The Crisis in Public Education

The Crisis in Public Education
Frosty Troy

Frosty Troy delivered this address at the annual meeting of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Washington, D.C., November 12, 1994. It is published by CHRISTIAN ETHICS TODAY with the permission of Mr. Troy and of Mr. Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United, who provided the remarks that introduce Mr. Troy.

Frosty Troy is the Editor of The Oklahoma Observer, an inde­pendent journal of politics, government, and social issues. It has won at last count at least 40 local, state, and national journalism awards. (It is doubtful that The New York Times has won that many-at least they should not have done so.) Before starting this paper, published by his wife, Helen, Frosty Troy served as Associate Editor of the Tulsa Tribune and worked in the state capitol and Washington bureau of that paper. Understanding that some people do not read any more, he decided to move into the multimedia empire. He has a daily radio commentary covering the entire state of Oklahoma; and he was a commentator as well for American Public Radio and has twice been named Commentator of the Year. He has received a number of other awards not just in journalism. He has the Oklahoma Friend of Education Award, the National Friend of Education Award, and has been cited as Outstanding Investigative Reporter by the Washington Journalism Review. He also takes seriously his other civic commitments. He is the recipient of Scouting`s God and Country Award and also of the American Legion`s Patriotism Award. The Oklahoma Observer has one of the great mottoes of American journalism, "To Comfort the Afflicted and to Afflict the Comfortable." Frosty Troy, thank you for sharing.

Thank you. It is an honor to be with you, all the way from Oklahoma, the state which is still trying to build a University of which the football team can be proud. You know, I told Barry Switzer when he moved to Texas, "Well, we`ll start losing games because we`ll have to stop recruiting in prison." I don`t know if you saw me on ESPN when they did a little thirty minute program with me after Barry Switzer got the new job with the Dallas Cowboys. I certainly enjoyed it because I have covered a lot of his career which has been very colorful, to say the least. The inter­viewer said, "What do you think about his going to Texas?" I said, "The minute he crossed the Red River into Texas he raised the IQ of both states." Barry called me and said, "What does that mean?"

I spent last evening in Portland, Oregon with the School Board Association. The President asked me a question during dinner, "Why are you interested in public education?" I unhesitatingly told her my story. I was the new guy on the block in 1960 at the state capitol for the Tulsa Tribune. I`ll be honest with you. I went over there to uncover waste, graft, and corruption and win the Pulitzer Prize. That is how you win the Pulitzer Prize, by uncov­ering waste, graft, and corruption. When I got over there, there was a state Superintendent for Public Instruction named Dr. Oliver Hodge, a very dour man. He kept dogging me. He would see the reporters at lunch in the Capitol cafeteria and he would say, "Are you going to come to the meeting of the state Board of Education? Are you going to cover our Department." I would be sitting there with these veteran reporters. I am the new kid on the block embarrassed to death because he was mocking them. Not a single reporter would even respond when he sent the agenda to the press room. They would not come. Finally, he jumped me at a legislative committee meeting one day in front of a bunch of peo­ple and said, "Aren`t you going to start covering the State Board of Education?"

Well, I am a Catholic. We thrive on guilt. Why, if we didn`t have guilt we wouldn`t have a church. I said, "I`ll come." So I started covering the State Board of Education. Good Lord, no wonder the other reporters wouldn`t cover it: it was Oklahoma`s answer to Sominex. Dull. Dreary. But he touched a spark in me. Every now and then he would point out how poor the public schools were in Oklahoma for a lot of the kids.

Oh, if you were on a Country Club street, no problem-Tulsa, or Oklahoma City or Bartlesville or Muskogee or Kingfisher-no problem. But if it was your misfortune to be in a poor neighborhood or in one of those little bitty rural hamlets, God help you because your schools were terrible. They would have three or four kids to one textbook. The textbook program at that time was only a few years old and did not even mention this problem. It was terrible, just awful. You know how you got to be a teacher? You got a pulse.

