Bucks
Haycock School, Tom Friedman, Michael Bykov
Dear Friends,
Good morning. When I read that the Quakertown School District decided not to close the Haycock elementary school, I thought about a column I wrote about parenting (Sept. 22), a letter from Michael Bykov who moved to America from Israel, and Thomas Friedman’s column in the New York Times (Sept. 12).
For decades, the Quakertown school board has been toying with closing the Haycock Elementary School. The administration believes that shuttering the school would save nearly $1 million in the first year and more than $9 million by the 2019-2020 school year. Five teaching positions would be eliminated, as would the cost of upgrading the building.
The vote to save the school on September 23 was razor thin…5 to 4.
But when you look at the Haycock School performance, another picture appears. Of the six Quakertown elementary public schools, the Haycock school children out perform the other five elementary schools in reading, according to the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). Haycock ranks third in Math.
Why does the Haycock School do so well? Are the teachers better? Are the parents more involved with the school? Do they have higher expectations for their children?
Michael Bykov is a reader from Newtown. He commented about my public school column. I opined that Asian and Jewish parents have higher expectations than Anglo Americans do, and push their children harder.
“I would stress a few points that to my mind are important,” Bykov began. “Obsession with sport is much more pronounced in American schools that it is in other countries. There’s nothing wrong with some sport, in moderation. [But] above all, school is for education. Jewish relative indifference to sports is traditional and might be a reason for better academic achievement.
“Second, there’s too much emphasis on political correctness,” Bykov continued. “Third, raising funds and collecting donations…it is important to teach values, no doubt. But again, like sports, it is way too much. In the U. S., you see school kids collecting donations on the roads. That’s something you will hardly see anywhere else in the world.
“Fourth, perspective teachers are judged by their degree in education and expected to have a teaching certificate,” Bykov wrote, critically. “ In some countries, you can teach if you have relevant education in the subject, even without a degree in education. It is no secret that these kind of teachers are often superior. Sadly, there is a certain kind of mediocrity, which is preferred in many U. S. schools. Fifth, testing system with its stress on results…it is a very limited way of teaching things. It should be incorporated with other evaluation strategies.”
Bykov concluded his letter with these thoughts.
“Now, some ideas apropos about your article in general,” he wrote. “I personally don’t see any problem if scientists are imported from Asia or elsewhere.” “The U.S. was always absorbing talents from abroad (just see how many scientists and musicians moved here prior to the Second World War). This problem is more serious for those countries from where people move to the U.S. Israel is one of them (many talents are relocating to the U. S., Canada, and Australia).
“Also, I don’t see any problem when a high school graduate doesn’t have a brilliant academic achievement and start working in, for example, roofing,” Bykov said. “Too much of today’s college education is fake anyway. With our obsession with high education, we make respected trades and crafts inferior…and this is wrong.
“The percentage of Jewish students were always high,” Bykov wrote about my comment concerning the unusually large percentage of Jewish students at Ivy League universities. Although the Jewish population in America is less than two percent, the undergraduate student population at the eight Ivy League schools is 25 percent.
“The high mark might be Vienna in the second half of the 19th Century and later until the Second World war,” Bykov wrote. “Do Jewish parents have higher expectations? There is something in that. But, let’s say without certain personal initiative, which is even more important than parental influence, there is nothing that can be done [unless the child wants to excel].”
Finally here’s what Thomas Friedman wrote about public education. “We should get excited about U.S. politics when our national debate is between Democrats and Republicans who start by acknowledging that we can’t cut deficits without both tax increases and spending cuts…and then debate which ones and when…who acknowledge that we can’t compete [with the world] unless we demand more of our students…and then debate longer school days versus school years…who acknowledge that bad parents who don’t read to their kids and do indulge them with video games are as responsible for poor test scores as bad teachers…and debate what to do about that,” Friedman wrote.
What more can I say?
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith