Monday, July 10, 1995
Washington Irving High School Still Needs Your Help
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
While on vacation upstate, I heard on WNYC about the accusations on part of the Washingt on Irving High School's UFT chapter against the school's principal, Robert Durkin, of having coerced some teachers to give high school diplomas to 19 failing kids. There were subsequent stories of Durkin's punishment by demotion and transfer, meted out by Chancellor Cortines. My heart sank at the thought of this terrible loss to the community, loss of an innovator who has put all his efforts into giving meaningful education and goals to discouraged kids from subpoverty strata. I could only deduce, knowing the standards and objectives of Robert Durkin, that if this indeed was the case, the kids involved were ones that he could see as good future citizens who would turn losers without the boost of a high school diploma. Now I hear that Robert Durkin may have been the victim of a plot. I have not yet examined the facts, but in New York Newsday of 7/7/95 there is a Jim Dwyer column headed "A Heroic Principal Hurt By Phony Story."
This much for support for an innovator from the education system. Let's talk community support. We know that there is much admirable outreach work done by the residential and business community at WIHS. Yet, we have a letter from a reader (T&V, 6/15), after I extolled all of you to support the community-wide effort of tutoring the 9th graders at WIHS, who thinks that the city-wide enrollment system for high schools such as WIHS brings psychopaths to innocent neighborhoods, and accuses the business/WIHS tutoring and assistance alliance of being a PR ploy. He advises us to stop pandering. I may know the concerned neighbor, and I've been wrestling with the problem he exposes. It is a problem of attitude which runs completely counter to the Christian/Judaeic ethic. Are we not our brothers' keepers? Are not our children our future? Can we afford to let the future generations dissipate? You know the predictable answer.
But quoting the Scriptures does not close out the problem. The anonymous writer is not unique in ignoring the ongoing self-destruction of the public school system in New York City, and in wanting to roll up the sidewalks and letting the poverty-struck ethnic communities go to perdition. Some members of the teaching fraternity may in effect be proceeding in the same direction.
A lot of these attitudes are ecoonomics-driven. I want to tell you a story, not entirely related, of another school system that is truly suffering from lack of community support. It is in Columbia County, a farming community 2 1/2 hours and an entire life style away from NYC. There, in Hudson Valley, the heartland of New York State, when the local high school needed rebuilding, at the cost of $20 million, the community rejected the proposal, and outvoted the concerned parents, time and again. Whatever the reason for the objection, education suffers.
Upstate, opposing the rebuilding of crumpling schools and giving the kids a science laboratory was a survival issue for many of the older residents (the kids move to Schenectady or elsewhere out of the area, where there are jobs). Increased taxes would cut into the meager subsistence livelihood of many residents of this farming area. Regrettably, most of the traditional NYS family farms are dead, agribus has destroyed them.
But this community opposition to the school rebuilding will not destroy the Columbia County kids. Despite the crumbling structures, the students in the Taconic Hill School District (430 in high school, 1745 overall) are not doing too badly, scoring 500 in math and 500 in verbal SATs, with all of the 70 percent college-bound taking the exams. The kids fit in and do fair work in the colleges they choose, many going to low-cost SUNY schools in nearby Oneonta and Albany and learning practical subjects.
So, the Columbia County kids will survive, even if the school renovation is reduced to bare bones in the next round of voting. But the New York City kids will not. With only 18 percent of WIHS students taking the test, and scoring 300 in verbal SATs and 325 in math (the rest of the city schools are not much better), our city will go down the drain. The worst nightmares of Charles Murray will be fulfilled. The rich will get richer and the poor will have babies and no jobs, and the middle class will be destroyed under the heavy burden of supporting both of them. That is, if it does not get destroyed itself, by automation and reengineering.
This abysmal situation points out that the education system cannot cope, or does not care. Educators are willing to throw more wasted school years and wasted teacher salaries into a social problem that needs to be solved as such. When a Robert Durkin engages in a social solution, generates community support, gets businessmen to paint dilapidated schoolrooms and teach remedial English, the insulted union chapter stabs him. So maybe he asked the system to give diplomas to some kids who with this encouragement might make it in the social scheme. For God's sake, the system graduates illiterates year in and year out, without a peep!
