Public Broadcast Laboratory; 210; Generation of Pawns: the Urban School Crisis

mayor rubio yeah an experiment in public television's boy generation of applause a look at the state of the urban education in america and examination of the struggle for local communities in all of the schools in new york with some early reports from other settings as it may be the old will run like human after more than sixteen hours of all my discussions on education and the united federation of teachers signed a written agreement which allows cities to reopen tomorrow agreement has been reached

your ishmael brown who matter of the eye believe me so that they pronounce the body of every general agreement i'm delighted that the children of new york city and now returns to watch now on september nine nineteen sixty eight new york city a plan to open at nine hundred public school but couldn't the teachers union closed often on the strike lasted for ten weeks there was a confused and sometimes violent very much and if you were three experimental school districts carved out of the huge assist to see what would have been the real power within the local elected school board in the ghetto the object was to reduce or

eliminate the city's enormous central bureaucracy a catchall word became the centralization behind that was a struggle to define and take all the experiment started last school year one of the local boards in the ocean ordered nineteen teachers to be transferred last spring hundreds of union teachers walked off the job in protest the summer again but nothing would resolve this fall five days before school was supposed to open the city's central board of education met to decide whether to curb the powers of the experimental districts or to let them continue the city was infirm of the teachers unions that would call a citywide strike the transfer teachers were put back and private school board voted to continue the experiment from the centralization a public meeting was scheduled to announce a decision when one board members came out to make the announcement that levels of tension anger and frustration were to walk

away he's being nice it was bad don't worry how old

are the wives i

hope on the day before school was to start the teachers voted for a citywide strike wisely union strategist label the issue is a fight for due process and the teachers' quickly won support but largely from the white areas in the slums the teachers walk out was translated as a white front against the block on a street corner outside the voting all the due process slogan came apart when a crowd of teachers tore into one who spoke out for community control they touted his credentials to teach it all about you right right you

live in the the value proposition seventy nine they've been apparently there was like it wouldn't be english and that kind of money thank you i want you to get you both white and black are demanding quality the quality education they want their family and get into the middle class how in god's name can ever happen if we don't teach the national language which the middle class language we don't

know the number of new plans not you may never going to get into the middle class the focus of this report is new york city which has the most advanced most expensive and possibly the least effective public school system in the country if only because it's the biggest and what has happened in new york is already beginning to happen throughout the country new york made a lot of mistakes and now it's trying to come up with a solution and there may be some lessons learned for the rest of the country's biggest city this is a story about school but not necessarily about education essentially it is a political struggle and political power shift more than just the school system will change the center of the struggle of the city's school board of education in new york that means thirteen private citizens who were appointed by the mayor and receive no pay in the midst of the crisis this fall eight members of the board went to a quiet suburban motel to work all plans for the future specifically

plans to be centralized they met for thirty hours and today normally board decisions are made in private and those decisions were once easier to make then they get off work while and the board was predictable it had only nine members reviewed three protestant and three catholic masood political crisis it is they'll attack victims that time because the borough president was running like melanie a lot very pressured the marriott executive kathy gunst that are and that's how i got on the board and actor i get on the ballot and the iconic out the other way the main event simplicity has given way to the edge what came through most clearly was that year were private citizen faced with the overwhelming problems and they were tolerant torn by pressure group friends and strong personal convictions job market

reverend milton columbus ohio i think that the whole question of immigration here has become secondary matter and the question of control well the time when immigration road shapiro i think that our community control and purely political and felt ill and not educational john locke strong proponent of the page i come to this and my own convictions i cannot whether it's politically the gauges to do this i care more the public education in urban america become meaningful the school board was ordered by the state legislature to write a proposal for de centralizing the new york city school system lawmakers gave maryland the permission to pack the board with four additional members so that de centralization would have a fighting chance in the meantime there was a school system to run

city school superintendent dr bernard dogs williams who are you and we do it for you all ignored or study did that in new york the centralization means handing over a specific powers from the central board of education locally elected community school boards at a closed meeting the school board wrote such a plan or public hearings were held afterward and yesterday february first the plan were submitted to the state for the region some felt it was long overdue bill head is one of lindsay's new appointments to the board

new york city is the fact that we used to have a lot of grief between the wheels that they would grind it make a great example bryant's trouble talking about if we had enough goodwill between the crime we don't know everything that happens is the crisis of our patrons know no metal them we'll we'll do that i'm not a bit it's going to dry out really quickly all over the country with that windup area the minute you know you could find a hotel somewhere and you have a way of serving of french horn washington aren't more show drake and french wine and you know enough of this at the school board they know that it's not moving quickly enough women are given the same one we'll react under pressure but head

