split in different directions," Huckabee said.

The governors also planned to meet with President Bush and his Cabinet while in Washington.

The summit is the governors' fifth on education, but the first devoted to high schools. The original governors' education summit, organized by the first President Bush in 1989, is credited with spurring a movement of basing student performance on higher standards.

Warner has made improving high schools the centerpiece of his chairmanship of the National Governors Association, which is co-sponsoring the summit with Achieve. He is considered a possible candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president.

Among the more high-profile governors who did not attend Saturday were two Republicans: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jeb Bush of Florida, the president's brother.

High School is supposed to be college prep, and back in the old days (I'm thinking up into the 50's), it assumed that a student got their fundamental baseline of skills and knowledge in the Elementary School level. Somewhere along the line, perhaps in the 1970's High School started getting "dumbed down" and filled with beaurocracy relative to state funds, etc. In California specifically, I personally believe that Proposition 13 having been past was the start of the disintegration of the state's education system, from which at this point there is no recovery regardless of the fact that one's property tax is now based on the purchase price of a given home. The system is far too broken and far too overloaded across the board. Two years ago, I think, the UC's raised tuition 18% to make up for the shortfall of funds. I haven't seen Arnold nor anyone else address how f'd up the system is here. In 1975 I met a girl my age who came over from Yugoslavia. She told me that they learned Geometry in the second grade, as well as a second language. I didn't get access to a Geometry class until I was a Junior in High School. I think many parts of the world are way ahead of us, given they were 30 years ago.

I was interested in this article, too. My thoughts...

1. Bill Gates is right. Whatever else people want to think about him, he seems to have a pretty good grasp on improving education. I'm not sure all the technology thrown into schools matters much, since there tends to be zero training for the elder teachers who don't already know how to use it. Nevertheless, his vision of what school needs to become (especially smaller class sizes!) is laudible. Research and theory abounds on how to teach and what to teach, but the system itself is just assumed, which is problematic.

2. I get irked whenever a group of politicians decide to resolve education problems...without educators. Mostly, it pisses me off because they'll accomplish very little (historically, they'll probably revamp testing or something) and when this lack of change produces no results, the blame lands on schools. I'd be glad to sit in with them for free...

3. You can't increase rigor and intensity in schools without failing people, so we've got to get passed the idea that nobody gets left behind. Hanging desperately on the students who misbehave and turn nothing in just keeps them in the classroom year after year, which dissolves the education process for anybody else in there with them to a degree I don't even like to think about.

4. Adolescents spend about 20% of their lives at school. Even discounting sleep, the outside world has far more opportunity to influence them. Further, the differences between what life is like in and out of school have never been greater. If a life of reality TV, violent video games (most of my MIDDLE SCHOOLERS play San Andreas...), idiotic sports heros, and fast food occupies 50% of their world, sitting in a desk learning about paragraph breaks is going to shut them down before it even starts.

5. I'm not sure I like how that world is encroaching into education, either. Movie posters, pop machines, and snack dispensers are all over the place, and are a huge moneymaker for schools. I know that without them, our school would have to cut our football, wrestling, and gifted programs. Cripes. I never appreciated the first two until I started teaching and discovered just how many football players were also the kids who fail classes. Staying on the team is a motivator.

6. I've said it before, I'll say it again, testing is a waste of time.

#3 is the biggest problem imo

but you really make some excellent points... i agree with them all (as an educator)

Parents spend so much time freaking out about what a child may or may not experience in school. What they don't get is that home life is sooooo much more critical. When a kid's homelife is chaos, it is severly unlikely that a kid will be able to absorb school. If a kid's homelife is calm and/or loving, then they'll absorb and deal with whatever comes their way at school.

I think kids, in addition to the calm and loving home, also need a disciplined home life as well. After all, spare the rod...

If I had to choose one in absence of the other ... calm & loving.

you have to have both of these... a child that has a loving, calm home environment but is not disciplined is just as bad as a kid coming from a rough homelife with discipline... many times the kid without the discipline is actually harder to deal with and teach than a child coming from a rough home life where consequences are the norm

i want those 4 years of my life back

Me too. They were so much better than most of the years since then.

How crazy would you think I was if I said I thought Bill Gates might make a good president?

No worse than Steve Forbes thinking he should run.

Depends on the child. There are definately children with whom calm and loving creates an atmosphere of manipulation and/or irresponsibility. Most children...say 70%, are probably ok with calm and loving.

At the very least, he could vastly slash the deficit with his own checkbook.

I know something that bothers me is being judged as a person on an arbitrary number that really shows nothing of my character or intelligence. I failed 4 classes this last six weeks, simply because I've stopped caring about my grades. I'm going to get them up to get my scholarship, but I've realized they are of no importance after I leave high school, and refuse to worry about them. Talk to me for 5 minutes and you'll realize I'm an intelligent person.

Be careful, bro. They really do look at your last semester transcript when determining your funding.

Not at all.

He'd be a better public representative than at least half of the dim-wits currently in office.

That's because most of them don't represent the public.

Yeah, but what parent today is going to give BOTH love AND discipline. Good luck!