Scrutiny of Public Schools Is Refreshing

I read the lengthy Times report June 13 on crime in the Orange County schools with mixed feelings. As a retired educator, I can relate to much of what is reported.

The public schools are faced with incredible demands to serve a population of growing diversity. Fortunately, the politicians have discovered an appealing platform that might yield some good for tomorrow’s generation. At the same time, the report includes much that readers can view negatively, as another drumbeat to destroy public education.

It is an ingrained part of the public education culture that the schools never should allow any bad news to escape the school boundaries. The necessity for positive PR was hammered into my head during my teacher training days more than 50 years ago and repeated frequently during my 44 years as a teacher and administrator.

News is carefully tailored always to strengthen the public’s confidence in whatever the schools are doing. Now comes a law that requires annual reports of incidents of violence. The designers of the reporting system were politic in avoiding the breakdown of incidents at the local school level to prevent some of the kind of intensive focus The Times placed on Orange County schools.

The Times pinpointed one great shortcoming of the present reporting system: uniformity of reporting. I’d be surprised if most of the principals named in the report as high-incidence schools haven’t been taken to the woodshed already and admonished for their more-aggressive interpretation and reporting of violence.

They’ll probably hear variations of the hiding I received from an assistant superintendent: “You shouldn’t let those kinds of things happen in your school.” Indeed! Pass a law against people’s individual differences.

At the same time, the spotlight on negative news makes the job of education even more difficult. The public needs to understand that the schools are a mirror of the society, and if we have hate, we have its consequences erupting on our campuses.

One final concern: When the design for the state reporting system was set, those responsible were asked why hate incidents deliberately were not included in the requirements. The answer was that such incidents are too nebulous and difficult to classify. What this means is that any kind of student harassment short of physical violence, drugs and so forth still goes unreported by even the most conscientious schools.

Much remains to be done in Sacramento as well as continuation of an unrelenting effort on the part of all those who care to address the daily discrimination against kids because of their rrace/ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or any other physical or cultural characteristic.

It is way past time that our schools and our society are freed from the poisonous climate that hate and violence injects into the learning climate. Thanks for focusing on part of the problem.