If schools don't get a grade or score or measurement or rating or SOMETHING... how are they going to improve? We wouldn't treat any important activity like this -- say, football.
If nobody comes to the games or reads about them in the paper, and doesn't know or care if coach does or doesn't train his team to put points on the scoreboard and wins into the record book, why pay the coach more than a classroom teacher? On the other, more common and realistic, hand, communities DO watch the kids play and DO follow the sports pages and see not only highlights of Friday Nights but later how many and which athletes get scholarships to what level or league of higher edu-athleticism. Good coaches prosper, less good coaches leave.
What if the losing high schools and districts and coaches sued UIL to keep scores out of the newspapers, banned parents from watching the games, to ensure "fairness" among competing schools by keeping comparison statistics all -- well, not "secret" exactly, but certainly not public? What if? Judges might forbid administrators to bring up football scores at school board meetings. Trustees might be constrained against basing salary or - heaven forbid! -hiring and firing decisions based on a few seasons' scorecards. Seniority counts, for sure. What else? Maybe we could track "diversity" initiatives to see how many girls try out, or even win, first-string slots as kickers or special-team centers. If we couldn't track wins and losses and scholarships and injuries maybe we could rate coaches by anonymously polling the players, like "Rank My Professor", to see which are "cool" and "easy to get along with" ... My imagination fails me, frankly. How WOULD we evaluate the essentials, like successful high school football programs, if we couldn't use the scoreboard?
I have the same two reactions to almost every story in this series. First, how can the taxpayers let it be this bad? Second, OMG, all school districts are probably about this bad.
If schools don't get a grade or score or measurement or rating or SOMETHING... how are they going to improve? We wouldn't treat any important activity like this -- say, football.
If nobody comes to the games or reads about them in the paper, and doesn't know or care if coach does or doesn't train his team to put points on the scoreboard and wins into the record book, why pay the coach more than a classroom teacher? On the other, more common and realistic, hand, communities DO watch the kids play and DO follow the sports pages and see not only highlights of Friday Nights but later how many and which athletes get scholarships to what level or league of higher edu-athleticism. Good coaches prosper, less good coaches leave.
What if the losing high schools and districts and coaches sued UIL to keep scores out of the newspapers, banned parents from watching the games, to ensure "fairness" among competing schools by keeping comparison statistics all -- well, not "secret" exactly, but certainly not public? What if? Judges might forbid administrators to bring up football scores at school board meetings. Trustees might be constrained against basing salary or - heaven forbid! -hiring and firing decisions based on a few seasons' scorecards. Seniority counts, for sure. What else? Maybe we could track "diversity" initiatives to see how many girls try out, or even win, first-string slots as kickers or special-team centers. If we couldn't track wins and losses and scholarships and injuries maybe we could rate coaches by anonymously polling the players, like "Rank My Professor", to see which are "cool" and "easy to get along with" ... My imagination fails me, frankly. How WOULD we evaluate the essentials, like successful high school football programs, if we couldn't use the scoreboard?
I have the same two reactions to almost every story in this series. First, how can the taxpayers let it be this bad? Second, OMG, all school districts are probably about this bad.
We don't even need the letter grades. We can tell that public education doesn't by simply looking at the people around us.
American parents will never agree to leave their kids in a bad school if there is a better one down the street ...
Or a better one an hour's bus ride away.