Carnegie Panel Calls for Urban School Reforms

In a scorching indictment of U.S. urban education, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching called on President Reagan on Tuesday to declare effective education for all children “a top priority” and recommended convening a permanent National Forum on Urban Schools to help achieve “quality education for all children by the year 2000.”

In its report, “An Imperiled Generation: Saving Urban Schools,” the foundation called it “disgraceful that in the most affluent country in the world so many of our children are so poorly served. . . . Many people have simply written off city schools as little more than human storehouses to keep young people off the streets.”

The most important recommendations were the extension of the Head Start program, which currently covers only one in five eligible children, to all who are eligible, and a new accountability procedure in which schools would be judged by student success.

The report looked at schools in six major cities, including Los Angeles, and cited three local schools, Locke and Fremont high schools and Bret Hart Junior High for their innovative programs aimed at student retention. Needs, however, far outstrip resources. At Fremont High School, for example, 125 students considered dropout risks are participating in an “adopt-a-student” program providing an adult role model, but the need is for at least 10 times that number.

Paul M. Possemato, Los Angeles Unified School District associate superintendent for policy implementation, who worked with the Carnegie task force, said that under present conditions, “public education is destitute and powerless. . . . If we don’t provide quality education for all . . . we should declare bankruptcy and quit.”

In preparation for the last nine months, the report is being issued at this time as a “challenge to the (presidential) candidates,” particularly Vice President George Bush, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who are making the quality of education an issue, according to Eugene H. Cota-Robles, University of California assistant vice president of academic affairs and a Carnegie trustee.

It has become clear, a Carnegie spokesman said, that the educational reform movement launched five years ago is having no effect on urban schools, which in many cases are continuing to deteriorate. Cota-Robles noted that between 1983 and 1986 the proportion of black students taking courses required for entry into the UC system declined from 18% to 9%, with a comparable downturn for Latinos.

Key Problems Identified

The report cited as key problems low reading levels, low expectations, student anonymity, disorganization, disciplinary difficulties and deteriorating facilities.

A social studies teacher in a Los Angeles high school confided that her students were using a third-grade-level book because that was “all they could handle.” And an 11th-grader with ambitions to be an architect but taking only a general “high school mathematics” course said, “I’ll need this more than I’ll need geometry and algebra.”

Teen-age pregnancy was cited as the primary reason for girls dropping out.

The cost of refurbishing public schools nationwide was estimated at $30 billion during the next 10 years.

Student apathy led the list of disciplinary problems at urban schools, with 81% reporting it as a problem, followed by absenteeism (78%), student turnover (58%), disruptive behavior, drugs, vandalism, and alcohol use (all more than 50%).

Students by and large are unknown to their teachers because of the high mobility rates in inner cities. One Los Angeles high school, for example, with an enrollment of 2,028, had 1,790 students enter and withdraw during the year. Ernest L. Boyer, president of the foundation, said in a statement that “students drop out because no one noticed that they had, in fact, ‘dropped in.’ ”

California Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said Tuesday he took exception with Carnegie’s charge that the reform movement has hurt minority youngsters in inner-city schools.

“When Boyer says reform is failing because the diagnosis is wrong--that more homework, more testing, more requirements isn’t working for those kids--I just disagree with that,” he said. “More homework and core courses have proven successful for minority students (in California). There have been huge increases in courses and dropout reduction. So for some of those kids it is working.”

Honig acknowledged that for other disadvantaged students, the reforms have not been sufficient. For those students, he said, more assistance, such as individual tutoring, should be provided.