EDITOR'S MESSAGE : IT'S ABOUT RIDING CAMELS

There is a popular saying that the only way to explain why the camel looks so odd is that it must have been designed by a committee. In what The Journal hopes will be a regular feature - "Surfing The Web: What's Out There," - we present to the membership excerpts, snippets, and slices of educational life from around the state and nation. To us, this is the best proof that American educational policy is determined more and more by special interest groups, and, that with every government "initiative," we look more and more like the preposterous camel.

It seems everyone, these days, either establishes or sits on an educational committee, with each group doing whatever it can to get a piece of the educational action. President Bush is already claiming that NCLB has transformed American education - a "victory," no doubt, for his committee. Governor Pataki touts his Commission On Education Reform in his State of the State message, and his Board of Regents proposes a major reform of state school funding. The Special Education lobby has its committees too, and there are the Congressional Commissions, and, of course, the courts - perhaps the most powerful committees of all.

The "innovations" and "reforms" these committees rain down on us as administrators today are often contradictory. The government - if it thinks about administrators at all - wants us to believe that its crazy quilt of politically-motivated special interest appeasements, is really a time-tested and reliable educational policy, and that all we as administrators have to do is plug in their beautiful machine and observe how well it produces improved student performance (you can already hear their crowing about NCLB as you read the "Surfing The Web" snippets).

There are other committees around these days, and sometimes their work can give us hope. The 6 million member PTA has called on Congress to reject private school vouchers. The Advertising Council of America has encouraged parents to become more involved in their children's schools and education. And ESSAA has a growing PAC committee that lobbies for our interests in Albany.

If there is good news in all this anywhere, it's that the history of "reforms" and "innovations" in this country is a dismal one. Radical and destructive changes often fall down and die out of sheer exhaustion - thankfully before they are allowed to kill the supposedly ailing animal they intend to cure.

As long as politics is involved in educational policy, education in America will never be a thoroughbred. We're a camel - make no mistake about it. And the system we have to work within is increasingly problematic. But because we care about our kids and because we've already educated so many of them, we still think we can get this committee-crippled quadruped up on its clumsy feet again, and ride it across the educational Sahara. Have a great 2004!

Robert A. Liftig

Editor, The Journal