School Officials, Community Discuss How to Fix Education System

The National Coalition of 100 Black Women Inc.-Bergen/Passaic Chapter and the Teaneck Board of Education hosted a “Dinner and a Movie” event Thursday night that included a documentary about the nation’s school system and a panel discussion on issues raised in the film.

The event was held at and drew parents, current and past educators, school administrators and members of the community.

BoE members from Teaneck were in attendance in the audience, but BoE Trustee Margot Embree Fisher was featured on the panel alongside Englewood school board member Stephen Brown; Principal Jonathan Foy of The Eagle Academy of Young Men in the Bronx, N.Y.; and Paterson Board of Education President Willa Mae Taylor.

Before the question-and-answer portion of the evening, attendees viewed the 2010 documentary “Waiting for Superman.” The film chronicles the journey of five students who enter charter school lotteries for a chance at what their parents believe will be a better education. The film also delves into what director Davis Guggenheim sees as failing and working with the country’s educational system. He spotlights the teachers union, illustrates the effect that “good” and “bad” teachers have on students, explains tenure and how it applies to firing educators, and points out what certain charter schools are doing to foster classroom success.

Deborah Witcher Jackson, president of the NCBW Bergen/Passaic Chapter said the organization approached the Teaneck BoE in February about partnering to screen the movie.

Teaneck BoE Vice President Gervonn Rice said the board was excited to collaborate on the evening’s event with the NCBW.

“We have a lot of challenges that this movie will point out," Rice said. "We’re looking at gathering together as a community to address some solutions that we can possibly work on together. We’re not just here to murmur and complain about the issues but what can we do about it.”

HIGHER PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

The first question posed to the panel had to do with a perceived higher level of commitment shown by parents who send their kids to charter schools.

Foy said that while it’s beneficial that parents are involved, it’s equally important to get students excited about school. So each year for incoming students, his school throws a celebration in which the new students march in and get a standing ovation, and the men in the community make a pledge to protect the students.

“We make it a big show because part of it is you have to sell a different reality,” Foy said. “And when you do that, you get a lot of parents who haven’t been involved want to give it a chance.”

Fisher said she wanted to address the question from the perspective of a parent. She described how her children began in the Teaneck Public School system, then went to the Teaneck Community Charter School, and then came back to the public schools.

At the charter school, Fisher said she saw a big difference in parental involvement, with parents showing more commitment to their children’s education, the school, and the teachers in the classroom.

She concluded by saying she would like to see Teaneck Public Schools do what certain charter schools do and that is have parents sign a contract saying that they’ll participate in their child’s education.

“I understand it’s unenforceable," she said. "It was unenforceable at the charter school as well, but simply by getting people to do that you get a much higher proportion of parents following through because you’ve told them what the expectations are.”

SELECTION OF TEACHERS

A few questions from the audience had to do with selecting teachers, rating teachers, and dealing with “bad” teachers.

Foy felt the documentary “slightly overstated” the damage of the Teachers Union in regards to the process of firing teachers.

“You can get rid of a teacher who’s tenured,” he said. “Sometimes it takes more time than you choose.”

Foy told the audience that instead of focusing on how many bad teachers are out there, schools need to implement a more rigorous process that hires good teachers.

Brown spoke briefly without elaborating, but he said he felt the movie didn’t overstate the issues regarding the Teachers Union.

Fisher said there are many things that contribute to failure in a school system.

“You have to have very careful processes in place, not just to vet new hires but to assess teachers, to offer improvement if they need it,” she said. “But we have other things that we have to deal with too. There are special education issues, there are various state mandates – there are a million things that a district has to deal with.”

CHANGES TO THE SYSTEM

At one point, the panel was asked what they would do as the first course of action in starting a new academic foundation.

Taylor said she’d “clean house.”

“If I was going to change everything, I’d flatten the whole thing out,” she said. “I wouldn’t have anybody; I’d throw everyone out. I’d rehire with the kind of rigor to get the best thing for our children and the best principal. If the leader cannot organize, connect and persuade people to work together to get children what they need, that leader shouldn’t be there.”

Foy said he’d start by ripping up the administrators’ and teachers’ contracts and making them much simpler.

Fisher said she would begin by offering universal child care to help working parents, and then she’d want to see a national curriculum so that every school in the country had the same set of standards.  

“And I’d like to see this current testing culture that we have turned around so that we weren’t testing to punish schools or rank students,” Fisher said. “Testing can be fun; that’s why people watch ‘Jeopardy.’ They like it. It’s fun when it’s informative and when it allows you to learn and to expand your horizons. And that kind of testing helps children, and it helps teachers.”

Brown said he agreed with what all the panelists suggested and that everything said was “absolutely doable.”

“The No. 1 thing that I would personally focus on is the No. 1 thing that matters, which is talent," he said. "If you don’t have the talent in the classroom and supervising in the classroom, it doesn’t matter what you put together. That starts with ripping up the contract and starting new and providing the things that we need in the community to make sure on day one that the right people leading the classroom do what we expect them to do.”