A Pragmatic Policy

DURING THE PAST YEAR, the ailing U.S. public school system has been attacked from all sides. The front line of dozens of federal and privately sponsored committees, organizations, and education experts have bombarded the American education process with criticism, charging that it turns out students deficient in even the three "R's." Politicians hoping to woo voters have taken up this fight, announcing dramatic plans for rehauling the schools. And last but not least, journalists themselves have joined the fray, printing endless articles deploring the deterioration of the schools and demanding action.

But realistically, a small group of glib policy-makers cannot wage a battle of such magnitude without engaging the support of the forces who will be carrying out those policies--the teachers.

Unfortunately, the high-pitched outcry against the schools has alienated many teachers, who are consistently blamed for many of the problems plaguing schools today. Many of the reports that have recently been published have recommended that teachers be paid on a sliding scale according to their success in the classrooms. But political maneuvering set aside, such success can be fairly gauged only in light of students' own success. Merit pay or master teacher plans measure need for further revision and will take months and millions of dollars to implement. In the meantime, people are still wailing about the schools without looking for any immediate solutions.

Harvard's Graduate School of Education knows that crying over a bowl of spilled milk won't fill the bowl again, but rather that a direct confrontation with problems in the schools, especially teaching, is the most realistic response. In the two years since Patricia A. Graham became dean, the Ed School has begun to deal directly with school systems, with new and old teachers, and with children. Last year, for example, the school inaugurated a "principal center", where public school headmasters can come and discuss different ways of improving their schools. Headed by Ed School professors, the center has provided a low-key forum for these school leaders to develop new plans in their spare time.

Other new programs include a month-old curriculum for training mid-career professionals who decide to retire early to become math and science teachers. Also this year a new concentration was added to train Ed-School students to develop computer software programs for school systems, especially for use in the classroom. These two new programs will enable the Ed School students to get into classrooms and to learn how to deal with kids instead of being thrown into the fray unprepared after graduation.

Last summer, the Ed School ran a series of seminars geared towards current elementary and secondary school teachers, principals and superintendents. Public school officials came from all over the country to share information and to hear Ed School professors express their suggestions for adopting new programs.

ALL OF THE ED SCHOOL PROGRAMS have taken a practical, unassuming approach towards schools, bringing the school's own emphasis back towards looking at what's going on in the classrooms as opposed to just focusing on abstract administrative planning. Most recently, the Ed School was awarded a $7.7 million contract from the federal government to set up a research center for studying the use of technology in computer, math, and science education. The center has already started buzzing with plans to get researchers into classrooms to see how students learn from computers Half of the money will go towards Harvard's own center while the rest has been subcontracted to various education organizations which will work on different ways to encourage students to learn effectively from computers. Complementing the technology center, is a smaller grant from the federal government for studying the effects of technology on writing. Professor Courtney Cazden and her colleagues plan to watch children work in their classrooms and are urging their own students to participate in the study.

Students at the Ed School have been drawn into the school's new interaction with schools and teaching. the school has encouraged its students to attend a series oaf special colloquia where various educators who wrote some of the recent potpourri of reports will come to discuss their feelings towards school systems. The panels have been organized so that selected students, Ed School officials, and outside educators are able to question the speaker and to challenge his arguments. The school has extended this participation to serve an advisory role to Massachusetts schools. Last summer, governor Michael s. Dukakis asked the Ed School to form a committee composed of Ed School administrators, professors, and students, which will make recommendations about ways to improve education in Massachusetts in a forthcoming report.

WHILE THE ED SCHOOL SEEMS to have espoused the theory that practice makes perfect for its students, financial limitations restrict the kinds of students it can attract. As one of Harvard's poorest schools, with only an $8 million endowment, the Ed School is having serious problems providing enough financial aid for all its students, especially minorities and international students. The school's endowment is this low because Ed School alumni can't afford to give as much as graduates of the Med or Law schools--forcing the school to rely on tuition money to pay its expenses. Although last year's tuition hike was the smallest of all Harvard's schools, it was high enough to prevent many students from attending.

Teacher recruitment remains the root of education problems; students can't be encouraged to go into the teaching profession as specialized teachers or planners if they won't make enough when they get out into the real world to pay back their loans.

Right now it is a no-win situation, where the interested educators lose out as much as school systems. Student aid is merely one of several financial concerns at the Ed School: faculty salaries and building repairs loom large. Moreover, all the school's new programs need to be funded since the budget is just barely adequate to pay for its current expenses. Led by Dean Graham and Corporation member Hugh Calkins '54, Ed School officials have begun approaching private corporations asking them to give five-year grants to the school. With federal support of education dwindling, the Ed School will not be able to continue on its mission of aiding the ailing schools without some kind of financial support either from the University--which is unlikely--or from outside corporations.

It is a pragmatic inevitability, but a shame, that money woes should threaten the innovative new programs at the Ed School, because if schools like this are forced to limit their projects, then all that will be left to future graduates of the deteriorating American school system will be a pile of yellowed reports, journalists' and politicians yellowed speeches, and articles--a pile which fewer and fewer will be able read.