says time has run out once the issue was integration now it's the centralization or community control the challenge goes much deeper than the schools where one level it's still a confrontation between black and white nine out of ten teachers in new york or why a better than half are more than five hundred thousand of the students were not white eighty five percent of the third graders in the ghetto reversal for me now that even school authorities admit it is unlikely that will ever catch up thirty thousand students graduated with academic diplomas from new york city high school last year but only seven hundred of them were clearly it is not all of although the school but what to get old teenagers schools have become prison like symbols of the dominant white society which they feel is i'm going to give him a chance at one high school in east harlem authority chain the door why now

thank you the logic of the teenager did not always above all concerned families in the slums know that the only way out for the young syrians improve education for whatever reason have a good day love it that'll be the ones that divide them up a little bit the way that they regulate where the value in it there may be a bubble

now although that ebola there's an example you think the gilded glam band of the middle here that they may be there two years ago women are learning a new york university junior high who were the slum section of brooklyn money was no problem the plan was to see if some old for the future could be kept the project was led by nyu professor dr john roberts at the end of the experiment he said it was a disaster two years later he hasn't changed his mind we're not going to do that i have a thing for that

they're not alive i do and where it is when you know they didn't wear i also want to know my guest on say they were generally won't work i would say that really psychologically destroyed meaning that the children are weaker each day from their experience and eleven and i think what i think it is that they don't want to think of the negatives will either <unk> sense that there's somebody playing games with me and i'm going to turn you off forty years ago yourself thank you take a complex subject

and everyone said they wanted to re segregate the school there were boycotts and demonstrations to dramatize the demand but by nineteen sixty five new york city had twice as many segregated schools as it did in nineteen fifty four when the supreme court outlawed placard for integration now seem gay community can chose the new rallying cry but it was unheard of until integration fight with law at the height of the drive for desegregation in the early nineteen sixties why turn struck back fifteen thousand of them marched across the brooklyn bridge they demanded that the neighborhoods who you say authorities tried pairing white and blacks who lost a voluntary transfer all hail the same general pattern of this throughout the biggest cities and its not fiat dr david rogers of new york sociologist a warrior writing and researching a book on the politics of education in new york osu integration york city with a history of

opportunity along with the board could have done much more than that the war claimed though the loyal opposition from white parent i recently moved ahead passed the politics of the pressure group mr fried prevented from going even though its mandate was anything or move against the will of a populace that role is both reflect public opinion when the public opinion they were puppets they're in the white community or quite confirm especially the poor and lower middle class white community in queens and in the north bronx and in parts of brooklyn and i see in the area but the good thing for the general black population these people were confirmed they want an hour one a lot of what was planning that you look at the gerrymandering that's taken place in your city over the years so his own life and really quite grotesque and they are resolved of precious often from the

tyler perry can you can look at erasmus high school you will find that white him through life in the er from three miles away while black youngsters from five blocks away but way out there are others that come about come about through any educational logic it came about because of the politics with a local parent's location in alliance with real estate in fact a group of locals who worry that they're going to do integration will allow the new demands came with the opening of the new school in east harlem called intermediate school two all want or i have to award a black principal and then promised they're also genuine authentic integration but when the school opened enrollment was all black and puerto rican and the principle of white again the district had been gerrymandered from rebel and demand for community controlled spread through the ghettos of the city

historically new york marriage have been careful to stay away from the school controversy but marilyn they asked mcgeorge bundy president of the ford foundation to head a citizen's commission to draw up a plan for the centralization the foundation's involvement angered teachers who were against some in the black community but the money commissioned a drop a proposal for the mare by the time it was modified in part of the legislature citywide the centralization what's politically too hot and the legislature sent it back to the city's central school book there are experiments and de centralization go on i asked to align is now part of the harlem demonstration disk it as a black principal and it is quiet industry the question remains will the children learn any better under the new system the middle later if you're evil proponents of community and voters that the

militants would be teaching warfare tactic in revolution curriculum would be destroyed by wild innovation ah ah if anything just the opposite is true except for a few schools there's been very little innovation aside from increased attention to black history in fact school administrators are becoming sensitive about the questions to a one principal ronald evans is common an overnight power to solve all the problem in the cage and through overnight gimmicks house for a year lolly lolly relationship

and that interaction lab and forty two to the road a little bit better than the voting very difficult privately administrators and the demonstration districts may feel there'll have to be some radical changes if they're going to make education more relevant this is no time for daring new programs which may face another problem with the community itself a sociologist i pointed out for years the heart of the black community is solidly conservative and that's even more true in the puerto rican community as is virginia ballot the community coordinator for ios to a one

