Pledging Allegiance

IF PUBLIC SCHOOLS are America's "great social laboratory," as Columbia's Diane Ravitch says in Psychology Today this month, then who has been the mad scientist? Last spring, the media and the Presidential Education Commission ignited the current debate on public schools. Since then, every politician along the rubber-chicken speech circuit has thrown in their own proposals: raise teachers' pay, raise good teachers' pay; spend more federal money, give more local control; return to basics, advance to computers. But while debate has raged nationwide, local communities hold many of the answers to education problems.

"School is in a very real sense a mirror of its community," Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation told Time Magazine. "Time and time again, we saw that community support or community conditions were shaping the school. So, in a very real sense, the report card on the school is a report card on the nation." To change many of those low passes to A's, we need a better institution for funneling community support into the schools.

Currently, popular support for public schools rarely solidifies into real results. The age-old Parent-Teacher Association offers one line, but ignores the interests of most of the community. Schools need broader organizations linking the support and input of business leaders, civic activists, school alumni, and neighborhood residents. Here, as elsewhere, public educators can learn from private schools that have traditionally mastered the art of tapping every potential vein of support, financial and otherwise. The importance of this link for public schools intensifies as a growing proportion of an ever-graying population loses parental ties to the schools. Already the cries are heard in South Florida and other retirement intensive areas: "We have no kids in school, why should we pay?"

But all groups have a stake in improving public schools. As private school fundraisers have shown, alumni are willing to donate time or money to the alma mater--aware that drunken cheers at the Homecoming game are inadequate support. For civic activists and businessmen, the interest is more concrete: graduates that can't read a ballot or sign a paycheck don't make good citizens or productive workers. These diverse groups share a common interest in making the schools run better, and could organize as Friends of, say. South Plantation High School.

WHAT REAL GOOD could such a board-based organization actually do? At the very least, Friends could provide moral support for flagging schools. Unlike the pom-pom breed, though, Friends could ideally provide concrete aid to the entire school: academics, athletics, and other activities. More tangibly, Friends would contribute to South Plantation High in several crucial areas: hiking funding, improving teacher quality, and increasing teacher compensation.

In the area of funding, the effect of Friends would remain largely indirect but still tangible. Ideally, the coalition would contribute primarily to occasional extraordinary expenses, such as a new auditorium, stadium, or lab expansion. In those extraordinary cases. Friends could help raise money to supplement regular education allocations. Some restrictions might be needed to limit any disparities arising from the varying wealth of communities. Without such provisions, wealthy communities could easily satiate their own educational appetites and thwart efforts to raise taxes for less prosperous areas. Executed fairly, a Friends system could increase all taxpayers support for education through a heightened awareness of school needs.

This sensitivity to schools could in turn contribute to solving the larger problems of teacher quality. For some time now, the average SAT's of education students have been among the lowest of any professional group. We call teachers professionals, but their paychecks label them dirt. Some politicians argue that pay grades--apprentice teacher to full teacher to senior teacher to master teacher--will superimpose a professional framework through competitive merit pay, but it is a travesty to suggest any instructor merits some of the wages currently doled out in schools. For many years, the brightest women and minorities entered teaching as one of the few doors open to them. As the doors now multiply, society must work to attract quality teachers. Higher pay is one step toward answering the problem of recruiting teachers--respect from an involved community provides yet another advance.

COMMUNITY SCHOOLS, in this busing era, remains a loaded term. But community education coalitions could organize within one neighbourhood or a cross-section of a larger district. Friends groups could share their expertise and unite on certain national issues, coming together as regional or national coalitions. The thrust of the coalitions, however, would remain in the community.

Today, before leaping at every scheme thrown out for public schools, educators and policy makers need a lasting and cohesive plan to institutionalize community support for community schools. Though education hovers in the political limelight now, history shows that such tides of interest flow sporadically, perhaps rolling back after the next election. Local groups should capture current interest and preserve it--a community united around education might just find some common ground on other issues as well.