Schools Getting Bum Rap, Newport Principal Says

One of the qualities especially impressive about Dennis Evans is that he not only resents what he considers the bum rap being laid on public education these days, but he takes on the critics as well. Head to head. One on one. Something a lot of public educators--who generally prefer to play it closer to the chest--are reluctant to do.

Evans, who is the principal at Newport Harbor High School (and a very different breed from some of the administrators I remember when my kids were going to public school in Orange County 25 years ago) asked me rhetorically the other day: “Why do we accept the fact that we get what we pay for in every other area except public education?”

We had been looking at a batch of recent headlines in Orange County newspapers that I carried into Evans’ office with me. They were universally bad news. “SAT Scores Plummet to All-Time Low.” “Many Freshmen Lack Basic Study Skills for College.” “U.S. Education Doesn’t Make the Grade.” “America’s Toughest Assignment: Solving the Education Crisis.”

Evans shook his head. “I know my perspective is limited,” he said, “but some of this rhetoric is pretty excessive. Crisis. Plummet. Come on. This kind of talk is political. The educational reform bandwagon is rolling, and politicians are all climbing aboard.

“That’s why we’re hearing so much these days about such reforms as schools competing for students and the use of parents as classroom teachers. Public education ranks right up there with popular music, dressing styles and TV stardom in terms of its susceptibility to faddism. These quick fixes are just ways for politicians to avoid infusing the system with enough money to make it work properly.”

Whether you agree or not, this kind of straight talk is highly refreshing--and it is why I turned to Evans in looking for an Orange County professional educator to respond, as the new school year starts, to the growing shrillness of the critics of public education.

I got a strong taste of this directness last year when Evans sent me a copy of an open letter he had written in the aftermath of the attacks by Christian fundamentalist groups, led by the Rev. Louis Sheldon, on the curriculum of Corona del Mar High School psychology teacher Mike Marino. Those attacks resulted in the forced removal of certain instructional units and materials from courses in psychology and family life. That incident was cited in a recent study by a liberal Washington organization called People for the American Way that named three right-wing groups--two of them based in Orange County--as leading a growing effort to censor course content in public schools. I asked Evans if the heat from these groups had intensified since they scored some points in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District last year.

Said Evans: “Maybe some good came of it because it has been relatively quiet here ever since. I suppose there’s some perverse value to us that Lou Sheldon has been busy acquiring a national reputation so there has been no focus on our district since last year.

“Traditionally, efforts at the local level are to get something out of the curriculum. They’ve been concentrating lately at the state and national levels where the effort is to get things like prayer and creationism in.

“But one of the results these people achieved would seem to me the opposite of what they said they wanted. We have lots of very conservative teachers who in the past would talk about reproduction in appropriate classes in a general way and move on. Now, because of the new law lobbied through by these fundamentalist groups, our teachers either have to avoid this subject altogether or deal with it in the 10 steps required by law--which forces teachers to go into a lot more detail than they otherwise would have.”

All of this is offered up matter-of-factly and without rancor. Evans is a tall, lanky, graying, composed, feet-on-the-table type who neither dodges questions nor makes speeches. But when he is annoyed, you know it. And he is plenty annoyed about what he considered a lot of widespread misconceptions about public education. Here’s what he had to say about some of the more pervasive ones:

The virtues of free marketplace competition that would offer a choice of schools would improve education.

This approach has been extolled by the President of the United States and various corporate gurus, but Evans said it is a case of apples and oranges. “In the business world,” he said, “the relationship between competition and quality is a function of profit. Competition may sometimes allow the consumer to save money, but the product or service may still remain shoddy. When you truly want a high quality product, you must pay for it--and we’re not in the fast-food business in education.”

We need to apply better business precepts to our schools.

Said Evans: “It’s a supreme irony that some of the most strident criticism of public education comes from corporate America, which offers up such current role models as Lincoln Savings and Eastern Airlines. But we would be happy for a Chrysler-type bailout that would dump that kind of money on our schools. Try us.”

Given the chance, parents would make wise choices between schools.

“What evidence,” Evans asked, “exists to support this politically attractive myth? Certainly most parents will be highly motivated to make a wise choice of schools. But isn’t it more reasonable to assume that marketing, packaging and advertising will dictate school choice? Unfortunately, good intentions are no guarantee of good decisions.”

Lay groups protect us from our professional educators.

Evans thinks this shibboleth has been stood on its head. “Why,” he asked, “has no one examined the part played by lay decision-makers in helping create the problems public education deals with today? It may be heretical to suggest that lay legislators and school board members are not the best sources for educational decision-making or that neighborhood council members would do well to concentrate on their own children, but perhaps we have reached a point in time when heresy is what is needed.”

The quality of teachers is falling off drastically.

“Because this is an attractive area in which to live,” Evans said, “we’ve got outstanding people coming into the teaching profession here. Dynamite people. Enthusiastic, eloquent, articulate people. I don’t know that that scenario plays out in urban schools, but it is happening here. But because of the teachers’ lack of income and status--somewhere below firemen--there still has to be some feeling of altruism to go into this field.”

Parents are abrogating their educational responsibilities to their children.

“I don’t see any great changes in the level of parental desire to help their children to the best education possible,” Evans said. “It’s the circumstances of their lifestyles that have changed. It’s especially tough in single-parent families. It’s easy for critics to say that parents should give more time to their kids, but a lot of them are at the survival level. It’s also hogwash--at least in my experience--that some minority groups don’t care about their kids’ education. They do care.”

Evans tends to take the long view in assessing the problems of public education.

“Action and reaction tend to ebb and flow,” he said. “In the ‘60s and ‘70s, when we were infected by the desire to be relevant, our teachers did bring some things into the curriculum that were challengeable. When those influences started to wane, the pendulum swung the other way and legitimate things were attacked. I tell my teachers that if they can achieve the same educational objective with less volatile methods, I prefer that. But if this is the only way to get it across, then do it--but be prepared for the heat.

“When public education professionals say things aren’t all that bad, we’re accused of being self-serving. But educational problems must be looked at school-by-school and site-by-site. There is very little bridge between the problems of inner-city schools and what we deal with here--and it’s important that we not paint everybody with the same brush.”

It’s also important that educators assert their professionalism and get off the defensive to press their own views on what needs to be done to jack up public education. Evans isn’t denying the need for reform. He’d just like to see the professionals have a clear shot at designing the reforms--and enough money to carry them through. It’s a legitimate point of view that needs to be heard.