You Can Rest Well Tonight

So are you concerned about our schools in Pennsylvania? Student achievement? Student behavior? Drugs? Violence? Salaries? Pension costs? Taxes? Well be assured, you can sleep soundly tonight with the understanding that our State Department of Education, our state legislators, and our governor are taking care of all of these serious issues. For example, our state Department of Education is about to approve a policy that would limit each classroom in the state to just one birthday party per month. Violators would risk the loss of state funds. Don't you feel so much better knowing that our state leaders are spending their time solving this serious issue? Now I know that birthday parties can be overdone, but is this serious enough for the state to deal with? Maybe it should be a local issue, if it is indeed a problem. Or maybe some health organization should suggest prepare some guidelines on nutrition to provide to parents. But should the state be threatening to withhold school subsidies because somebody has two birthday parties in a month? Maybe they'll also supervise this by having teachers fill out another form listing the dates and the food provided. After all, the teachers need one more state or federal form to complete. That paperwork is one of the things that helped me decide to retire. Then there is the pension crisis which threatens to skyrocket property taxes and change schools dramatically. This problem was created by the state legislators who now don't want to deal with the serious impact. But again, you can sleep easy tonight for they recently pushed through a bill to "solve" this problem. As I understand it, the new bill finds a way to put off the impact. This means our grandchildren and great grandchildren can deal with it and pay for it - after our legislators have retired with their fat pensions. And there is some reform of the pension plan built into the new law, but it only affects new hires. That means that new hires will be teaching until they are 65 - at highly inflated salaries since teachers continue to get 3% - 4% raises. So in 43 years the state will be faced with loads of old, tired, and expensive teachers. And while the pension plan rates will also be reduced, it will be 43 years until these rates kick in. This is what our state representatives think is a solution. Maybe they just had too many birthday parties when they were kids in school. Besides the fact that the state has no real leadership in education, state policies are generally political. And traditionally, they change when a new party comes into power. Oh yes, we just elected a republican governor - so more change is on the way. A number of years ago the state leadership wanted to have an honors test (politicians always want to increase testing) to recognize top students throughout the state. I guess things like the SAT couldn't do this. So they hired teams of teachers throughout the state (I was one of them) to develop test objectives and questions, Then a national testing firm was hired to put our questions into tests which were then field tested. After a few years of preparation and loads of money spent, the test was ready to go. Then a new governor was elected and years of work went into a file, never to be seen again. Fortunately, it isn't this way in all states. After I won my national award from President Reagan in 1984, I had contacts with top leaders from every state. I was really impressed with what was being done in some states and I was also embarrassed by what was happening in my home state. Unfortunately things have not changed. But relax. While some of our kids struggle with "readin, writin and rithmetic", you can be sure that while your taxes increase, the kids won't have too many birthday parties!