Education in America - Part VI: Are the ExxonMobil Initiatives Enough?

This is the final installment of a six–part series. You can also review , , , , or .

Back to the ExxonMobil agenda…two possible answers to our educational problems are mentioned: raising AP scores as documented earlier and teacher training through initiatives such as the Mickelson-ExxonMobil Teachers Academy and/or the (astronaut) Sally Ride Science Academy.

The Mickelson Academy is currently taking nominations and applications for their free all-expenses-paid 2013, one-week summer session at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ, for third-through-fifth grade teachers. It will host 100 teachers from across the nation.

The Sally Ride Science Academy webpage informs us that it helped over 270 teachers, administrators, and counselors from 39 districts nationwide during the summer of 2011 in a 5-day event. Three invitation-only events were staged in San Diego, CA; two upper-elementary teacher sponsored events and one middle-school teacher sponsored event. It appears that there are a total of three similar events planned for the summer of 2012 in San Diego and New York. It is unclear from the website whether these events are expense free.

The Sally Ride Science Academy further boasts that it has trained over 650 educators since its inception (2009) that in turn have returned home and trained over 4,250 additional colleagues. According to the website, it is predicted that this training will impact over 604,000 students by the end of the 2012-2013 school year. The Mickelson Academy site does not publish any such information as to its success.

These programs both specifically target upper-elementary and middle school teachers; so, what about high school? It seems to me that our high schools right now are in dire need of fixing.

Anyway, let’s get a little perspective on these numbers provided by the Mickelson Academy and the Sally Ride Academy.

• 77 million – According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s webpage, as of October 2009, there were 77 million children and adults enrolled in all schools throughout the U.S.
• 55.5 million – The projected number of students expected to be enrolled in elementary through high school grades for 2011 was estimated at 55.5 million.

Breaking those numbers down using 55.5 million students in elementary through high school and averaging 20 students in a class room, I calculate a need for 2.775 million teachers in both public and private schools. There were, BTW, 1/3 the number of private schools as there are public schools as of 2008. Using a 1:20 teacher-to-student ratio, I calculate a maximum requirement of 2.775 million teachers. I should state that the census revealed that there are, in fact, 7.2 million teachers in the U.S. at all levels and almost 3 million of them teach at the elementary and middle school level, the target group of the ExxonMobil initiative. Given the number of teachers required to populate our classrooms at the ratio of 1-to-20, it appears that we have no shortage of teachers. That is not our problem!

What I really want to understand is how the ExxonMobil initiative has impacted the situation so far. The Sally Ride Science Academy, since its inception, has claimed to have directly impacted 650 teachers and 4,250 teachers indirectly. The former number is admittedly much easier to prove than the latter number. The Mickelson Academy has plans to train 100 teachers in 2013 so I will give Mickelson Academy the benefit of the doubt and allow that it has trained 100 teachers each year (2009 through 2011) putting its direct contact at 300 teachers (2009 through 2011). Forget the real numbers because it is plain to see that with 3 million elementary and middle school level teachers in the U.S., that the initiative, while valiant, is minuscule when compared to the task at hand.

It appears that ExxonMobil is actually suggesting a two-pronged attack. The first prong is aimed at our elementary and middle school teachers. I will point out that I thought that teachers were to be trained in college - isn’t that why they go? If they are not getting the skills they need to do the job for which they are preparing maybe they should demand more for their money. Of course, that would involve teachers complaining about other teachers and I’m not sure how well that would work.

The second prong is to provide extra-curricular training for students taking the AP tests. Can anyone disagree with that? But isn’t the accumulation of knowledge resulting in a liberal education for all what is supposed to be going on in our schools already? Must we now take time to provide specific test-based training (otherwise known as outcome-based education) to our students on top of their high-school educations?

I have my own ideas as you may well know about the merit and the actual progress made by both prongs of the E-M attack in an attempt to solve our educational problems. You, however, must decide for yourself whether we have the time and/or the money for either or both to work.

I do wonder at what point ExxonMobil thinks its initiatives will have any real effect on the standings of U.S. students against those competing directly for the same jobs for which we hope our students are qualified. It seems obvious to me that ExxonMobil is attempting to do its part and encourage others to join in but since the inception of the program in 2009, I wonder who else has gotten on board. I have no real criticism of ExxonMobil’s effort and I commend E-M for what it is trying to do, I’m just wondering what kind of payoff we can expect based on the numbers that confront us both in students and money spent.

Today we have many, many private businesses going into bankruptcy and we had at least 11 municipalities in bankruptcy as of December, 2011. Multitudes more of our municipalities, cities, and states are on the verge of bankruptcy as well. (Breaking news informs us that Stockton, CA, with a population of 300,000, has just annouced plans to declare bankruptcy marking it as the biggset U.S. city to do so to date.) Public schools are mainly funded locally through real estate taxes and the fact is that there is no more money to be had. Mr. Obama is running on a platform that promotes hiring more public employees including fire and police personnel, as well as teachers, all paid through public monies. It appears to me that the numbers show, as proved above, that we already have more than enough teachers. Isn’t it time to declare our public school systems bankrupt and start over with a model that actually works?

I would welcome your comments on where we should go from here and how we should begin to solve our education problem in America. If such a dialogue ensues, and time and space permit, I will gladly submit some of my own ideas, as well.