TELEVISION REVIEWS : A Report Card on Education in America

Over the last decade, amid the noise of honking yellow school buses, ringing bells, banging lockers and the giggles and chatter of children, there has been an uproar over the dismal state of education in America. This year, the opening of school will be markedly different for a change--at least on TV.

This week, three specials present a welcome realistic view of what is being done to address the education crisis. Tonight, PBS looks at four very different elementary school programs in “Learning in America: Schools That Work” (9 p.m., Channels 28, 15 and 24). The most comprehensive survey is “America’s Toughest Assignment: Solving the Education Crisis,” hosted on CBS by Charles Kuralt (Thursday at 9 p.m. on Channels 2 and 8). And on Sunday at 6 p.m., CNN examines the extreme measures some school districts have taken to overhaul the education system in “The Education Revolution.”

In tonight’s PBS special, the schools featured, for once, represent the diverse student populations and communities that public education draws from--children from predominantly working-class and minority families. None of the schools is in an affluent neighborhood.

Each, however, is built on characteristics that ensure educational excellence: collegial partnerships among teachers, students, principals and parents; a rich and varied curriculum; a fundamental respect and belief by everyone that all children can succeed.

The joyful energy of these schools is conveyed not by interviews between commentator Roger Mudd and experts but through in-depth classroom portraits of children with their teachers, thriving through the discovery that learning can be fun.

At Lozano Special Emphasis School, with its 98% Latino population in Corpus Christi, Tex., we see why principal Maggie Ramirez is among the daring new breed of administrators. She’s shown living what she calls her “team approach”--making a regular home visit to a sick student to ensure that the child does not fall behind, leading a parenting workshop for adults with little schooling, giving a rousing pep talk to her teachers and receiving hugs of affection from clusters of proud, happy children.

“We focused our corporate efforts on the early years because we believe that’s where the battle to make American education world-class again will be won or lost,” says Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca in publicity material explaining the auto company’s sponsorship of this PBS program.

Lozano and the other three elementary schools featured show the battle well on its way to being won, and they serve as models for other schools across the nation.

The CBS special analyzes with remarkable warmth and detail how previously troubled elementary, middle school and high school programs are becoming beacons of exemplary change. Balanced, fair and realistic attention is given to such issues as parental involvement, the testing crisis, recruiting the best and the brightest for teaching and the controversy over increased funding as a means of improving the quality of instruction and student achievement.

Interviews with leaders representing all facets of business, industry and education and vignettes of students during typical school days contribute to the program’s depth.

Dr. Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and senior fellow of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, proclaims that the entire nation’s attention to the state of American schools is crucial because “we’re talking about the future of America. And when it comes to that vote of confidence, the American people are going to make the investment and demonstrate the determination and the will to accomplish it. . . . The job can and indeed will be done.”

In CNN’s look at education, correspondent Mark Walton discusses Boston University’s takeover of poverty-stricken Chelsea, Md., schools; choice programs in Minnesota, and schools run by computer technology. Although atypical and not representative of what is going on in most school districts, these educational experiments offer evidence that radical changes are occurring when all else has failed.

Whether these innovative approaches to education will succeed in the long run still remains to be proven, for the criticism from the other side is as vehement. Boston University’s approach is considered “arrogant” by some Chelsea parents of students; Minnesota’s choice program is still struggling against critics’ discoveries of inequities for disadvantaged peoples; and while computers are on many campuses, CNN reports that “the information age has yet to arrive” fully in U.S. schools.

In the end, we are finally given reassurance, even confirmation, through these three welcome specials that in many schools--amid the sometimes painful upheaval of reform and renewal--there still is a future for excellence in American education.

Though timely, TV’s efforts to keep the public informed and enthused about changes in American education cannot begin, then end in September only. Rather, the viewing public will have greater understanding and acceptance about how school reform affects all aspects of society when TV shows on education are not seasonal specials only but updates as part of regular ongoing programming.

Television’s report card on how the schools and our students are doing should not be an exception but the rule.