Posted August 18, 2005

     In just under three weeks, schools will reopen for the 2005 – 2006 school year.  Hopes will be high.  New schemes for improving learning will be examined, tried, modified, and finally accepted or rejected. 

     South Boston Online recognizes that the City of Boston school system is still very much a work-in-progress.  There’s a great deal of unfinished business, which can mean “clouds on the horizon” or challenges.  It’s like the question about whether the glass is half empty or half full.

     One idea that should be put out of its misery is paying students to go to school.  We have heard that this idea has been tried in Chelsea.  We also heard that it seems to have worked fairly well, at least on the first try.

     Even so, it’s a self-defeating idea.  Why should any system – including a school system – pay its members for doing what they should do anyhow?  Even if paying students for school time appears to work at first, it sends a badly distorted message.  Should youngsters be paid to eat right?  Or to exercise properly?  Or to get enough sleep?

     The answer is, “No!”  There are many things in life that must be done without being paid.

     In Springfield, the topic of merit pay for teachers is on the negotiating table.  Provided that less skilled teachers are given reasonable opportunities to improve, this sounds like a good idea.  But we have two major questions:  How are teachers (both the good and the bad) to be evaluated fairly?  Who will perform these evaluations?  If these two questions can be successfully answered, then merit pay is an idea whose time has come.

     With Boston’s Superintendent of Schools, Thomas Payzant, leaving shortly, the City has a golden opportunity to upgrade its leadership.  This is not to criticize Payzant.  He has been a very competent administrator, who came in at a critical time back in 1995.  But now, it’s time to seek new directions. 

     We’ll risk being politically incorrect and state that the search for Payzant’s replacement be directed solely towards finding the best leader for Boston’s school system.  No matter what that person’s background is, qualities such as “love of learning”, “charisma”, and “sense of mission” are what Boston’s schools need in their new boss.

     And oddly enough, the residents of Boston are realizing that the answer to better education isn’t more spending.  Plenty of school systems, including those in the developed nations of Europe and the Far East, spend less but educate better. 

     The answer instead is higher standards.  Just look at how well our young people have done on MCAS, even though the educational establishment fought MCAS tooth and nail.  Give young students a difficult goal and they’ll strive to achieve it.  Dumb down their schools and they’ll end up doing nothing at all.  They know intuitively when they are being patronized – and it turns them off.

     One final word for parents:  please encourage your children to do well in school.  That takes time and occasionally, a bit of discipline.  The world is increasingly technical and knowledge-driven.  But the rewards are out there for them, in great measure, so long as they are well educated.