Do the people running the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 schools understand that they may not be getting the job done?

Judging solely by the article in last week’s Park Ridge Journal (“District 64 Responds To ISAT,” 11.06.13), the answer to that question appears to be a resounding “No!”  According to Lori Hinton, D-64’s Assistant Supt. for Student Learning, D-64’s student performance “remains strong, with a majority of students meeting or exceeding standards over the past seven years.”

Bragging about a majority of Park Ridge students “meeting or exceeding [state] standards” is like bragging about a majority of Park Ridge residents not going to bed hungry every night.  It’s damning with the faintest of praise.

Reading the Journal article might also have taxpayers feeling like they’ve fallen down a rabbit hole into an “Alice in Wonderland”-like world of edu-babble that makes the honest simplicity of Humpty Dumpty’s “a word…means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less” refreshingly direct.  Once we get past all the acronyms (“NCLB,” “AYP,” “PARCC,” “MAP”) that seem to serve primarily to bamboozle readers into thinking D-64 is doing great, we’re still left with the fact that not even one D-64 grammar or middle school was ranked in the Top 50 in either category.

Meanwhile, other districts, many of which compete with Park Ridge for residents, are placing one or more schools on those lists.

Hey, D-64!  Are you telling us that the schools in places like Elmhurst, Deerfield, Glenview, Northbrook, River Forest, Wilmette and Western Springs whose kids consistently outperform ours on the ISATs are educationally inferior to D-64 schools?  Are you saying that those other districts are irresponsibly “teaching to the test” rather than actually educating their kids?  Or do you just want us to believe that ISAT scores and rankings are irrelevant?

We don’t expect to hear D-64 administrators answer those questions.  They never answer questions about D-64 test scores versus those of other districts.  But the answers should be pretty obvious.

So what’s the number one way Park Ridge taxpayers can change D-64’s chronic acceptance of mediocrity and improve the quality of education it’s delivering for all the money the taxpayers are pouring into it?

Improve the quality of the D-64 School Board.

Those 7 people are the ones who are supposed to be telling all our highly-paid administrators what the taxpayers deserve for their $70 million a year, and then demanding that we get it.  And those 7 people are all that stand between our wallets and the special interests that seem to have succeeded in hi-jacking the system for their own personal benefits.

Public education has five principal constituencies, three of which are clearly “special interests.”

The first “special interest” is the parents of the students.  They generally want no expense spared to get what they believe to be the best possible education for their kids OPM (“Other People’s Money”) can buy.  For the typical D-64 student, his/her parents pay around $4,000/year in property taxes to D-64 in order to get an education worth $13,000+.  That’s a $9,000 “profit.”  And because raising the cost of that education by another $1,000 per kid adds just pennies to the tax bill of those D-64 parents, they can be counted on to vote for whatever tax increases come down the pike.

The second “special interest” is the teachers – the only self-proclaimed “professionals” we know of who not only have a captive market for their services but also receive collectively bargained-for, non-merit based wages and constitutionally-guaranteed, defined benefit pensions.  They, too, pay only pennies in extra taxes (assuming they even live in the District) for every $1,000 of extra pay or benefits they receive, which is why they, too, support increasing property taxes every chance they get without regard to student performance.

The third “special interest” are the administrators.  The vast majority of them are former teachers, only with bigger paychecks and without any further obligation to pay union dues.  But their pay raises customarily reflect the pay hike percentages received by the unionized teachers – so they have no incentive to bargain aggressively with the teachers union because they, too, trade pennies for dollars.  And their pay, like that of the teaches, is almost never tied to performance.

The only two public education constituencies that are not “special interests” are the taxpayers and the students.

The taxpayers foot virtually the entire educational bill for their community, irrespective of whether or not they have kids who use those schools.  If the taxpayers are lucky, the schools do a good enough job that the taxpayers’ property values remain stable or increase, thereby turning their tax expense into a kind of capital investment.

The kids, of course, are the intended beneficiaries of public education; and, at least in theory, the community as a whole benefits from their education.  If the education is good, they presumably will succeed and prosper.  If it isn’t, they’ll be the victims.

School Board members are elected to represent the community’s values, standards, aspirations and vision on the local schools – and to give taxpayers full and fair value for their tax dollars.  Unfortunately, Board members historically have served as rubber-stamp enablers of school administrators, who themselves have been little more than rubber stamp enablers of the Park Ridge Education Association (“PREA”), a/k/a the teachers union.

The result has been consistent increases in non-merit based compensation – “step” (based on nothing more than longevity) and “lane” (based on progress towards graduate degrees that may or may not have any value in producing better teachers) – with no commensurate increases in student academic achievement.  That’s because “step” and “lane” increases provide no real incentives for actual teacher or administrator achievement.

Performance-based incentives, however, are not something the PREA or its puppet administrators endorse.  And that one of the main reasons our School Board members should be demanding them, not just for the taxpayers but for the students whose futures often depend on the quality of the education they receive.

This isn’t meant as an “attack” on parents, teachers or administrators.  But it is an attempt to inject a much-needed reality check into the public perception of our educational system that has been consciously and even brazenly manipulated by public relations specialists bought and paid for by the “educational establishment”: the teachers unions, the Illinois Association of School Administrators,  the Illinois Association of School Boards, etc.

That’s why we need D-64 Board members who are smart enough not to get bamboozled by the sophistry and edu-babble that the “professional educators” and their advocates regularly spout, especially when they are challenged with common sense questions.  And we need Board members tough enough not to be intimidated whenever those “special interests” – the parents and the PREA members – show up at meetings en masse, the latter usually when their new contract is being discussed and voted on.

We’ve previously praised Board president Tony Borrelli for finally bringing some common sense and backbone to the Board.  In just two years he has shown more concern for the taxpayers and for the students than every one of his predecessors over the past 20 years.  We need more Board members like him.  And we still hold out hope that Dathan Paterno will turn into the candidate we endorsed in our 04.03.13 post.

The rest of the Board?  A bunch of pleasant, arguably well-intentioned bobble-heads whose next tough question to a D-64 administrator will be their first.

When was the last time you heard any D-64 Board member tell this or any previous superintendent, on the record in a public meeting, that the academic performance of our schools is not acceptable?  When was the last time you heard a D-64 Board member tell the superintendent, on the record in a public meeting: “I want at least 1 of our 7 schools to be ranked in next year’s Top 50 for achievement, and at least 1 more in the Top 100”?  Or even: “Next year I want an overall 5% improvement in our students’ test score performance”?

We scoured the Internet and Googled ourselves silly without finding even a hint that such comments or demands have ever been made.  Truth be told, Board members haven’t held administrators and teachers accountable because WE, the taxpayers, haven’t held those Board members accountable.

We, the taxpayers, too readily accept the same teacher/administrator propaganda our School Board members accept, such as that D-64 students “continue to earn competitive scores on standardized assessments and demonstrate exceptional achievement in all curricular areas through our Educational Ends framework” (per Lori Hinton) – without pointedly inquiring: “Competitive scores” compared to whom?  “Exceptional achievement” as measured by what standard?

As a result, we keep getting the same old, same old…year after year after year.  The only changes tend to be the occasional new face in the superintendent’s or some other administrator’s chair, and a new program or initiative that promises major improvements until it proves to be as ineffective as the last one.  And the continuing increases in the property taxes that pay for it.

At least Cub fans can delude themselves with the 100-year old slogan: “Wait ‘til next year.”

D-64 doesn’t even have that.

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