the problem here compounded by the problem of the home environment the problem of the adult in the room because i think a great deal of effort to get children education minded education oriented interested in education the chow is not ended in history period black or white he couldn't care less about harriet tubman bringing hundred and he found why but it's true i'm a pub and bringing hundreds of slave the broad didn't work then i mean anything for black thought he made the now that the black children live live live and grow up much fact that unlike killed in a fire what's going on the reality of the very beginning and then and the danes are like happy for them to go back of a pretty wide political way back in the day an african pope the

entertaining in reading that at the time but it will not bring up away from the basic fact that a try to learn how you can really yeah i know where in the english language is going to be could communicate anything going to make it with the fact that i'm basically a private and we got there we were going to a black cultural black history that make it so that we're learning a breakup where we learn it because i want to learn how but even he didn't want to like any other black leaders jealously guard the concessions won a pious to a one of the other schools in the three experimental vote but white areas especially those ordering the ghettos are resisting the concept of community control the same way they once resisted integration in queens housewife angered by the school strike and the man from the ghetto

started a drive to recall maryland ms bluhm yeah citywide they claim they got a hundred thousand signatures although nothing came of that pressure was obvious and i'll be doing anything now this group was led by the president of the local school parent association in the neighborhood that way here and now

and why in a lot of people felt that integration quickly re wrote the national attention given how they think they will get better education but there have been knotting and that meant that your life that you will get better and you can make it work on how the children have not been flirting with with one teacher and at that time she had not been tried that and they feel a lot of black you know he more than anybody and they were learning the highway at the other end of the spectrum of history in the ocean will brown hills section of brooklyn just eight years ago this was a white neighborhood to date is all black and puerto rican which the whites with most of the money needed to support the community

and it's clear that the problem here is a lot bigger than just the educational system the schools have become the target of focal point for discontent attack schools and there is a response even if it's a negative of the response from the society generally so well insulated from the problems but ironically perhaps the negro has already won his struggle or simply buy his numbers and poverty alone here's the cumulative power to break the tax structure is more constructive region are carrying on at the moment doctors solving problems is the growing polarity between whites and blacks much of the anger and frustration have been channeling in addition to finding still fighting in court to do what a politically and economically only a dozen double rainbow for white man south is brought

back that was we don't commit genocide nor the backyard there and we went up there david why don't they like to think the family a dicey thing is trying to get in that and that is our thing they knew they were coming out there so you know that's how it is that it shows a white you don't have it it just fell together because like we get now a cell sedan in the town hall more for white americans sold democracy out her chicken in every pot and causing beach ride and that we're beginning to see a struggle are coming to a head and in new york city i think throughout the nation the next few days the next few months the next few years the focus of the struggle the control of schools to reassure his power we're going to get it the board that we intend to organize at this point on how important education is and the war of education will be made up of were upstanding citizens of

harlan and one of the major goals of baseball board of education will be to set up a design for a referendum over the question of a harlem school system we board of education at whatever the power because that seems to be that name again and we want more within filmmaker people of education gone the man for a separate our own board of education and boys before they have never been taken seriously at the moment there is no real alternative to the resources of the white power structure community knows that and many reasons and wish of the powerless is most clearly seen in the teenager's such as these meeting with their minister in a middleclass negro church in queens ted cruz

and i want to be on the environment you know like they say good morning i like that and merging pride in blackness among the young provides muscle for black pressure to be effective it must have direction and gordon later as board member go on this publicly go on this infrequently

disagrees with the school boards private leahy may disagree with a naive militant was talking too much besides power he needs his constituency we must lead and follow a minute you know we wonder what's happening in the school system that oh people are whining it necessary that humans onboard methods in order to adjust their personnel problem you're right crucible it's

b well right they do if you're a lady the law he

didn't even was in the school auditorium in queens was called to formulate new district lines more important than specific plans however it was organization of neighborhood support getting parents involved and that's why though aniston was from brooklyn was there but no such meetings white or black it went on for several hours why have a lot of education at all then as good one of them and now black people are they are all individually black people all lenders that went into and we all get in and then black people and we will ms bibi the

pain has been today is one of the only as bell the piece but we can't

oh man i pledge allegiance to the united states of america john watts is chairman of the school board powerful the centralization committee was like glamorous and he needs support to operate effectively not so from staten island which is one of the city's five counties and overwhelmingly white to sell change he too must go back to his constituents to persuade to explain to calm fears on this morning he met with selected fern association delegates from throughout the county i think it's well telling you again so that nobody gets confused about that i have not met anyone who's been involved in public

