A Call for Education Reform

Photo by Arjun Jain

Leslie-Bernard Joseph, Dean of Students at Coney Island Prep, tells about his sixth grade student who, unable to answer any questions on a quiz, had simply written “I need help” instead of an answer. Joseph keeps the note in his office to remind himself of his mission as a teacher.

Joseph - a 2006 Princeton alumnus – was part of a panel discussion titled “Education as the Civil Rights Issue of Our Time,” which discussed educational reform in the United States and the role of undergraduates in the reform movement.

Held on October 15 at Princeton University, the panel was moderated by Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman and included New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein and Newark School Advisory Board President Shavar Jeffries.

            “Students around the world vote with their feet to study at our colleges, but we are not preparing our own students to attend these institutions,” Tilghman said. “This is the challenge we are here to discuss.”

            “What I realized from the moment I walked into the classroom is that schools look nothing like what they were supposed to,” Joseph said. He explained that this isn’t because of crumbling paint or old books, but rather a missing sense of possibility and hope.

            Jeffries echoed this sentiment, calling the lack of expectation “fundamental” and “insidious.”

“I grew up in Newark, and college seemed like this foreign thing,” he said. “It didn’t really seem real.”

            Combating this, Joseph said, is what teachers need to prioritize. “The way you measure a teacher’s success is based on their value added,” he explained. “I don’t get paid to teach students who would have learned on their own – it’s my job to motivate kids.”

            Yet real accountability for teachers is still missing from the system, Klein said, and the focus is “on the wrong thing… the adults, and not the children.”

            “The fact that there are no perfect evaluations [of teachers] is an excuse for us not doing the evaluations,” added Klein. “There will never be perfect metrics. We’ve got to change teaching from a trade union assembly line job to a profession where excellence is the hallmark.”

            Joseph added that establishing a clear pathway to leadership is an important step in developing better teachers. “Teachers become very complacent,” he said. “No one expects when they enter a job to never, ever get a promotion…with a pathway to success, competition and performance are encouraged and aren’t just happenstance.”

            Jeffries, however, cautioned against being overly critical of teacher unions. He believes that the unions are simply doing what they are supposed to do from a democratic standpoint.

            “They have beliefs,” he said, “and they organize themselves around those beliefs. At the end of the day, this is a political problem.” That unions are organizing political efforts to pursue their interests is admirable, Jeffries said, and citizens themselves need to “engage in the nuts and bolts to change the system to reflect the interests of children.”

            “We need folks to run for office,” Jeffries concluded.

            The panel discussion was sponsored by SFER, Teach For America, and the Princeton University Undergraduate Student Government.

About the Author

Tara Thean

Princeton University, Class of '13

Tara Thean, a Princeton University sophomore from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, enjoys journalism, education policy, and marine biology. She is a staff writer for The Daily Princetonian, a staff writer for the Princeton Alumni Weekly, a project manager for Students for Education Reform, and a tutor with the Petey Greene Prisoner Assistance Program. She also enjoys gardening with the Princeton Garden Project and dancing ballet.