Alfonse D'Amato

Time to get an education

Posted

New York state has some of the nation’s best schools, and some of the worst. Many suburban schools are considered models of learning, with high graduation rates and impressive college placements. But too many of our schools, urban and suburban, just don’t measure up. Too many students don’t even learn to read in the elementary grades, and remain functionally illiterate through high school. They get diplomas that aren’t worth much more than the paper they’re printed on, if they make it to graduation at all.
New York ranks near the top in what it spends on education — an average of about $20,000 per pupil per year, according to the State Education Department. By way of comparison, California spends about $11,500.
Where does this money go? About $15,000 is spent on salaries and benefits for teachers and other school employees. The other $5,000 goes to “administrative” overhead. On Long Island, school superintendents’ salaries range as high as $400,000 per year, and all but a handful make more than $200,000 per year. Since Long Island also has 120 school districts, the administrative tab for our half-million public school students approaches an astronomical $2.5 billion a year.
I recognize the value of the public school system to our state. There are many fine teachers striving to give our kids a first-rate education. Where students are properly motivated and parents are fully engaged, the results can be great. But in schools where many students come from disintegrated families, with absent or uninvolved parents, the results can be disheartening, even tragic.
So what’s the solution for these disadvantaged kids? If we truly value their lives, we should be open to anything that offers hope. Nothing should be off the table, including more charter schools and other innovative environments, including faith-based schools.

I’ve followed two schools — St. Martin de Porres Marianist School, which has students in pre-kindergarten to eighth grade, and Kellenberg Memorial High School, both in Uniondale — that have worked near miracles in the Hispanic and Haitian communities they serve. St. Martin has an annual tuition of $6,000, and Kellenberg, $10,000, but families of limited means may receive financial aid. These schools turn out model students and model citizens.
The schools’ guiding light is Father Philip Eichner, who takes a comprehensive approach to learning, with students grounded in standards of conduct and civility that underpin their academic success. In addition to rigorous school-day instruction, students who want it are offered a 3-to-6 p.m. after-school program. Extensive summer programs are also offered. Eichner cites the involvement of engaged parents as a critical component of the schools’ success, with nearly all Kellenberg graduates going on to college.
Throwing more money at our already well-funded public schools isn’t the answer. We need to fundamentally rethink the role and shape of those schools. On Long Island we should begin by consolidating districts. If necessary, state aid for districts should be conditioned on consolidation and other reasonable cost-saving measures.
Any far-reaching realignment of our schools would no doubt meet with resistance. But given that Long Islanders pay among the highest school property taxes in the nation, such cost-containment is now more justified than ever.
And simply running schools more efficiently won’t necessarily prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s world. Given the changes sweeping the American workforce, we must ask hard questions about our schools’ ultimate mission. Teaching our kids basic skills, instilling civic and cultural pride and making them good citizens is commendable, but it isn’t enough. Today’s schools need to prepare students for today’s working world.
We should look at what works in other nations. Most European countries emphasize channeling students into job-training education programs. Not all students want or need to go to expensive colleges, where they take on huge debt and have limited employment opportunities.
Entering the workforce with skills that fit our evolving economy is critical. Teaching students things like computer programming to run today’s businesses is just as important as other educational paths. Automation is dramatically altering the job scene, and the internet will continue to reshape our economy. Cars and trucks will drive themselves, and stores will serve us with far fewer workers.
Much as the country moved from its agrarian roots to the industrial era to today’s largely “service economy,” the next wave of change will require new educational strategies to meet the job needs of the future. Hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide already go unfilled because there aren’t enough computer-literate workers to fill them. If this doesn’t tell us the U.S. education system is missing the point, nothing will.
If our schools stay stuck in the 20th-century model, they will slip further into irrelevancy, and the children most in need of proper classroom preparation will be left in an educational vacuum that could suck the life out of their futures.

Al D’Amato, a former U.S. senator from New York, is the founder of Park Strategies LLC, a public policy and business development firm. Comments about this column? ADAmato@liherald.com.