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If education officials had consulted Lillie Rayborn, a policy requiring learning-disabled children to share classrooms with other kids might never have been written. But decisions affecting schools are still mostly top-down. In Chicago administrators make it clear that students should be held back only once and then promoted to the next grade, regardless of performance. Other kids languish in unsupervised classrooms because the school board underestimates the number of teachers a school needs and will not provide substitutes in the interim. "You can lose total track of the students by the & time a board-authorized sub shows up," says English teacher Daniels.
Asked to cope with the consequences of these bureaucratic snafus, teachers feel impotent and bitter. The flurry of educational reforms of the past five years has also been largely imposed from on high. Take, for example, the effort to upgrade the quality and qualifications of teachers. Concerned about an alleged epidemic of incompetency, legislatures in 46 states have enacted tougher training requirements for teachers, including minimum college grade- point averages. While many teachers applaud these changes and hope they will attract higher-caliber people, veteran educators generally give low marks to standardized competency tests such as the National Teachers Examination, now required in 30 states. No multiple-choice exam, they say, can predict success in the classroom.
Last month, in response to such complaints, the Educational Testing Service unveiled plans for a far more sophisticated exam. The new test, which will be in use by 1992, will include two exams -- one given during sophomore year in college and a second after teacher training -- plus an evaluation of performance in the classroom. Says National Education Association spokeswoman Jane Usdan: "This is a step in the right direction."
Another way of upgrading the quality of teachers, say many veterans, is through a strict peer-review process, in which teachers themselves would help screen and rehabilitate incompetents. "A teacher who is incompetent should have a conference with the principal; then she should get help from a support teacher," says Baltimore's Jacobs. "But if she's still incompetent, then I'm sorry -- she has to go." Some take unions to task for protecting poor performers. Says science teacher Rodriguez: "They should not be so closed- minded when it comes to retraining and testing."
In some parts of the country, teachers are being given more say in setting school policies. In Dade County, which includes Miami, 45 of the system's 260 schools are experimenting with "school-based management," which allows teachers and administrators to tackle problems free of the usual bureaucratic constraints. Schools can request waivers from union contracts and from local and state regulations. The result: a palpable boost in morale. At one school, teacher absenteeism is down 50%, saving $7,000 a year in substitute-teacher costs.
It is midmorning when Juan Rodriguez begins to talk about the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy. The ancients had no idea what the earth looked like, he tells his 24 seventh-graders. The kids cannot believe anyone could be so dumb. "Oh, my God," says one, rolling her eyes.