So, he sensitized me. I started traveling across Oklahoma. I had this wonderful publisher, Jenkin Lloyd-Jones-Right Wing, Republican to his ingrown toenails; but he had the good sense to know that the future of Oklahoma depended on what happened in the public school classrooms. So, he said, "Money, marbles, or chalk. Whatever it takes, Frosty, cover it. Do it." And so I start­ed traveling Oklahoma in an area that no other reporters gave a darn about. In almost any daily newspaper, do you know where they put the new kid on the block? On the education beat. The guy or the gal with the least knowledge is going to translate one of the most important things that happens in that community, what is happening in public education, for the reading public in that community. It is sad but true.

So, I just started writing about it. I guess that is why I am here tonight. I just stayed after it and stayed after it. Quite frankly, with that marvelous newspaper behind me, we started winning journalism awards; and legislators started awakening. That was something, particularly in Oklahoma where you usually had to say "Chicken fight!" to get one of them up.

Let me tell you something, folks, if you think one person can`t make a difference. That wonderful old man in what he did in sensitizing me changed my whole life. I was in Washington a few years ago with my wife in the Library of Congress getting the First Amendment Award for our fight against censorship in the public schools in Oklahoma. I have been able to travel this beautiful country and a lot of the known globe speaking just on the subject of public education simply because that guy sensitized me. I was in Texas. Then I was in Arkansas. And before you knew it, the word spread, "Call Frosty Troy. You want to get people stimulat­ed about public education? Call Frosty Troy." Maybe you saw me on Nightline. I debated the vice president of the Moral Majority and he turned around to the host and said, "I don`t care what he is saying. Everybody knows that public education is a failure." I asked the host, "Well, ask him if he went to public schools." He said, "I certainly did." I said, "He`s Exhibit A."

Listen. I represent a little old state where we have totally restructured our public schools. The seventh poorest state in the Union, and those voters trudged to the polls where 54% of them voted a $2.1 billion tax increase on themselves for a new curricu­lum-foreign languages in the elementary grades, certified teach­ers, rehired guidance counselors and all the librarians we had fired during the oil bust, and a renewed curriculum. That was a tough one. Shame on What do you mean, you want learner out­come? I went to a Southern Baptist church in south Oklahoma. There were 1500 parents there; and the anger! One lady ran to the trav­eling microphone, and she said, "Listen, if we get outcome based education, OBE, they`re going to teach our children to hate their par­ents." I ran to the other traveling microphone and said, "No; that`s automatic at 13."

We do have learner outcome. It is not good enough to be able to conjugate a verb or do sentence declension. You need to know how to write a good letter of application for a job. Education ought to mean something. I represent a state that has the single finest voca­tional technical education system in America. They come from all the other states and even Europe and even Asia. Mitsubishi Industries flew all their executives over to see our magnificent achievement. Every kid is not going to college. We dump these kids out on the streets constantly with high school diplomas so they can cook hamburgers. Not in Oklahoma. We have got industry coming out our ears, new industry, the new Kimberley­Clark Kleenex plant, the world`s largest passenger tire manufactur­ing plant, Goodyear, and others. And guess why? Because educa­tion works for us. If you don`t hear anything else I say, remember this, God gives kids different gifts. And the beautiful thing about public education is that it addresses all those kids and whatever their gifts are whether they are a genius, average, retarded, or devel­opmentally disabled.

When I hear the critics of public education, especially my fel­low Christians, I just want to get them to spend a week fol­lowing my sister around in a public school classroom in Harlingen, Texas where she teaches where 70% of her students in the fifth grade have English as their second language. And those little kids come to school with hope in their hearts and their parents come behind them to say "Help them." They did not come over here to get rich. Almost every day they say, "We came here so our kids could get an education. We are here so these children can get an education. We have got to get them educated."

