[Jeff Greenfield:] As America's students head back to school, one of the oldest questions in our history heads back with them: How do we make our schools better? More money? More accountability? Higher standards? Computers in every classroom? More discipline? Tonight, yet another question: What is it we want our schools to do? Tonight on GREENFIELD AT LARGE. America's students are heading back to school now, some 53 million of them, and that sound you're hearing is not just their groans of resignation, nor their parents' sighs of relief. You are also hearing the renewal of a debate that's as old as the republic: what should our schools teach, how should they teach it, who should run them, by what standards? There's hardly an issue in our public life, from economic justice to the politics of race, to our morals and values to the promise and perils of high tech, that hasn't focused on our schools. Today, as CNN's Rusty Dornin tells us, there's another question: Just how much can and should we ask of our schools?
[Paul Cheng, Principal, Lowell High School:] Any ninth graders here?
[Rusty Dornin, Cnn Correspondent:] Paul Cheng, principal of Lowell High School in San Francisco, knows about expectations. His school is academically one of the best in the Bay Area. He knows in education, there are no end to the expectations.
[Cheng:] We know that there is a greater demands for student performance. We know there's a greater demand for parent involvement, and teachers to teach at higher standards, and to have everybody rise to a higher level.
[Dornin:] So many expectations, and for so many schools, so few resources. The goals may be the same.
[Cheng:] A very strong curriculum, quality teaching and a safe school environment.
[Dornin:] But few can agree on how to achieve them. More computers or more math teachers? What about English? Art? After- school programs? Paul Cheng is one of a growing number of educators who say, "Let each school district make up its own mind."
[Cheng:] Those people who are in the community know best how best to use those dollars. I think people at the central government and the state government, they need to recognize that.
[Dornin:] While many schools want to do their own thing when it comes to where money is spent, teachers say they want to know what's expected of them. That means figuring out what are the top priorities. The American Federation of Teachers says standardized curriculum in core subjects, more teachers, smaller class sizes, stronger reading programs in lower grades and extra help for students who need it. And then there's technology. While many believe computer literacy should be added to the three R's, reading, writing and arithmetic, there are still those who say, "Hold on, let's not get fancy until we learn our ABC's."
[Greenfield:] CNN's not ABC's, but CNN's Rusty Dornin. Joining us now to talk about this from Washington, Bob Chase. He is president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest union of public school teachers. Also in Washington, Jeanne Allen. She is president of the Center for Education Reform. With me here in New York, James Verrilli. He is co-founder and co-director of the North Star Academy, a charter school in Newark, New Jersey. James, that school that you co-run. In terms of the kids who come in and their needs, how different are they from what we traditionally think of as what kids come to school to do, and how do you meet those new needs?
[James Verrilli, Co-founder, North Star Academy:] I think there are a great deal of needs that students come to school with. A lot of students come to school unprepared academically, many have not been read to as children. Their fundamentals in math and reading and writing are very low. They come particularly where I am, in the city of Newark there is a lot of problems in the city, there's a lot of crime, substance abuse, sexual abuse, violence in city so they come from all this, plus parents that are struggling to get by. Mostly single parents who are trying to do this. So they come to school with a great deal of needs, and we had the choice of crying out at the darkness or lighting a candle. And we chose to light a candle. And what we did was to create a school that would really meet the needs of the students there. So we have a longer day, a longer year. Our students go to school through the end of July. We're there every day until 5:00. Our school day runs about an hour or two longer than a regular school day, and then we have after-school activities and programs for the students. What we're trying to do is rise up meet the needs that the community used to provide but doesn't any longer. So we as a school have to meet those needs and provide them. But it takes a great deal.
[Greenfield:] Bob Chase, on the one hand it would seem to me that any teacher could cry, you know, they're bearing the burdens of Joe being asked to do all this. But the other thing that this raises is, if a big city asks the public school system and its teachers to work through the end of July, to be in school until 5:00 every day, to work through lunch hour, the things that James is talking about that would be, I think, probably a strike. In other words...
