Bill Gates of Microsoft recently concluded that America’s K-12 school system is failing if not broken. This is after donating millions of dollars to groups/schools with no appreciable improvement in student achievement.
The most recent standardized international tests show shocking evidence that the average U.S. high school senior ranks somewhere between 15th and 17th in the world in math and science compared to average seniors in Seoul, Mumbai, Peking, etc., their real competitors.
In sharp contrast, in the 1960s the average graduating senior ranked first or second in the world.
Further, U.S. seniors are illiterate as to how our market-based economy works nor do they have a basic understanding of American history, the constitution, etc.
Regrettably, the average Burlington High School senior falls somewhere in the above rankings as does the average senior at Waterford, Union Grove, etc. for that matter. This is in spite of the fact that the U.S. now spends more per students than almost any industrialized country in the world.
The lack of financial resources is not the problem, it’s how the money is spent.
What has gone wrong in America and Burlington Area School District? Most experts say it is failed leadership. Bill Gates is especially critical of intransigent union leadership, interested mainly in maintaining the status quo and not supporting a 21st century educational model (charter schools, voucher programs, pay for performance, etc.) They have no real interest in improving student achievement, being in the business of maintaining the flow of union dues and their union leadership positions.
Although senior administrators (e.g. Superintendent Moyer, etc.) are also to blame, the biggest failure at BASD is the School Board. It is comprised of seven individuals who to a person embrace a worldview of educational and organizational operations stuck in the 1990s.
Their leader, Board President David Thompson, effectively the surrogate representative of the teachers union, ineptly leads this group (i.e. the Oct. 31. 2011, vote could have been challenged in court and the results possibly overturned because of his allowing Moyer, a resident of Illinois, to make a major presentation at a meeting legally restricted to residents of the district).
Recently, Thompson stated that school taxes may have to be increased by 6 percent to 8 percent in the coming budget year. This was quickly contradicted by Moyer as it appears that neither one knows what is transpiring at the meetings they both attend.
If you have attended any School Board meetings you will observe this sleepy, out-of-touch group comes prepared to accomplish one thing and that is to “rubber stamp” anything Moyer wants. Remember, he was even able to convince them to increase his salary and that of his administrators by 8 percent last year (Racine County unemployment at a record high of 12 percent and few in the private sector receiving any pay increases).
How do we begin to improve the situation now? Although it will take several election cycles to upgrade this board, the immediate action parents and taxpayers can take is to vote to replace the two incumbent board members, John Anderson and Susan Kessler, who are running for re-election. Both are part of the problem at BASD, not part of the solution.
Wayne Raisleger,
District resident
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