Messing with schools at the cellular level
The good news this week is we’re at least two-thirds of the way to becoming Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon. We’re not sure all the men are good looking (though some certainly think they are), but we know for a fact that all the women are strong and that at least most of the kids are above average.
A recent honor roll confirms that. Of all the kids at Marion Middle School, 69.7% made the honor roll for the third six weeks. After 26 years teaching at a university that forbids putting any more than 20% of students on honor rolls, this curmudgeonly old professor is a bit surprised but wouldn’t change a thing.
In our modern juvenocracy, the world revolves around children, and locally hired educators and elected school board members are in the best position to determine whether kids are most encouraged by limiting an honor roll to a grade-point average of 3.83 (the top 20% score at my old university), 3.50 (just a hair above the 3.43 average there), or 3.00 (as Marion Middle School does).
In lower grades, encouragement might be more important than it is in high school or college. Kids are still developing study habits, and rewards might be potent motivators just as awarding a medal for 32nd place out of 33 racers might be good for a young kid but not so good for an older one.
That’s why we have local school boards and administrators and teachers who are empowered to implement local policies that they, in their experience, think work best.
That brings us to the bad news. The state legislature, without any such experience, is bragging this week about passing “Bell to Bell, No Cell” legislation. In most districts, educators and board members already have decided exactly when and where kids can use cell phones. Their answers may depend on such things as students’ ages, the location of the school, and whether cell phone apps can be of value in classes.
Cell phones can be disruptive, but most teachers have been able to curb disruptions with policies limited to their specific classrooms. Why the legislature seems to want to do the job that board members and educators were selected to do smacks of wanting to score cheap political points.
If the legislature really wants to set policies protecting students and education, it might look at limiting travel time to sports events. Laws limit how much and how late kids can work after school. Why not limit athletics, too?
Breaking Kansas schools into six classes, with further subdivisions within some of those classes, seeks to guarantee an equal playing field. That might be important for top-end varsity sports. With town pride and playoffs on the line, no district is going to willingly mire itself into competing with schools of dramatically different sizes. But does that really apply to junior varsity, C team, and middle school sports? Aren’t those contests more about practice time, like the preseason basketball games Big 12 universities play against small state schools?
On this question, the legislature could provide important cover for local educators and board members, saving travel expense and time away from studies without the specter of imposing competition limits on top-tier varsity teams. A law requiring non-varsity contests to be against the four nearest schools, regardless of class, would be far more welcome than “Bell to Bell, No Cell.”
The legislature loves to focus on hot-button issues like cell phones, school prayer, property taxes, bathrooms for transgender students, special education, and whether undocumented students can be educated. But it tends to shy away from anything that actually impacts education at a time when Kansas’ standing for education is slipping.
Otherwise, our state becomes, like Lake Wobegon, the little place that time forgot and the decades cannot improve.
— ERIC MEYER