education in the city or any city in the country is not for de centralization of the game is everybody looks to right the eye and with moral certitude says i'm for the centralization blood and then when the bugs come rolling out you find out about some longer than a decentralized their concerts they will now while we don't have ghettos here is that now the problem of getting the ghetto child having ghetto child educated to get in one actor it's a very important in staten island as it is to every american where he lives on a farm or not because the majority of americans live in urban centers i think this is the worst possible time in the history of the world to be centralized the new york city board of education i also know that this is also the words have time for children to attend in urban america which are neither chilton our school system on the growing puerto rican we must face this problem these youngsters are ripe apart this fabric there was unless we make them successful

so please don't think that that gratuitous or overly freud happens to be the truth in quality ventilation programs that have been credited with so far there has not come up with a financial statement showing how the new plan is going to shape up financially against what we now have another way that will be duplicated in many areas and it was with a selection of another candidate i suggest to you a valuable tool that we make schools more relevant that we will spend money much better in a much better way and we're doing now for example we bring teachers into the system and after two years they granted tenure that has to be hundreds of cases people simply can't make it so that's when you talk about courts got i think the more

relevant businesses that many have tenure and here is that nine years so ideally blessed when god praise the lord you had two hundred he just won a fight between the assistant with two years say to them ladies and gentlemen we're going to value professions about a valley wy you you'll have not gotten automatic tenure with a local school boards are directing the principled and a principal can do it year after year after year there's no shades of and then by guys knock on his jaw and a person charged with the responsibility of children in these vexing david camp do the job i'd been in all union guy i simply don't hear i don't think he on the world's over the kind of preciousness and the kind of destruction that in the heat by that and i have physically been in classrooms where my god i'm gonna cry together i think that our community control is purely political

and social and not educational there are of course board members with powerful forces behind them opposed to radically alter and present control of the system this is rose shapiro who lost her job as president but is still an important board member has been a rallying point for those who don't want to turn the school's over to the local boards and there are many parents from the ghettos who share this is shapiro's fear should play far more important role in the education of their child and they now play and if this is what is meant by the centralization then there's a great deal of hope but i am it is confused today with community control and this is the this is the thing that is troubling to many of the parents in the community we talked with a group of parents that came in to see me this morning deeply concerned that maybe a demagogue and did the label of community control are making it impossible for them to

function in the way which they were accustomed to function a bit frightened by the they may feel that they don't have that voice they have great voices you know the troops and my own feeling is that you cannot hold the schools entirely

responsible for some of the bay is that the children experience i think the society has an important role to play that we haven't done enough about correcting the plight of the maid role in the puerto rican minority groups generally i think we've got to provide greater job opportunities we've got to do a great deal of training we have got to do a great deal more about housing we have got to do a great deal more about the health of people who live in ghettos and you must understand that the false reflect the general condition of an area and if you have good areas you will have good schools and that you had said terry is you have vegetables ms shapiro came out of the united parents' association movement a post now held by mrs blanche louis clearly a middle class pressure grew you pa boasts a membership of four hundred thousand current or organized at the school level

uva members meet regularly to study proposals of the city's school board especially proposals on the centralization they know what is going on now how to make the weight of their opinions felt as documented by dr david rogers and his research on the board of education these people on the integration friday on the community control might say they are in favor of change but gradual change their evolution with they believed in gradual wasn't it is my firm belief that that what this does is killed change because the bureaucracy is so capable of absorbing up piecemeal innovations such as the parent association wanted a local experiment pairing here something that you don't get anything you have what you need a new york city in any institution it is this sectors in europe to schools you need a system wide change in the change in the structure of the whole institution you can't do it and by page are we

feel that in any de centralization proposal that it's a path that they must be a victim instead of checks and balances by which the natural or it can monitor and enforced and maintain thinking why curriculum and and monitor the performance on and this is where we get the advocates of absolute community control we do believe in a system of checks and balances of some central safeguard it's more to come on the new york city school controversy and conflict over community control of the nation's big city schools the deal continues in one you

the blm continues now with part two of generation of pawns the urban school crisis we believe the high school should be under local control they shouldn't be on a local control until we make that high school's comprehensive you pa members and high school principals fought against comprehensive high schools the idea behind comprehensive schools and combined the vocational an academic programs under one rule youngsters would then share similar activities and the stigma now attached to vocational schools would be removed the city's de centralization plan allows the civil war to keep control of the high school's until they are comprehensive that won't be easy as board member john watts explained

that means airing twelve or twenty percent attendance in high school at those youngsters a week taking what are known as the occupational vocational center we will phase out or vocational high school in the city now we have not been able to make those high school's comprehensive because of political pressure and ultimately we started in brooklyn tip for high school the reasonable and wings on them will they come out of the box read a book when i sat there in every pollen rather another plotted and i'll give it yeah like it is they didn't save italy on and that is common in this school those are the facts we have a dumping ground call vocational high schools in many places in this town and i don't propose is any member of the board of education proposed to continue those dumping grounds we intend to have wings on the high school for the