Shame on the voters of California. They did a bad thing with that recent vote. You just don`t make children pay for the sins of their parents. As long as they are in the country; legally or illegal­ly, they are entitled to all the emoluments of citizenship. That is what makes this country great. And by the way, except for the American Indians, that is how all the rest of us got here. I don`t know what we are looking down our noses at immigrants for. This immigrant bashing that goes on, much of it from Christian pul­pits, shame on them. Lamar Alexander running around America promoting private education, charter schools, vouchers, and his friend Chris Whittle, saying that we are losing 25% of our kids. That spurious remark of his keeps coming out of his mouth almost everywhere he goes. It is not true. Let me tell you about public education. I will give it to you in shorthand and unlike the critics of public education, I will back up everything I say here with evi­dence, with sources, real sources.

First of all, do you know what the dropout rate was in American public education last year? It was 11%. This is the highest retention rate in the the voters of history of public education in this country. When they long for the good old days, what are they talking about? The good old days in 1950, by the way, when fewer than 50% of the white kids graduated from high school and fewer than 20% of the minorities did? What good old days? When they were segregated? Separate and unequal all across the country? What good old days?

These are the good old days in public edu­cation. I am sorry that we have any dropout at all. But let me tell you an amazing statistic. Check this with the Department of Education. Within five years of dropping out, 40% of the kids have gone back and gotten their General Equivaleney Diploma, the GED. And do you know why? They won`t talk to you about any job, even fast food jobs, without a high school diploma or its equivalent. And that is the way it ought to be. You set standards.

And then you hear William Bennett saying, "Aw. Gee. We are just not getting the bang for the buck. We spend more money than any other country in the world." Boy, that guy proves year after year that all the squirrels don`t live in the trees. Book of Virtues. What an oxymoron, coming from him. Now the truth about spending. Out of the sixteen major industrial democracies in the world, this country ranks fourteenth in our spending for education. If you believe the latest UN figures, and I have those and will give them to you in chart form if you want them, at the best we rank ninth. Now if you crank in our higher education sys­tem, we rank third, after Canada and the Netherlands; and that is wonderful. But we are not first there either. We have been losing ground in financing public education in this country; and one of the reasons we have been doing so is because of zealots who are lit­erally using the pulpits, both political pulpits and religious pulpits, to bash public education. They are in the process of demonizing public education. Because if you can demonize it, then people don`t feel bad when it is destroyed. Because it is bad. The truth is we don`t spend nearly enough in public education.

I remember one night when Ronald Reagan was addressing a joint session of Congress. I was sitting on my couch in my living room with my beautiful wife, Helen-of Troy-(Oh wow; it took me a lot of years to find one named Helen) and Ronald Reagan was saying, "We`re just not getting enough bang for the buck. We spend more money than any other country in the world…." That`s not true. Why do they keep repeating these myths? I`m screaming at the television, "Let`s try money one time; and if it doesn`t work, we`ll go on to something else." And Bennett says, "Look at all the billions and billions and billions of new dollars we`re spending." You know where it`s going, don`t you? Do your homework. If you`re going to defend public education it`s not good enough to say, "Oh, it`s wonderful. It`s traditional. It has always been there." It won`t always be there. You had better arm yourself with facts and fig­ures. Example: Do you know where most of the billions of dollars have gone in public education in the last twenty years? Special education. 22 cents out of every public school dollar is now going to special educa­tion, 39.7 billion dollars a year. And I am not denigrating it; but those wonderful guys and gals on Capitol Hill who passed the special education legislation-read the law-it says they would fund 40% of the cost of the spe­cial education schools. Do you know what they put in it last year? Seven percent. And it`s driving some districts to distraction. I was in Philadelphia the other night; the Superintendent taking me back to the airport said, "Boy, that was an interesting story you had about the one special ed kid they had in the public school that cost $51,000 last year. Frosty, that`s not even in the ballpark. We have a child in one of our suburban districts that cost $118,000 last year." Do I want to take that away from them? No. But when you talk about all the money that is going to edu­cation, you had better find out what the money is and where it is really going because it has not been going to the regular class­rooms. The American public school teacher, on average, makes less money than any other public school teacher of any major industrial democraey in the world. And takes all of that heat. Doesn`t it really depress you to turn on the television in the morning to hear some so-called expert, some pseudo-expert, claiming to be pro-public education but instead is bashing it? I asked my public school teacher sister; and she said, "Listen. Frosty, some days when I go home, there is nothing left in the barrel. And I just go to bed feeling really bad. Because it`s so tough." She spent $700 of her own money last year for things like workbooks because the state of Texas will not equalize the educational opportunity of all those boys and girls. And Texas is not alone, by the way. Thirty-seven states now have pending law­suits trying to equalize the educational opportunity of boys and girls. But my sister then says, "But then the most wonderful thing happens. I wake up the next morning ready to go because I`ve got kids who won`t get a hug that day unless I hug them. I`ve got kids that I know that the school lunch is the only hot meal they are going to get that day. And I know that-it almost drives me crazy-outside their parents, as their teacher, I`m the most important person in their lives." It`s true.

