The panelists for today’s far-ranging Round Table Discussion are: Jane Burger, director of policy and planning for the Grable Foundation; Helen S. Faison, acting Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools; Peter J. Kountz, president of Shady Side Academy; R. Gerard Longo, superintendent of Quaker Valley School District; and Lauren Resnick, director of the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

		Participants'  opening statements: Jane Burger Helen S. Faison Peter J. Kountz R. Gerard Longo Lauren Resnick

Q: The first Regional Education Index Report, released last month, suggested that all school districts in the region offer full-day kindergarten, have first-grade classes with 17 or fewer students and have all fifth-graders be able to read. Do you agree with these goals? If so, what’s the route to get there?

Resnick: California has passed a law requiring smaller first grades, and its main effect has been the hiring of lots of unqualified teachers. And it’s been a big boon to the industry that provides the temporary school classrooms. The same funds spent on upgrading instruction in classrooms of 23-25 students might be better. And there’s some evidence that that’s true.

Burger: But isn’t the bottom line that smaller class size in the primary grades makes a difference? There’s no question.

Resnick: But how do you get there and at what cost? Smaller class sizes are better, but if you have to forego really good teachers in order to have the classes smaller, it’s not so clear.

Longo: Legislators are always looking for the one magic thing they can do to improve everything. But there is a reality to the class size thing. There is an advantage to a smaller class size. I don’t know if it’s 15, 17 or 12.

Q: What about all-day kindergarten?

Resnick: I’ll take that over small class size.

Q:  Do you believe that all children can achieve academically to the same level?

Kountz: I’m sure we all believe that every child is capable of learning. However, because of the differences that the children exhibit, we have to also assume that every child is not capable of learning at the same rate or achieving the same level of competence.

Q: If there are differing potentials and needs among children, how should that be addressed in the classroom?

Resnick: It’s very hard to fight the view that native aptitude wins out over effort and work. But there are lots of places where you can see evidence of that.

One study I’ve seen looks at mathematics over a three-year period, and it shows very clear, sharp rises. It turns out that what makes the difference is the level of implementation -- the degree to which the offered program was really used by the schools and teachers. In the schools where it was well used, African-American kids’ performance exceeded that of white kids where it wasn’t well used by nearly two to one. What you teach is what you get.

There are instances where breaking out by ability is better for everyone. The argument against that tracking is that in the low-track classrooms, kids aren’t expected to do much. The predictions from the socio-economic factors are seen as putting a cap on what’s possible.

Faison: We have to be careful not to place limits on that potential, which we often do.

Kountz: So you end up teaching down rather than teaching up.

Faison: And something even happens to the teachers who teach those children. They begin to think less of themselves.

Q: Is it true that the amount of intensity needed for children to reach their potential varies depending on the raw material? If that’s true, don’t you get a similar form of tracking? That is, by refusing to segregate them in any way, don’t you guarantee that some people who need more intense efforts will be shortchanged?

Longo: It’s not a mater of segregation per se. For example in math, in our system, they’ll group for instruction. But when they change topics, they may find that this kid can be over here and that kid should be over there.

They’re moving them constantly today. It used to be in certain systems that, by sixth or seventh grade, if you weren’t in a certain place, you were done. It’s not that way today.

Burger: When you look at the special education issue, mainstreaming has dramatically changed what happens in teaching.

Q: In the sense that it’s a drain?

Burger: Terribly. Financially as well as teaching-wise.

Longo: We are in the position now of doing a lot of caretaking for children who, in the traditional way of educating, really can’t be educated that way. In terms of taking resources, they really pull them away from that mainstream population.

Burger: Well let’s really look at money. There are children who cost more than $60,000 a year in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. And that has to detract from what’s possible, to say nothing of what it does in a classroom. And they’re all unfunded mandates -- a very huge drain on anybody’s budget. What does the state pay, 20 percent?

Faison: 25 percent.

Q: Do you believe you could deal with these issues if they were more regional or countywide?