purposes of making relevant curriculum for the world of work and i don't mean basket weaving i mean those dragons have to be changed and changed regularly so that the youngsters don't have to be embarrassed about the fact that they're attending a vocational component of ice what is that the more proposals keeping fido control over the high school because as a central authority they can better handle white pressure fighting against comprehensive school but it still wants advice from parents on high school budgets curriculum and stare the problem is how to get the parents involved presently new york has ninety high schools often they are far from the family's neighborhood there hasn't been a new high school built in the parliament twenty five years basically the board has two ideas for apparent involvement in running the high schools at a city council thank you

i like that are not a citywide board still seeing too big a non responsive to the needs of the individual school right right the island why that have a regional war and the thing with a citywide we'd go no citywide you that a citywide administrative secretary again you're listening to all the people we're with the panel agreed with you because he said well it's great what we would do is they would be very little difference between except that its elected between that it wouldn't happen in little bit more manageable the board finally adopted a temporary plan was devised than ninety schools into eleven regions they're

called high school councils members of the council who will be selected from the local junior high clusters which feed the secondary schools one so schools are comprehensive plan is to phase out the council's return the high schools to the local districts where they stand but our board members who doubts that will ever happen and that's why they supported a citywide council you know human nature and the de centralization cripple the local board to run the elementary and junior high schools and thirty districts in most big city school systems district lines are pushed around by political pressure and that usually means de facto segregation now the new york border is drawn its new district lines around existing schools in their communities john watts explained what we did was we took an elementary school with a lot longer it's about it since

elementary schools feet into a junior high school well an immediate we find elementary school junior high schools and we know that the parents on enormously interested in their neighborhood school and they were in elementary school and they continue their interest and join pta is a junior high school so we decided to make this series of elementary school and the junior high school into a basic building block like using about actual streets of the uk has come from one hundred and forty four of them in the city we decided to put these together with other such building blocks from three years under the de centralization planned each building blocker cluster of schools will lead to members of the local district board and we think we will now i hear about the specific problems of each

school rather than hearing from local school board that reflect a portion of the district which has happened too many times in the past the board can only purple final entered must come from the state legislature state assemblyman jerome kretschmer of manhattan led the fight for the centralization the last session and as he candidly admits the question maybe one of education but in the legislature if political and go that there's a perfect package in session live perfect package in session and israel are recalcitrant the republican party and i'm a predatory workable protections seventeen top ten votes at some point desperately maybe of diesel through training early on second steal in meehan says one interview for the lone wolf in taxes on the wealthy to change media we want and so a good decision was an issue though is how we wrote it up as i attend only the best bands that played a recently

attended of knowing who cross some in those rwanda battling to go on between now and in the other side of the shakeup on this is you know honestly the union out remote family strife governor dewey of the best that proposal and so really it becomes a question of hard bargaining between the government forces in iowa saw in the forest known the other in smaller question could be answered at this time at the riverdale your own creatures will to prevail and clear but so was that a major opposition united federation of teachers not all teachers are against community control with those who are can be mobilized quickly why political pressure generally the union has been fighting for a smaller incision but clearly the well for the teacher come first in europe a spokesman for the union of albert shanker president of the us at the height of the strike he was hailed as a conquering hero when he appeared were teachers were

gathered last year the union spent three hundred thousand dollars to defeat a strong de centralization bill in the state legislature a similar campaign his promise in the current session ten percent union say realty civilization and is going to propose its own bill one which would reduce the number of local district and insurers central hiring from rank with that teacher community control is only employee unknown to escape more serious problem now it's terrific for the people in the urban call it show is other rich characters including the mayor antonio isn't to say that there's not money or you have to do that when you're a control one is that you have to pay any more taxes are what these fifteen four characters are local board and one naked spells a job for you're now in a local boy education okay can raid the olive oil education and it's a band like that all of the harm that that status and tell people that may only buy a collecting local people to their

board of education that decades ago though the way kids in scottsdale to scarsdale could be taken over by the government of france tomorrow i most kids would know precisely just as well because the line parade and write and talk and allman of the breakfast that that's the militias <unk> poverty and the local controller that actually irrelevant that would make a difference of a bombed out the entire local board of education and replace them with men from mars and you know everybody else knows it i would rather stop kidding ourselves about the romance of local control because local control and named local oppression and local terror and local non participation and local private elections when nobody also chairs the rocks start hitting them that with the election of a cell that front yard they made my ear pages and news that hackers that a lot of unions who have been the members of union among the five network a lot of the teachers the