Just because you don`t start the day with a prayer, Hail Mary, Our Father, Mantra, or whatever, does not mean public educa­tion is non-religious. I believe with all the fervor of my soul that the most priceless religious institution in America is public education. It does more of God`s work every day for forty two and a half million boys and girls than any other institution, or three or four combined.

Last spring I was supposed to be speaking to the librarians in Colorado, 700 of them. They had a terrible complaint from Focus on the Family, James Dobson. Ohhh. Do you ever get the impression that his ambition is to die in his own arms? He did not show up. He sent Dr. Tom Minnery. And I debated him; and I whipped him. When I got through, he looked over and he told the audience, "Well, I agree with everything Mr. Troy said here today." And I said, "Put that on the radio." It doesn`t make any difference whether they agree with me. All I hear com­ing out of Focus on the Family on those 1500 radio stations every day is vouchers, vouchers, vouchers and secular humanism, all of this denigrating of public education. Pat Robertson-good Lord, some day God is going to get him for what he said about the public schools in this country, because it isn`t true. What he is saying is not true.

In my profession of journalism we do a rot­ten ~ob in covering public education. Some kid gets stabbed in a school-Page One. People think, "Everybody is being stabbing in public schools." All some journalists look for is sensationalism. This summer I had a reporter from a national publication who called me and said, "I`m getting ready to do a back-to-school series; and they said you real­ly knew a lot about public education. I`d like to interview you. Why your perverse interest in public education?" I said, "Young man, I`m not going to play your game. I`ve done this a hundred times. You`re going to bash public education and you want me to defend it. So you want me to be the little quote that you sprin­kle in your article and then counter me with "But…," "but…," "but " You ought to do the real story of public education about what happens in those classrooms every day, about the kids who come to school, 4.6 million of them in our public schools are handicapped. Try to find them in some of my denomina­tional schools-Catholic. Or Christian or Baptist or Academy or Private or any other form of non-public education. I`ll tell you who takes those 4.6 million kids and makes a difference in their lives, the public schools. Half a million kids showed up this year at the public schools-are you ready for this-homeless. We had to change the law in Oklahoma for you used to have to have a permanent address to get in public schools. The kids come from the Jesus House and Lake Thunderbird where they are living in tents and old trucks. Doesn`t that tell you something? Isn`t that amazing? Here are Mama and Daddy with no jobs, often with health-related problems. They`re not winos from down on skid row. These are people who will come in there and say to Sister Ruth, "Sister, where is the nearest public school?" Isn`t that amaz­ing? No jobs, no income, no prospects but they have this mag­nificent desire for their kids to be educated. Now, let me tell you, you ought to see the jitneys running out of the Jesus House in downtown Oklahoma Ciry to those public schools. Nobody else would take those kids. They talk about alcohol and drugs and violence in the public schools. Those aren`t public school products. Those are the products of society that come to public schools. That is all the difference in the world.