Burger: That’s the M -- word (metropolitanism) -- nobody wants to talk about. Do I believe there are ways to share resources across school districts? Absolutely. Do I believe we need to be 43 school districts? Probably not.

Q: Do we need this kind of system? What are the advantages of it?

Resnick: The potential advantage, which it doesn’t seem to me that we realize very well, is for the schools to be in closer relationship to their local communities.

Longo: The quality of the school board is directly proportional to how much the community values education. If the community values education they put good school board members in, and they typically will insist on getting what they want.

Kountz: If the community puts a board member in there to get what the community wants, it’s not necessarily to a good educational purpose.

Burger: If you look at this county and say "What we really want is the child in fifth grade to be able to read, write and compute. And are we organized to do that?" The answer is probably no, given the data we know.

We know research says local schools are better than huge schools on the other side of town. We know that, in this county, there’s huge disparity in the amount of money. And that suggests that the way schools are funded should be looked at.

Should we merge or not? I don’t think that’s clear. What is clear is we’ve got to do something.

Q: To what degree do you find helpful leadership or cooperation on the state level?

Burger: It’s very difficult as a legislator to get reelected on this issue, if not impossible;.

Q: What about the governor?

Longo: The governor’s the most important piece of this, and every time we get a new one, we get a new agenda, and a whole laundry list of gimmicky kinds of things that they want to do.

It isn’t true for me, but a lot of people tend to ignore governors because they know that once they make the investment, the next guy’s going to change it. Their impact, generally, turns out to be not very much.

If you look at the reorganization of the state’s key curriculum chapters, it’s taken almost a decade to get it done. And it’s not even one-third done. Do you know why? The message is very clear -- the next guy‘s going to have to do this.

Q: Politicians come and go. Is the notion of building some constituency here, between you and teachers on a regional level, something that is too large to consider? If you could, you would have more influence.

Faison: It’s hard to find consensus. What is the expectation?

Q: Has the whole profession taken too much of a back seat to the public and its demands?

Resnick: I don’t think so. I don’t think we’d be seeing any of the changes we have in public education if not for the public, led by the business community. That’s where the engine of change has been. The profession as a whole would still be doing what it was 15 years ago, if not for the public.

Burger: If you want to talk about governance, something we could do is get school boards that are more effective and get them talking about what makes a good system. And get good people elected to school boards. I think we should go back and consider the issue of elected versus appointed boards.

Kountz: It’s like trusteeship in the independent schools. When a trustee is elected, how is that person trained? One of the things that astonishes me is that we have trustees or school board members who are appointed or elected to a position, and THEY DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!

And nobody does anything to make them more literate. No wonder we’re screwed up! These people are the keepers. They’re the stewards of resources. In some respects, they’re the stewards of mission and vision. And if they’re not prepared, educated or made learned, we’re not going to get anywhere.

Longo: I was in the Steel Valley when the mills shut down. I saw a valuing of education happen in a hurry. The way you get good leadership is the grass roots. The citizen has to believe in the value of education and making the investment.

Q: If we’re talking about a grass roots awakening being necessary to improve the perception and appreciation of education, why not have a marketing plan locally to that effect?

Kountz: Who would do it, the newspaper?

Burger: What is the message you want it to say?

Q: You tell me. Educational excellence. It shouldn’t be that hard to come up with it.

Resnick: Educational excellence and the fact that we can do it here. There’s a lot more that can be done about the things that are going well. And that would be appropriate for a newspaper to do. Because it’s reporting. There are stories to tell that are real. I’m not talking about whitewashing.

Q: We can take on some of that, but you don’t want us to be leading a marketing campaign. The foundations are to be the laboratories of new thinking. Why not come up with such a campaign? The Pittsburgh Regional Alliance is marketing this as a great place to do business. Why not drum home the message of education to this region and its residents?

Longo: In our region, the number of people with children in school is low, maybe 20 percent. That leaves 80 percent without children. What is it that turns that 80 percent on?