kenyan security and over again about their move to make a lot of what he could become administratively young bright guys get good ministration at the top homeland haven't set somebody thing and in that living like the middle and to be treated with the economic coma i'm in favor of decentralization has a lot of vegetation as do you mean you actually that i just fear that i might be released or no specific reasons without a very clear and i went to school the hot pod planet depression baby college dropout that people accept what i've tried to light or i don't know what we've gotten from them

on you know the side of the night with a depression child work very very hard i was a college dropout and went back to school and we have all the time and it's really fine it existed and i know person experience out there and honest they are i felt all along that the examination by no means actually identifies the two chico ten show of an individual sam cutler's a principle you may find fault with the testing procedures what he's learned to work within the present system is responsible for public school number one sixty five on the upper west side of manhattan about five blocks away from columbia university the school was built seventy years ago for eight hundred students today there are seventeen hundred elementary school children packed inside a by new york

standards he has won sixty five is certainly not a bad school until recently the school like the neighborhood around it had been well integrate the neighborhood is changing rapidly this year over eighty percent of the students are ordering this is cover of first years of principle and it took an eighteen years to get the job which pays from eighteen to twenty five thousand dollars a year he started as a teacher and work up to assistant principal taking all the tents and required

courses along the word before that he attended new york's public schools and took his teacher training at one of the cities university ninety percent of all the teachers and the system went to one of the colleges or universities in the new york city area and promotions go to those who started there and move up within the ranks of those parents were immigrants he feels that background helps him in dealing with the cultural problems of the schools community dave davis will either mean i know that when i think that i think five dollars isn't enough money at home at a new program while but you got to bring yourself together with other people to keep yourself separated is no and this as in traditional for many

years with hispanic people and in this way you have lost out and it's time to come together still believe it's possible was in with the system as it exists now to make tremendous inroads in the situation in the reading situation in the entire instructional program in the schools i think i think like when i talk about changing the system i talk in terms of developing a feeling of feeling that pervades the school the teachers supervises the children their parents the community when everybody is together after nearly twenty years and cutler is part of the system he worked for he feels it is easier to change attitudes and feelings than it is to

change the system but there are times when he loses patience with the bureaucracy but somebody also because every time i talk to you i get absolutely nowhere and i don't like america would this a sand cutter and regardless of what is i wanna speak to mr robel quarterback jacobsen well i will wait i don't like your attitude which comes across on the phone i mean it's so off and forget about a past they cholesterol blocker i know you know yes but if you would just give a little bit of thought to what i'm saying if we just got to go you would realize that regardless of whether we pick up our checks there are a number of people who did not get made and that's what i'm talking about well regardless of that if you think a little further you might realize that some of our checks or among checks that may have been among among a group of checks sent to another school

or pick up my analyst all how would what he mean you wouldn't have anything though that would do what mr raul up on the lawn and stop this silliness i'm as impatient with the bureaucracy is understandable like this island the bureau supplies warehouse the school system is often remote at the top and impacted at the bottom throughout the bureaucracy as an enormous system of inertia built in something frequently described as negative or a mass purchasing does not always save money on a large order of books a school in queens paid a list price of two dollars and five cents each the quality of books received were retailing for a quarter apiece in the bookstores the de centralization bill proposes that the local district handle many of their own supply me the boys also ours the centralizing another huge operation the central school lunch kitchen plunge for one hundred and fifty thousand children has made clear they

go to five hundred pounds of salt a day sixty million eggs a year his charge of the bureaucracy is to centrally controlled to be affected in a sense quite the opposite is true the system is so large and nobody is in control its hard to get something started and once it's going it's almost impossible to stop recently the school system was supporting two hundred and one different curriculum experiments some of the so called experiments have been on the books for twenty years maintenance and repair of the city's nine hundred school buildings is always under attack as one who has to work within that system board member john locke says the mayor with a tragic comic aspect of getting a school building fixed i went to jean horton i said this is saying down in john jay i did finally go to see that place they had an extension would imagine at the cafeteria walk that you thought you were back in in the end in in biblical times the old building at the no one eye

and they dont know transition i put a million dollars and when you're trying to be vintage on jacob it's about all of us the answer from the street to come through to a barroom doors a record breaking into a little boy that's all gotten almost ended on a walk into david american advances i said what in god's name the people come through that political million dollar all the time in the foyer has a fix and john mccarthy was a supervisor john it has been thirty five thousand dollars to fix that exterior and the door so that it would look one piece is i couldn't get it as you know i get it we were i went to the board of at and i said goddamn it they're making live work and apple and they all work in the daytime the kids can't go to school and what kind of at sea is this isn't it reasonable for us to spend this kind of money the poor contractors forgotten same applies your working with kids get this together had to go back he dismissed them at the closed meeting