So, I pretty well changed that reporter`s mind; and he did some really good work in public education. And he did the most amazing thing that few reporters do anymore. He went to the classrooms. Imagine that. You know, a school board meeting is not education. That is administration. If you want my living def­inition of public education I saw it a year ago last May at Owen Stadium, University of Oklahoma at Norman. The most amazing thing happened. The first graduate who walked across to a thun­derous ovation was an 88-year-old great grandmother. And she just strutted. She gets to the end of the runway and a television reporter puts a microphone under the nose and says, "In your eighties and you`re just now getting your degree. What would you do with a degree in your eighties?" Isn`t that snotty? But all wis­dom is not in books. That wonderful, gor­geous, silver-haired little great grandmother looked at that television reporter and said, "I just got around to it." How`s that for a straight answer? She said, "I put my husband through Oklahoma State University (which is where my two children went.) And then the babies start­ed coming. And then the grandbabies; and we had the ranch to run; and then we had a won­derful life together-and then he was dead. And I still have this hole in my heart. Most parents in those days thought it was unheard of for women to go to college unless they were going to be a teacher which I did not want to be. But my parents wanted me to go. Now it has taken me five and a half years to finish. I had to have a lot of help. I paid my tuition. I just tell you that I stand tonight on this plat­form a complete person.

We are one of the rarest countries in the world. Do you know that in most countries in the world that would not be possible? Oh, you can go on to a class or two. But you can`t do what that great grandmother did.

Do you know who walked behind her? .L./ This could only happen in Oral Roberts Country. The youngest graduate in the histo­ry of the University of Oklahoma. He enrolled at OU with his mother at age 14. He aced Pre Med in two years. I was telling my brother Jerry who is a Doctor, I said, "You are not going to believe this; but there is a kid who just aced Pre Med in two years. He is 16 years old. He is recruited by Harvard; and every medical school in the coun­try wants this kid." And my brother, Jerry, says, "I doubt that very seriously." You know, it`s the most amazing thing. I come from a medical &mily, by the way, and isn`t it the most amazing thing in the world that with a medical degree you also get general knowl­edge of every other subject in the world? Isn`t that amazing? Isn`t that amazing? I said, "But it`s true. I`ve got the press release from the University. It`s true." To which my brother replied, "He would have to be a genius." I said, "He is. 167 IQ. The equivalent of three new members of Congress." Three days after he was gradu­ated, he was back in his home high school with his Mother again, Duncan High School. "Please, sir," he said in the Principal`s office, "Could I come back to Duncan High School and finish my senior year with my class?" To which the Principal replied, "How can I enroll a college graduate in high school? Why in the world would you want to do that?" He said, listen to this folks because this is what public education is all about, "Well, sir, I have really missed my friends; and I want to go to the prom." The public school is a community. I could have afforded to send my kids to any private school in Oklahoma City or Catholic school at Saint Philips. I wanted them in public education. I wanted them there warts and all. And there were plenty of warts there, by the way. I wanted them to meet a whole range of people and be part of the real America. And then my son comes by one night and piops down on the couch and says, "I want to know if you will lend me that money." My granddaughter is starting to school. "We`re going to put her in St. Philips." I said, "Well, she`s your daughter. I don`t have any problem with that; but if you do, you`re out of the will." Let me tell you. She`s in public school right now where she belongs. Loving every minute of it, too. She has foreign language in the seventh grade. Computer training. You would not believe what happens when you really spend money to hire quality teachers and put in a quality curriculum with good facilities.