It restores one's faith in humanity to read that the rank-and-file of the WIHS teachers wholeheartedly support Robert Durkin's efforts. Nevertheless, certain forces that be have won a victory. A principal has been punished for wanting some unqualified kids to graduate. The insulted school painter and teacher union chapters have been vindicated. The school-business partnerships that are struggling to give discouraged underclass students a chance, an attitude change, a proof that people care, a reason for positive thinking have lost a motivator, a mover and shaker. The effort has been undermined. And those who care are seen by some as panderers.
That reminds me of a story. Milly and Sam are asleep on the Titanic, when Milly wakes up and shakes her husband. "Sam, get up, the ship is sinking!" "Go back to sleep, is that your ship?" Sam mutters.
I think our ship is sinking, but a lot of self-serving people just want to go back to sleep. If you feel otherwise, if you think that the demotion and removal of Principal Robert Durkin of the WIHS hurts our neighborhood and hurts the kids in the school, consider writing to the Chancellor (Ramon Cortines, Bd of Ed, 110 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201 ). There is still a real chance.
Scores notwithstanding, 80 percent of WIHS kids want to go to college, not untypical of the city. How is that possible? Well, in 1970, after the black and Hispanic students rioted and demanded more minority presence on CCNY campus, CUNY permitted open admission to the seven 2-year comunity colleges and reduced admisssion requirements in the nine senior colleges of the system. Scores did not matter. Already in 1965 the SEEK program, implemented for students deemed disadvantaged by powerty, had provided remedial academic help. Under open admissions this has gone further. Nearly one half of students require remedial studies, in five levels of math and two levels of English, not counting those taking ESL. And with all that help, about 60 percent drop out of college.
Meanwhile, sweet dreams, UFT chapter board delegates, enjoy your three months of vacation, you deserve it, you worked hard.
While on vacation upstate, I heard on WNYC about the accusations on part of the Washingt on Irving High School's UFT chapter against the school's principal, Robert Durkin, of having coerced some teachers to give high school diplomas to 19 failing kids. There were subsequent stories of Durkin's punishment by demotion and transfer, meted out by Chancellor Cortines. My heart sank at the thought of this terrible loss to the community, loss of an innovator who has put all his efforts into giving meaningful education and goals to discouraged kids from subpoverty strata. I could only deduce, knowing the standards and objectives of Robert Durkin, that if this indeed was the case, the kids involved were ones that he could see as good future citizens who would turn losers without the boost of a high school diploma. Now I hear that Robert Durkin may have been the victim of a plot. I have not yet examined the facts, but in New York Newsday of 7/7/95 there is a Jim Dwyer column headed "A Heroic Principal Hurt By Phony Story."
This much for support for an innovator from the education system. Let's talk community support. We know that there is much admirable outreach work done by the residential and business community at WIHS. Yet, we have a letter from a reader (T&V, 6/15), after I extolled all of you to support the community-wide effort of tutoring the 9th graders at WIHS, who thinks that the city-wide enrollment system for high schools such as WIHS brings psychopaths to innocent neighborhoods, and accuses the business/WIHS tutoring and assistance alliance of being a PR ploy. He advises us to stop pandering. I may know the concerned neighbor, and I've been wrestling with the problem he exposes. It is a problem of attitude which runs completely counter to the Christian/Judaeic ethic. Are we not our brothers' keepers? Are not our children our future? Can we afford to let the future generations dissipate? You know the predictable answer.
But quoting the Scriptures does not close out the problem. The anonymous writer is not unique in ignoring the ongoing self-destruction of the public school system in New York City, and in wanting to roll up the sidewalks and letting the poverty-struck ethnic communities go to perdition. Some members of the teaching fraternity may in effect be proceeding in the same direction.
