Work to close gap in
education a start
EDITORIAL, Home News
Tribune Online August 21, 2006
New Jersey may have the highest
graduation rate in the country, but that does not mean our schools, or our
students, are outperforming everyone else. Although 88 percent of the
state's students graduate, according to the findings of a recent study, the
state reckons 80 percent of those who go on to community colleges require
remedial classes in math or English, and nearly half of those who go to the
state's four-year schools need the same.
In those cases, at least, our diplomas hardly seem to be worth the paper on
which they're printed.
So there is plenty of reason to cheer Gov. Jon S. Corzine's decision to
strengthen the state's high school curriculum. The details are still
sketchy, although they are likely to become clearer after a series of hearings
beginning this fall, but the governor has announced his intention of joining an
alliance of more than 20 states committed to school improvement. The
coalition's goal is to make American students more competitive by increasing the
number of required academic courses, particularly in math and science, and by
strengthening and more closely vetting the content of those academic courses.
For example, the governor and his staff say they will push to demand four years,
rather than the current three, of math and science for graduating students.
The governor's committee, which includes businessmen as well as educators, says
the toughened requirements will apply to students bound both for college and for
work; there simply is no room in the modern-day economy for students who can not
do math, or who are not versed in technology. That is especially true for
an economy like ours, which relies less and less on manufacturing jobs and more
and more on higher-wage, higher-skill professions.
For years, businessmen and educators have predicted doom for the country, based
on our service economy and our perennially dismal performance in international
education rankings. Corzine's plan is a necessary first step in trying to
reverse our lagging educational standards. But even he says the process
will be slow and the rewards long in coming. Of course, the state must
constantly balance higher standards with the threat of higher drop-out rates; it
also must make sure the standards really mean something — that they lead to
better curriculum content and better teaching, rather than simply more testing.
These changes will take time to do right, and the state deserves to be given the
space and time to find the right solutions.
On the other hand, the governor already seems to have discounted the possibility
of significantly changing the school calendar; he appears loathe, for example,
to embrace a longer school year, a strategy used by other countries that
consistently outperform us. Corzine's reluctance is economic: he
apparently fears the cost of such a measure. There may be other solutions.
The state might shorten the summer break, for example, but lengthen other
vacations throughout the school, which would give students the same number of
days in class but protect against a long break that interrupts the learning
process.
Still, it seems almost inevitable that the state, if not the nation, will one
day have to pledge more days and/or longer hours in school for its students; at
any rate the governor ought to remain open to such a possibility. It is
abundantly clear we must do a better job of educating all our children. As
the governor prepares to embrace change and tougher standards, he has got to
leave himself open to any kind of change that will bring the most success to the
most students.
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