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Elaine Wynn: Better teachers, better leadership for our schools
Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Elaine Wynn
What's Your Vision?
My hope is that over the next 10 years we will become more enlightened about education.
I’ve been very disappointed for a very long time about our direction. We have teachers and principals, dedicated education professionals, who have tried their hardest to deliver quality education to our children, but they haven’t had the leadership and resources they need to be successful.
As a state, we spend more on education than anything else, but it doesn’t get the attention it needs. There’s too much confusion over responsibilities, and services for students are too fragmented.
We need to move toward a more coherent structure, and that’s going to take dynamic leadership. Ideally, we will see more business leaders and parents take a more active role in demanding that changes be made. If it doesn’t come from the community, it will never get addressed.
There doesn’t have to be this great disparity in student achievement between our minority and white students. We know when schools get the wraparound services and support they need, test scores go up. I would like to see us close the achievement gaps, and also reduce our dropout rate and improve our graduation rate.
I think with our growth slowed nearly to a halt, there might be some hope. We have been so focused on the galloping capital demands to build enough seats for students that it didn’t give us enough time to focus on the issues of quality and equity.
If I walked into a public school 10 years from now, I would like to see a well-trained principal who went through formal leadership training and only highly qualified teachers. There would be a working relationship among UNLV’s school of education, educators and the district — professors would be coming into the classrooms as visiting instructors to get a better sense of what teachers are having to deal with on a daily basis. Teachers would have better salaries.
Everything in life is about leadership. Show me a good principal and I’ll show you a good school.
It’s up to the citizens to decide what kind of leadership they want. It’s easy to be critical of public servants when no one else offers to take on the burden. We don’t need more people to tell us what what’s wrong with public education. You’re either part of the problem, or you’re part of the solution.
Nevadans have to ask themselves — which part do you want to be?
Elaine Wynn is director of Wynn Resorts and national chairwoman of Communities in Schools, a nonprofit organization that connects campuses in need with resources for basic services.
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Spend more money on student-centered education in the poorer neighborhoods, and guess what, you'll have better schools. It's just a matter of priorities.
Mrs Wynn:
Your sentiments seem to be in the right place. We do need better trained teachers, but having re-tread administrators assuming the role as mentor instructors for teachers in the district is not going to do the trick. Many of those who conduct workshops or seminars for teachers, particularly in math and science haven't taught either of these subjects since becoming administrators 10-20 years ago.
You are correct we need university level professors in all subjects, including knowledge of education pedagogy principles teaching our teachers and administrators; the place is at UNLV and not in or by the CCSD administration. This could be done on campus by closed-circuit TV as the CCSD has invested millions in public televison and in-school TV telecast systems districtg wide.
In the 1960's with Russina Sputnik making headlines and grabbing the attention of the public and policians federal program of public schoalrships to teachers was developed. Universities across the nation developed master degree level programs and courses to re-educate science, math and foreign langauge teachers. That is the kind of program that is now needed in the same subjects and must be extened to all other subjects including art, music, physical eduction, etc.
The state of Nevada cries poor mouth constantly when it comes to education. Money may not be the entire solution but it sure helps. When way to make this all possible is to stop catering to illegals and educating their children with our tax dollars. The way to stop illegal immigration to to stop providing cheap, benefit-less jobs for them. This, my dear Mrs Wynn, includes the hotel-casino industry as a cheif offender in Las Vegas and throughout Nevada. You could begin with talking to your friends and associates in this industry.
I really hope this becomes our top priority as a state/county. Unfortunately, when I talk to people and read the comments on this board, it almost seems like the citizens don't value a good education system. It would allow our economy to diversify, I think it would have a positive effect on crime rates, and improve the overall health and quality of our state.
I've said before...there are so many good people that live here, but this is our biggest problem, in my opinion. Elaine Wynn makes the comment that we spend more on more on education than anything else, but unfortunately, we're still at the bottom of the list of states, as far as spending per student is concerned. Money doesn't always equal quality (see Washington DC), but what we're currently doing clearly isn't working. The good ol' boy network is killing our education system...we need some new ideas ASAP.
Unless and until local teachers become part of the decison making process about education, this system will continue to stagnate. Teacher input, as is employee input in any large organization is essential for progress and success.
Many more administrators today are out of touch with the realities of teaching because of the lack of real classroom teaching time. In past years administrators served at least 10-15 years apprenticship as classroom teachers, carrying full load of classes, students and related responsiblities.
Today, many are able to take a quick exit from teaching in 3-5 years via the administrative 'good ole boy/girl nework' and move out of the classroom to positions as deans, VP's and finally principals. Experience in the classroom is short circuited and hence they really do not know of what they are speaking about when criticising more experienced teachers.
So many administrators have become manufacturing plant managers with the engrained idea that the final product are students who leave our schools like uniform cans of Delmonte String Beans; uniform, all with the same knowledge level and skills and lacking ability to think qualitatively an quantitatively on their own; our students need to be able to think creatively and respond accordingly, not to some idealized educational principle out of a district management manual. This is carried out locally to the point that all teachers within department or subject are required to be at the exact points of instruction from day to day; rigidly following cookbook curriculum guides has eliminated any teacher initiative, creativity and indvidual genius of preparing exciting and innovative lesson plans to motivate and interest the reluctant learners.
Our schools are not supposed to be turning out uniformed puppetts who act, know the same exact facts, figures without individual creativity and initiative being applied thereto. Our students are living, breathing humans with individual qualities not beans from a factory.
This district has allowed this rigidity to develop to the point that they now consider students to be a factory product; in fact it is a defective product now with very high failure rates in achievement scores, daily attendance, and decresing graduation rates. Someone in the the administration is responsible for this poor product. In any profitable factory failure to produce quality products would result in immediate dismissal, but not in our school system. Irresponsible managers (i.e. the administrators) continue to produce the poor quality product (the students) and praise it as among the best.