[Robert Chase, President, National Education Association:] I don't think that is necessarily true, Jeff.
[Greenfield:] OK. Tell me, then, how the teachers are preparing in a public school system to meet the kinds of needs James is telling us about.
[Chase:] Sure, right. There are a lot of schools right now, and a lot of districts, individual schools in districts, who do exactly what James is talking about, where there are extended school days, extended school years, some are programs after-school programs. These type of programs within the public school systems are in fact growing. And if you had an opportunity to really sit down and talk with a lot of public school teachers, they would tell you that these are, in fact, the kind of programs that we need to see in place, with the resources available, to help kids succeed.
[Greenfield:] So then, Miss Allen, if in fact, Bob Chase is right, that public school public school systems, public school teachers are quite aware of the needs that James is telling us about. We have longer days, longer years. Why the clamor for basic reform? That is the group that you had.
[Jeanne Allen, President, Center For Education Reform:] Well, Jeff, in fact, what James had just described is absolutely a model that we should be emulating all across this country. Somebody in the piece your opening piece said that he believes that the school district should have control over where to spend money and what kind of things to purchase. I would go one step further. I think we need to give it to people like James and the co-director to start individual schools, where the money and the teachers themselves the teachers themselves decide where the money is spent, how it is spent, and are directly accountable to the parents. And that kind of setting, Jeff, which has all sorts of programs that we all can agree are there, however, they are locally and community driven, and they are based on the needs of the smaller group of kids, right in front of those folks at that particular charter school. The question the debate today about reform isn't so much what, it is how you take all of these things and put it in a box. Do you use the traditional big city or big town school districts with a central office, with everybody from top down telling people what to do, making them very unresponsive and resulting in what we do have today, which is lack of ABCs known? Or do you take the system and kind of break it up and allow it to still be united but yet have these wonderful autonomous public schools where people have opportunities to delve into this and to specialize where they need it in different places? Newark may be different from Washington, may be different from a suburb. That is where we have to give the control and the incentives, at that level.
[Greenfield:] James, let me ask you. Can this program can this charter school that you are running is it having impact on the public schools in Newark, New Jersey? Are they adapting to what you're showing might be one way to help?
[Verrilli:] We are working very hard to make inroads into the district and to share with them, but unfortunately, the systems are so different that it's hard make it happen. I think that what's happened to the traditional district schools in Newark, is they used a very old model which I think is obsolete. It's like the old housing that they used to make in the 50s for poor folks, these giant projects that were like warehouses for poor people and they put everybody in. Well, nowadays in Newark they're blowing those up and they're building small row houses and condominiums and town houses which are much more humane for people to live in. What I would like to see is school systems begin to do that, because the public education system is not its present manifestation, it's a system that serves the needs of the public.
[Greenfield:] Do you think that's right, Bob Chase, that in fact that the model itself, a centralized, top-down model has to be radically restructured?
[Chase:] First, Jeff, I think there is something interesting that's going on. The whole concept of charter schools would is a concept that enables people to have more opportunity and more choice and doing things within the school to meet the needs of the individual students. At the very same time, we have being passed in state legislatures, as well as in Congress, the legislation that places more controls, in some respect, over the regular public school setting. A very interesting piece of the ESEA discussion that's going on right now in Congress when it comes to the issues of teacher quality, when in fact we are looking at those schools that are deemed to be Title I schools. In the proposed legislation there are very, very strict controls on teacher quality, controls that we think are fine and appropriate and so on. At the very same token, they say these controls or charter schools, rather should be exempt from these very same standards for teachers. What when we're talking about about the idea of enabling school personnel to be empowered and to make decisions at their own level, and at the same time have legislation being adopted or proposed and in some cases, implemented that does exactly the opposite of that, it is rather problematical to understand why people who profess to want more local control are in fact doing just the opposite...