board member ernest cannot confront in the chief of maintenance and repair of new york school building mm hmm although they work long

hours present board members are still only part time forced to rely heavily on central administration step in terms of efficiency and expertise a number are convinced that even their thirteen member board is too bureaucratic and subject to the same charges leveled elsewhere the water here on an international we all introduce into the plan in the legislation they are no wallowing in conflict the year it's about the desire of the community for

religious business and you want everybody elected that the local level ozone is a tomato point the top education directly appoint commissions i would still like to say the procedure whereby the governor appoints want the mayor points one label elect the chairman seems to work out before you think the

commission you can't haul whether the portland school board has dissolved or not is up to the legislature again that's a political decision influenced by many forces including new york's maryland's it as a republican democratic city lindsay was elected by capturing the liberal jewish bowl and the black vote more than fifty percent of the teachers are jewish and linsey has become a lightning rod between the black and white community as lindsay faces a decision of running again from air you must reconcile the two groups most alienated by the school controversy the same two groups which elected as major weapon of persuasion at present that's difficult the last

thing that we like mcqueen synagogue they booed lindsay when you hear during the strike it's not every day that i am called an agent of militant black the pope nice butt maryland's he never finished his thought it was clear or not both sides black and white are charging the other with asking too much and giving too

little was almost two hundred years ago that a jewish philosopher know that the hand held literally identify the tallest mountain it is time to take that and the way and to see what kind of schools what kind of city we could have for ourselves and our children if we were willing to talk and to listen and act that may not be much a half there are better places to start but that's where new york and it's not likely that what happens in new york will stop during almost immediately maryland they will switch from speech making to bargaining with the new york state legislature and when viewed from the state capital de centralization of lost its luster in effect lizzie has to put a new wrapper on own issues and his experience and the

lessons learned in the past eighteen months should serve him well clearly some change in moscow chaos in the school to continue that will not be tolerated empty promises produce enormous bitterness and revolutionary activity that there must be pacing your decisions case to improvise and crisis in the worse than no change at all over the years the central school bureaucracy a sabotage most desperate for jay it should be broken up or dismantle in a way must be found for teachers to have the financial benefits of a strong union but at the same time enjoy the other advantages professional an intellectual of working in the school which controls its own destiny and has community support there's another is must lead and promote change both in the neighborhoods and in the state capital state legislators rarely rises they've been juan politically explosive issue they're likely to approve a system

of the centralized schools until there is a political consensus as of tonight the mariners allies are still in search of that solid political ground a lot of the rest of the country in san francisco roughly fifty five percent of the students are not white and fifty percent of those graduating from high school last year were i am giving them a education reporter for kqed tv in san francisco behind is polytechnic high school which has become a center of conflict of the major symbol of the city's problem with the school system a system in which the average tenth grader reads about two years below grade level and in which our picnics students read another year below even that for a record the national association for the advancement of colored people and other groups of concerned citizens have pressed for years for schooling and for racial integration but a conservative school bureaucracy has published

have now many schools like ali are racially and balance and most of them were very poor in academic achievement the board of education has shifted very gradually toward greater concern this year the board elected as its new president dr lowell last one of its liberal members and an associate professor of anatomy at the san francisco va medical center of the university of california in here the message i keep getting is that oh they're really saying like our kids aren't learning if they don't learn and not going to make it in the society and if you can teach us mr warren because we want to cry there's considerable discontent both in there white middle class upper middle class an end in mind i probably various was anger that we see expressed now in some of the demonstrations that have

occurred especially among minority groups do you think those can be scaled up those antagonisms can be quieted by the centralization i think we're going through for this anger a long road through revealing the injustices that have been heaped on the very poor on a line it on the immigrant drive black ground invasion no i i wish i thought that they said was a shilling panacea but it certainly seems to me that at some point the decentralization have to be taken very soon the possibility of school the centralization often discussed hasn't really been tackled seriously in san francisco and now a state legislative committee has this understudy for all the states' big city school systems meantime the san francisco school administration has undertaken to set up special committees for each of the senior high schools which will include students and

parents as well as teachers whether these companies will be able to respond adequately to the community needs and pressures as the questions still unanswered the story from los angeles sound much like that of the new york two or three years ago and merino ok ct reports the idea that the sun does finally clear expose ourselves than there is no longer even challenge by many members of the border with the occasional of school administrators from high school here and southerners and it was just one of the stories with the press literally coupled with low achievement scores and such basic skills reading our summer book reviews a new york minute and groups are calling for local control over your curriculum as well as sub ministry and teachers selection the most recent confrontation took place he had three month high school mounting tensions finally rock that when students and parents insisted on exercising authority over the appointment of a new principal in a series of disturbances the