A lot of these attitudes are ecoonomics-driven. I want to tell you a story, not entirely related, of another school system that is truly suffering from lack of community support. It is in Columbia County, a farming community 2 1/2 hours and an entire life style away from NYC. There, in Hudson Valley, the heartland of New York State, when the local high school needed rebuilding, at the cost of $20 million, the community rejected the proposal, and outvoted the concerned parents, time and again. Whatever the reason for the objection, education suffers.
Upstate, opposing the rebuilding of crumpling schools and giving the kids a science laboratory was a survival issue for many of the older residents (the kids move to Schenectady or elsewhere out of the area, where there are jobs). Increased taxes would cut into the meager subsistence livelihood of many residents of this farming area. Regrettably, most of the traditional NYS family farms are dead, agribus has destroyed them.
But this community opposition to the school rebuilding will not destroy the Columbia County kids. Despite the crumbling structures, the students in the Taconic Hill School District (430 in high school, 1745 overall) are not doing too badly, scoring 500 in math and 500 in verbal SATs, with all of the 70 percent college-bound taking the exams. The kids fit in and do fair work in the colleges they choose, many going to low-cost SUNY schools in nearby Oneonta and Albany and learning practical subjects.
So, the Columbia County kids will survive, even if the school renovation is reduced to bare bones in the next round of voting. But the New York City kids will not. With only 18 percent of WIHS students taking the test, and scoring 300 in verbal SATs and 325 in math (the rest of the city schools are not much better), our city will go down the drain. The worst nightmares of Charles Murray will be fulfilled. The rich will get richer and the poor will have babies and no jobs, and the middle class will be destroyed under the heavy burden of supporting both of them. That is, if it does not get destroyed itself, by automation and reengineering.
This abysmal situation points out that the education system cannot cope, or does not care. Educators are willing to throw more wasted school years and wasted teacher salaries into a social problem that needs to be solved as such. When a Robert Durkin engages in a social solution, generates community support, gets businessmen to paint dilapidated schoolrooms and teach remedial English, the insulted union chapter stabs him. So maybe he asked the system to give diplomas to some kids who with this encouragement might make it in the social scheme. For God's sake, the system graduates illiterates year in and year out, without a peep!
It restores one's faith in humanity to read that the rank-and-file of the WIHS teachers wholeheartedly support Robert Durkin's efforts. Nevertheless, certain forces that be have won a victory. A principal has been punished for wanting some unqualified kids to graduate. The insulted school painter and teacher union chapters have been vindicated. The school-business partnerships that are struggling to give discouraged underclass students a chance, an attitude change, a proof that people care, a reason for positive thinking have lost a motivator, a mover and shaker. The effort has been undermined. And those who care are seen by some as panderers.
That reminds me of a story. Milly and Sam are asleep on the Titanic, when Milly wakes up and shakes her husband. "Sam, get up, the ship is sinking!" "Go back to sleep, is that your ship?" Sam mutters.
I think our ship is sinking, but a lot of self-serving people just want to go back to sleep. If you feel otherwise, if you think that the demotion and removal of Principal Robert Durkin of the WIHS hurts our neighborhood and hurts the kids in the school, consider writing to the Chancellor (Ramon Cortines, Bd of Ed, 110 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201 ). There is still a real chance.
Scores notwithstanding, 80 percent of WIHS kids want to go to college, not untypical of the city. How is that possible? Well, in 1970, after the black and Hispanic students rioted and demanded more minority presence on CCNY campus, CUNY permitted open admission to the seven 2-year comunity colleges and reduced admisssion requirements in the nine senior colleges of the system. Scores did not matter. Already in 1965 the SEEK program, implemented for students deemed disadvantaged by powerty, had provided remedial academic help. Under open admissions this has gone further. Nearly one half of students require remedial studies, in five levels of math and two levels of English, not counting those taking ESL. And with all that help, about 60 percent drop out of college.
Meanwhile, sweet dreams, UFT chapter board delegates, enjoy your three months of vacation, you deserve it, you worked hard.