[Greenfield:] I want to pick up on that when we come back. And I also want to pick up on the question that's widely being asked today, whether computers in the classroom are a necessity or a diversion. And later, if our schools have been so troubled for so long, how come America has been doing so well? When we come back.
[Unidentified Male:] And courtesy is what Jane's class talked about that morning. They talked about what courtesy means. Some thought courtesy was like kindness.
[Greenfield:] Just to prove that values were in our classrooms not just in the last five or 10 years, that is a film from 1957, I believe. And we're talking about great expectations for America's schools, with NEA President Bob Chase in Washington. Also in Washington, Jeanne Allen, who is the president of the Center for Education Reform. And here with me in New York, James Verrilli, co-director of the North star Academy, a Newark, New Jersey charter school. Ms. Allen, just on that one question, I don't want to get mired in the legislative agenda of education, but on the issue of whether it's fair to require more of public schoolteachers than of teachers in charter school, is Mr. Chase right about this?
[Allen:] No. There is there is a little bit of a different focus on what's really way going on right now. Essentially, Jeff, across the country and in Congress the debate is about standards, teaching and structure, structure being the kind of thing we just described about charter schools, teaching being how do you make sure the people in front of our kids whom are getting the lion's share, who are getting the lion's share of federal dollars in terms of helping disadvantaged kids are really in fact helping those children get the remedial education they need, and standards how do we hold them to high standards without getting so boggled or boggled in local control that we take over the schools. It is a very, very good question, very good debate, but here is what's really happening: Charter schools are on a performance contract. Unlike every other kind of public school in this country, charter schools have to sign a performance contract laying out their goals. They still have to meet health safety, civil rights and the academic standards, but it's all loose on the means, there are allowed to get there the way they want. What they tend to do, we know through federal as well as university research, is they tend to incentivize their teachers and their staff. They tend to hold them to very high standards, pay them for responsibilities as well as how they perform. We have a huge problem in this country. We don't hold teachers with fixed salary schedules responsible for whether the child learns, and so while many of us long for a simpler time where we can simply send the kids to school and get them to learn, the fact of the matter is teaching is the only profession and teachers are dying for this where we don't say to them, the best ones make this much, and that's great, and the other ones that need help, we've got to do something about it or move them on.
[Greenfield:] All right, let me Ms. Allen, I want to let Mr. Verrilli respond to this specific point: Are your teachers held to the same standards in terms of training, education, as public schools teachers?
[Verrilli:] Far higher.
[Greenfield:] Far higher?
[Verrilli:] Far higher standards, absolutely. Well, it's everything. The quality of teaching is everything in education. A good teacher in the classroom is where teaching happens. And we would not have 900 kids on our waiting list, which is what we have now, if we don't have the absolute best people in our classrooms teaching the kids, because they choose to come here. No one forces them to go to our school the way they would in a district school. So if we don't have the absolute best teachers in the room, nothing will fly, and we are held accountable to a standard, to a high expectation, and the only way we can meet it is if our teachers in the classroom are the absolute best.
[Greenfield:] Mr. Chase, the question I guess which always comes up is: What when you say standards, do you mean, for instance, that the teachers don't necessarily have to have a degree from a teachers college, or school of education, or are you talking about something else?
[Chase:] I'm talking about that plus. Certainly, we believe that those who teach should know how to teach, and we also believe that those who teach should be very well grounded and know their subject area. Both of those things should be in place.
[Greenfield:] All right, well...
[Chase:] As a matter of fact, that is what's being called
[Greenfield:] Because we have a limited amount of time, I do want to turn or wrench the discussion to a different area, and that is the, you know, in every generation, somebody has a magic bullet, whether it's everybody had to be a math and science major after sputnik or everybody has to learn phonics, now it's computers in the classroom. Is it a fair point that if your kids, or any kids, are not computer- learned by the time they get out of school, they are at a powerful disadvantage? Is this a key to what you do?
