Reform School Reform

I recently watched a new Ken Burns documentary on PBS about the Roosevelt’s, Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor. Like I am with most quality depictions of American History, I was fascinated. During the telling of Franklin Roosevelt’s role in dealing with the Great Depression I thought about the International Business Machines Corporation, known to many as IBM. In 1979 IBM recruited me out of the graduate school at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, to work in its marketing branch office. I was one of the first African Americans to work there. During the Great Depression America (and the rest of the world) was near economic Armageddon. The unemployment rate went from 3.2% in 1929 to 24.9% in 1933. Incredibly, Tom Watson Sr., IBM’s CEO at that time refused to lay anybody off. 

Watson believed that his most valuable asset was his people. He has been quoted as saying “you can take my buildings and inventory, but if you leave me my people, I can build it all again”. When the Social Security Act was signed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, IBM had the people and the inventory to do the massive accounting job. The company was also well positioned to take on many other government contracts throughout the years leading up to World War II. This “full employment” policy, packaged with an employee benefit package that included group life insurance, survivor benefits, paid vacations, profit sharing, and a pension, (all of which employees did not contribute a cent to) continued until the turn of the century, allowing IBM to attract the best and the brightest. There were no unions at IBM. We did not want or need one. We were loyal to the company because it was loyal to us. We were well paid and our benefits and working conditions were second to none. IBM was and remains one of the best companies in the world because it had and continues to have some of the best employees in the world.

Telling people how to fix America’s failing schools has become a profitable business. Whether you are a politician, former government employee, former educator, entrepreneur, writer, journalist, or philanthropist, there is a place for you if you think you have “the” solution. The problem itself, is real. I felt that after spending 10 years in predominantly minority schools just outside of the Washington DC beltway, working as an administrator in schools with a poverty rate near 70%, I was very familiar with the problem. That was before I spent a year in Cleveland, Ohio as an educational consultant. In my entire life, I had not seen the kind of poverty and educational dysfunction that I saw there. If the schools in America’s other large cities, such as Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Miami, Newark, etc. are similar, we are committing a crime against humanity. 

Langston Hughes said it best.

 “What happens to a dream deferred?

          Does it dry up
     like a raisin in the sun?
        Or fester like a sore…
               And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

          Or crust and sugar over…
                  like a syrupy sweet?

                 Maybe it just sags

                 like a heavy load.

                 Or does it explode?

 There are many very good schools in America. Those schools have strong, knowledgeable, politically savvy, courageous leaders. They have leaders with an understanding of the science of managing people, running a business, and the empathy of a clergyman, they are outstanding teachers in their own right, they have a vision of what their schools should be, and do not hesitate to articulate that vision to anyone that will listen. America’s outstanding schools have outstanding teachers. They are teachers that are smart, motivated, energetic, creative, demanding, empathetic, and nurturing. Those teachers are always prepared and take great pride in their profession and the accomplishments of their students. You cannot have a very good school without having very good people running that school.

A Superintendent is not going to reform a school. A Superintendent has as much power to fix a school as the President has to fix a neighborhood. What he CAN do is ensure that each of his schools has the kind of Principal described above. He can ensure that each of his schools has the type of  teachers described above, and the moral and professional support, physical plant and financial resources his students and employees deserve.

A Board of Education is not going to reform a school, neither is a city council or mayor or governor. What they can and should do is everything possible to ensure that the right kind of Principals and teachers are hired and the wrong kind are fired. If they fail in this task, nothing else will really matter.

A school is an individual organism. Each has its unique problems and solutions. Each has its own personality. Five-Year Plans with common goals, expectations, and resources did not work in the Soviet Union, and they do not work in education.

Hire the right people. Treat them well. Train them well. Pay them well. Like Tom Watson Sr. did at IBM. Eventually, the best and the brightest will line up to work in the schools.

And then maybe, just maybe, the dreams deferred, will not explode.