It may be the economy, stupid. But it may be something else as well. What we’ve lost over the years is the sense of the common good and why everybody has this investment in seeing that all the children are educated as well as they possibly can be.

Somehow or other we have to get that personal stake back. It does mean something to you. It means something to your property values, to the vibrancy of life in the community.

I love the Steelers and the football stadium and all that, but this is far more important to our long-term health.

Faison: And I think there needs to be a sense of responsibility among people who live where they think they have good schools for the entire region. Not just the school where your child lives.

Kountz: It’s really astonishing as a nation, how little we value K-12 education. If you look at the indicators, we don’t value it. It’s really difficult for us to get the commonweal to take this seriously.

Q: What can you do to create the best atmosphere for the teacher so that the every day situation is the best it can be for the teacher and the student?

Kountz: The idea is you go out and seek the best teachers. You train them. If they’re not to your liking you invest in them. In our school, we spend thousands of dollars annually to get people in school serious study, believing that a teacher does have a life of research to be able to do what he or she does best.

Our job is to make it possible, by working with boards and parents, for the teachers to do their best work every day. Environmentally, financially, socially, politically, we get them in the classroom so they can do two things: teach and care for children. So that the children learn as a result.

Q: Is an effective classroom also socially homogenous or not?

Resnick: One of our goals in education is that we are about creating a polity that is about all Americans. And at some point in children’s lives, they have to brush up against one another, work together and listen to one another. That goal is often put up against a bunch of other goals.

Take neighborhood schools. There’s a lot to be said for kids of the same physical neighborhood going to the same school. As a parent, I would weigh that, which is a very strong positive, against some other thing that might be a positive. And what I think I would fight for today -- and for my own African American foster grandchildren as well -- is neighborhood schools that would be as good as the schools that were envisaged as a result of desegregation. Because I’m giving away too much of the community responsibility by sending kids across town.

We have several states in the union that have successfully addressed equalized funding. There are only two ways to get equalization. One is to lower the funding available to the more wealthy districts per pupil. The other is to increase the tax amount going into education as a whole.

Faison: I think there still is a need for children to experience other children from different backgrounds.

Longo: It’s that greater good question. At the state level, we don’t have that. We have the thought of how to divide the resources more -- the voucher thing. It’s an example of how we cater to that "It’s your kid and you."

The equity thing is misunderstood a lot. People think that if everyone had equal resources, everything would be okay. That’s not true. In Wilkinsburg, it’s going to cost a whole lot more to educate children than in places that are more homogenous. Equal is not going to do it.

Resnick: Parents are making the choice of where to send their kids by voting to send their kids to private schools, charter schools, moving to some town instead of another. There isn’t either a likelihood or desirability of limiting that choice. My job as an educator is to figure out how to educate them superbly , whichever choice is made.

Q: The argument of voucher foes is that the public system will be left with the residue. That if you gave people the choice, a lot of people would go. Do you think that would happen?

Burger: That means you so undervalue what’s happening in the public schools now that no one would use them. I don’t think that would happen.

Resnick: I don’t either.

Q: Then why not just have the voucher system?

Resnick: The voucher system he (Governor Ridge) is proposing wouldn’t really give the choice to kids. It’s not enough money. If it were a good voucher program, I might go for it.

Kountz: A voucher system has enormous possibilities, but the one that’s on the table is not going to take us anywhere. If the voucher system is designed to offer educational choice, then it has to be able to do that. And right now it can’t.

The rhetoric that the current voucher system, as proposed, could wreak some havoc with public schools is absolutely right. And I don’t think that’s a help to anyone.

When we had the last voucher scare five or six years ago, the Catholic schools were ready and willing to take all these thousands of kids. Who are you kidding? You’re not ready to do that. Just as any independent school is not ready to take scores of kids.

The media finds so much fault with public education. Suppose public education were just to drop off the map. What would we do with these kids? Our task is not to dismantle public education in any conceivable way, but to strengthen it. There are 3,000 students in independent schools. That’s one percent of America’s students. Everybody can’t go there or to a Catholic school. What are we going to do about public education? That’s who we are.