school for two weeks prior to the christmas vacation the main issue ultimately became the appointment of the month old thomas permanent rings the vicinity of the socialist and it was suspended its own homes and they vote on the permanent principle britain has made it clear that he must operate within the structure of this without judgment at the same time his public statements really sensitive understanding of the problems of the black community renee people of a conservative nature black people are thanked me now you've got to stop it we don't have to open the job or to move any time in school they needed for her to be able to get a job with at all many everything out there that we're talking about don't feel that they're going to get a job any how they feel that they are locked up they don't feel that they education have any relevance to their immediate life therefore they're not tempted at all to think about the future it of american dream

on walk into that if a youngster have depleted their to like it for all practical purposes hear that beat moving back across the country the reports are depressingly familiar but in washington dc the centralization is being tried in one district as well as a small experiment in community control over as a farmer a pbr reports washington dc has an underdeveloped territory still without an elected mayor or city council covered by congress but not represented in it until last monday a school board was one hit by federal judges now washington has an elected school board which doesn't however control school revenue or expenditures congressional committees and presidential re appointed mayor and city council to do that but in many respects washington began trying to centralize school administration some time ago cardozo high school is the centerpiece of the model school's division some system of the district of columbia

public schools which was established in nineteen sixty four to try to find better ways of educating inner city school children because it takes in the poor central area of washington federal education funds of the district of columbia are concentrated here getting substance to the model schools freedom to experiment with new administrative arrangements teaching techniques and curriculum the model school division operates under the supervision of the special assistant superintendent of schools the wharton school in the words of its principal is run by the community and not by the board of education a community more and make the hiring and firing and curriculum decisions made elsewhere by the board of education by all accounts the neighborhood and the principal have made a far better thing of morgan then the failing school it was a few years ago mr haskins the principal reject reading scores of the measure of success but his school and the idea of community control were given a boost last year when reading

scores that morgan without passports that most other washington schools were going down the elected school board which was sworn in last monday will determine how far and how fast the ideas of the centralization and community control are made real in washington the campaign for school board membership and the election results showed that increased local control of the schools it's a popular idea and i have no powerful enemies the superintendent of schools and the head of the washington teachers' union and the board of education all support the idea of community control and declare themselves willing even eager to make accommodations to help realize the last shift toward more local control may previous administrative confusion and may not solve the educational problems of washington it seems unlikely that it would result in a seemingly irreconcilable conflicts that marks in new york city that's essentially because the ingredients of racial conflict no longer exist in the district of columbia schools at the time of the nineteen fifty

four supreme court school decision washington schoolchildren were about half white house negro now ninety four percent of the pupils are black white families left for the suburbs or maybe other arrangements for their children most of the parents than eighty percent of the teachers that a majority of members and the chairman of the board of education a black president of the teachers union is a negro theater by teachers have come to washington knowing that they would be teaching mostly poor negro kids and wanting to do that job only in the central educational bureaucracy are there people who resist the idea of a greater community control and they have no allies few people in washington doubt that if the schools are to respond to the needs of the black and the poor parents and local leaders have to have more of a say in running the schools but hey we don't know yet is elizabeth farmer in washington as mentioned at the outset

this was described as a story about school but not necessarily about education and perhaps that's the greater tragedy virtually absent from the new york scene and from other big cities is a sense of confidence that anyone knows what to teach this event insurance long or how to teach it and how long rambling school buildings are called failure factories many belong in a museum and so do many of the school bureaucracies across the country which have grown up around system of central management but at some point the political fight must turn from the struggle for control to a search for quality education that's going to cost money and it's hard to see how community control will produce the new money needed to make a difference in the inner city schools but again educational progress energy is now so lavishly spent on conflict must be harnessed to finding better teaching methods rather than better slow that in the end it

means an expensive search to find better ways to make a youngster in his education relevant of the twentieth century while that process may have to start with a community boycott or teacher strike its growth will not reassured by those events the next chapter requires new ideas than the money to make them work regrettably neither fresh ideas nor new money on our website this is greg jackson good night next sunday he also insisted on a high wire and impressionistic <unk> remarkable emergence from the restrictions of russian domination by the heels of a public television station played as in brookings south dakota on its first anniversary station wnyc in cleveland ohio on its fourth anniversary and station gave only be in portland oregon on its

specialists this is behind the piece it is

mrs nicolae ceausescu leader according to the soviet union into increasing contacts and these other people are really part of a new society suddenly bursting with industrial growth that russia did not want to happen this is the room i know encountered by a p b l the first western nation to travel freely without government has grown for weeks that camera move information images and impressions moment in mind and the object a portrait of a lonely man at a unique time in its history the country many thought russia would invade next up for czechoslovakia second season

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