Don`t buy that Bell Curve crap. Let me tell you something. If you put the energy and the effort behind those kids, it`s amazing how well they do. I`ve been in some of those inner city schools that Jonathan Kover wrote about. A disgrace. Did you see what hap­pened two weeks ago? The state took over that public school system because that is a district that won`t even fix the plumbing and teachers and kids were wading through human waste three or four or five times a year. Or go to New York City where there is a high school in the Bronx in a former bowling alley with no windows and no library. Come on. Listen. I`ll tell you when I`ll sit down and rest. I`ll sit down and rest when every kid has an equal educational opportunity regardless of where he or she is in this country. That is what it`s all about.

Just because of temporary political reverses, don`t you sit down. Don`t you give up. Let me tell you. When things get tough the tough get going. Now more than ever. The best Christmas present you could give this year would be to find some leader in your community and give them Rob Boston`s book, Why The Religious Right Is Wrong. pub­lished by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Boy, that book is a wonder. And by the way, if they are a part of the Religious Right, read it to them. I was told there are a couple of you here. I forgot that or I would have talked slower. We say to the radical religious right, get off of our backs. We are Christians. And we are Jews. Most of us love our kids, love our schools, and love our country. Don`t you dare paint me as non-patriotic. Don`t you dare paint me as anti-Christian, Don`t you dare paint me as anti-God. There are some things I`m just not going to tolerate. You bet I`ll fight back; and I`ll continue fighting back. Oh, I know. They canceled a bunch of my "In Services" seminars for teachers` groups around the country. So what? I just get more invitations. It says more about them than it does about me, by the way, when they do that kind of censorship. I have got to where the minute I get a call I just tell them, "Well, you`re going to hear from Focus on the Family." They don`t want me because I tell the truth.

You tell the truth. Fight them. Listen to Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage; rage against the dying of the light."

Do you know what the light of America is? It is 42.6 million boys and girls in our public schools. That is 94% of all the school-age kids in America. It is 88,000 buildings in 15,557 school dis­tricts; and it is two and a half million teachers either actually or symbolically saying, "Come on. We don`t care what color you are or what side of town you come from. We don`t care who your Mommy and Daddy are, whether you are rich or poor or what church you go to, or whether you even go to church. We don`t care if you are just an average old student like an 88-year-old great grandmother or a genius like that 167 IQ kid from Duncan, Oklahoma, or my little nephew, Lennon.

Anybody who wants to bash the public schools should have .Elbeen with my family last Thanksgiving a year ago in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I married one of three German farm girls, the youngest. And the middle girl, Hazel, has a grandson who, when he was born, had a distended stomach, was palsied, and has men­tal retardation. How many things can happen to one poor little child? When he was four, he sounded like a wounded animal. One could understand hardly a word he said. They put him in the public schools of Tulsa, Oklahoma in a Special Ed class. And that neurological pediatrician put all the wires on his head and they got him a speech therapist and all of that. They spent a lot of money on him because he had a lot of need. And there we were at Thanksgiving; and Hazel, my sister-in-law said, "You know, Lennon is trying to learn all of our names. He has really had trou­ble with Frosty. But he is going to try today." I married a Southern Baptist, by the way, and we tend to alternate between praying and meddling. They have this wonderful tradition in their family. They get in a prayer circle before they eat. So we got in a prayer circle, 26 of us and Lennon popped out in the middle of that circle and he put his hands on those little 11-year-old hips and he looked at me and he said, "Uncle Froddy." That is his Harvard. That is his Yale. That is his MIT That is all this country owes anybody. A chance, an opportunity. Most of those kids are going to get their opportunity in public education or they are not going to get it at all. Vouchers are another way of saying, SEGREGA­TION. Not just along racial lines this time but along class lines. Read the Carnegie Report on those few vouchers districts in the United States and see what happened to the poor kids left behind.

So, don`t give up. Take courage from the recent elections. All I decided to do was to redouble my efforts. And when I went to bed after the election results were in, at 3:00 in the morning (I`m a television commentator for the CBS station and have a Sunday TV show now, too) I closed my little eyes real tight and I said, "God, don`t let anything bad happen to the public schools."

Thank you.