Resnick: My sense is that the mood in urban school districts has changed among the professionals. The accountability systems coming in are shaking people up and saying "you’re going to have to change." And there is a sense of reality of competition coming from charter schools and vouchers.

Faison: I think you’re right. That’s the message that leadership of the teachers organizations is trying to tell them.

Q: What kinds of things are happening to kids that you would like to get rid of? Or what kinds of things would be helpful to kids?

Faison: It’s very important for everyone to understand how important education is, particularly as far as the life chances of children are concerned. While the schools bear a major responsibility, the child is more than the person who comes to school. The child is the person who lives in a home and in a community and who is influenced by all kinds of variables. To the extent possible, parents need to control those variables so that they enhance rather than detract from the experiences children have in school.

One thing is the amount of time children spend in the pursuit of recreation that does not lead to achievement in school. The expectation is that children will be assigned certain tasks to be performed outside the school. Parents need to be responsible for helping to create the environment in which that will occur.

There are a number of community groups who are working toward that. A week ago I attended a church group which gives children the opportunity to do their work and then to play.

Resnick: I think kids need to be in settings in which they learn that they have to try hard and put out effort. That things don’t come easy but that effort does pay off. They need to be in settings in which there is value placed on doing something very well. That can be sports or school work. Settings where they learn they can count on others, that there are adults who really care about how they do.

That’s what kids need. It’s what makes them thrive, smile and be proud of themselves. And it’s what makes them able to give back to the community.

Burger: Parents need to read to kids. Every child should come to school with a whole raft of reading experience. We need to have high expectations of them. We need every business person who works with kids to ask kids what their grades and attendance were.

If we expect it from kids, I think they will perform.

I just want to add, I think you’re really right. We need to rethink that marketing idea. In the early 1970s we did that -- full-page campaigns. One of the headlines was, "Public education is our venture capital for the future." There was a whole series like that, and we need to think about reviving it.

Kountz: I have a lot of things I could put on the table as far as helping kids, television being one of them. I’m very public in my position that television is not at all helpful to kids.

In eliminating television, you’re eliminating a particular worldview and some segment of reality that kids may need to interact.

But the judgment we’ve made is that television is not useful to us. I would go further to say it’s not useful to us culturally, but I’m not allowed to do that.

I like Jane’s idea bout reading. I think we’ve lost our focus on books. In our little school system, libraries are central. And the idea of reading and going into a story is so critical to a child.

Another thing is how critical order is. I wouldn’t want to be a kid today. It’s really hard. All this stuff we throw at them: clothes, radio, CDs, jewelry, watches, sneakers. How are kids to make sense of it? They desperately need their parents and they desperately need their schools.

Kids need to be able to experience ambition and to want to achieve. That’s what school is about. You’re here to take it seriously. If you don’t want to take it seriously, let’s talk about that. School is a privilege.

I also think that actual work is critically important. I mean a real job. Not just community service. In our culture, everything comes to them. No. They need to work.

Longo: I find myself afraid for children today. I find myself afraid for their parents. Children and parents are becoming an uncared for minority in our society. In my own heritage my grandfather and grandmother couldn’t read to me because they couldn’t read. But they had expectations for me. They sacrificed for me and for my parents. My parents likewise.

I don’t find the idea of posterity being part of the conversation anymore, the notion that the older generation has responsibility for the younger generation. I’m afraid that when baby boomers become the older generation that children will be forgotten altogether.

There’s a role for schools in this, but the fact is that between birth and 17, children spend less than 10 percent of their time with us in the school.

Our parks are falling apart. When I was a child in Wilkinsburg, I could go down to the park and there was a recreation program every day of the week where I could make lanyards and play games and socialize. And my mom was at home. Today mom isn’t at home, and the program isn’t in the park.

As a society, we’re kind of in this mode where "It’s my money and I can keep it. I have no obligation beyond me and mine."