[Verrilli:] I think it's important to what we do. I think that computer literacy is a skill that children will need, and our children do not have computers at home, so it is up to us as the school to provide them. We have worked very hard to gets lots of technology in the school. We spray-paint the keys, kids learn to touch-type. We have the Internet, they learn to do PowerPoint presentations. However, that alone, a computer in the room, is not going to change things. Again, it's the good teacher using that tool which will make a difference in education.
[Greenfield:] Ms. Allen, your organization is the Center for Education Reform, is computer literacy part of the reform you want to see, or do you think it is a side issue?
[Allen:] I think it's one of the I think it is a side issue at this point. I think I absolutely agree with James, a good school that is held highly accountable, like his school is, and that has to educate all these children and be accountable to their customers, is going to use technology well. The problem has become, like everything we have thrown on the schools, we just assume that by throwing a bunch of computers in a classroom, oftentimes without training and without integrating it, excuse me, into a program, that it's suddenly going to let kids learn. I have been in public schools in lots of cities where kids are sitting in front of the computer to learn to read, and yet there is no one really helping instruct them, but they somehow have been told it's a beautiful computer, it's an expensive program, this will do the trick. It's not teacher's fault that's happening. Quite frankly, it's one of those other top-down controls, so I think that we definitely need to give children those skills, just like I had typing. And now kids need computers, but at the same time, it is a small part. We've got to remember, our kids still aren't reading and writing and doing some of the basic stuff they can do manually, and should learn to do manually first.
[Greenfield:] Mr. Chase, I wonder if this is one of those issues where you and Ms. Allen might actually be in agreement but you can tell me. Do you want to see computers in every classroom, is it an important part of what you think we have to do next?
[Chase:] I think I think computers are an important part, and I think computer literacy is something that's very important for all of our youngsters, but I also agree with the fact that in using computers and technology in schools they have to be integrated into the program. To have them be add-ons without them being fully integrated is really a mistake. There is a growing amount of quality software available for that kind of integration, and it's particularly important.
[Greenfield:] All right. We want to take one more break, and when we come back, we are going to ask our guests we are going to put them on the spot, actually, and ask them for the one thing each of them would most like to fix in American education, after this. President Bush, candidate Bush, back last March, March of 2000, visiting the North Star Charter School in Newark, New Jersey. And we are back for some final thoughts on what we can do now to make our schools more effective, given all the demands on them. James, you hosted the future president. You've given us a kind of preview. What's the one thing you would like to see done?
[Verrilli:] I think educational justice for the disadvantaged. I think that if we could create the kinds of schools that urban children really need, which would be small, which would be diverse, which would be able to meet their needs in a way that's really successful, to eliminate this whole kind of model, of a factory model to a more humane model, that really meets the needs of the kids who come to our schools and gives them the kind of educational justice they deserve.
[Greenfield:] And just a quick follow-up: would you like to see that done throughout the school system, not just in charter and experimental schools, but as a...
[Verrilli:] Yes. The overall school system, I think, needs radical change if we're going to meet the needs of the kids we serve.
[Greenfield:] Mr. Chase, does the school system as a whole need radical change if we're going to serve the kids that we want to serve?
[Chase:] Well, I think my answer to the initial question, Jeff, would be equal opportunity for all kids. There's no question about the fact that that is crucial. There are three or four things I think that can bring that about. Obviously, ensuring a quality teacher in every classroom, the resources necessary to make things work, parental involvement. Just opportunities being there, and people working together to meet the needs of our students.
[Greenfield:] Ms. Allen, that sounds fine. What do you want to add to that add to that mix?
[Allen:] I just want to put a sharper point on the concept of equal opportunity. You know, Jeff, across America this week and next week, our kids are going back to school. And for the most part, the majority of children are going to school not based on their needs, not based on what they need from a school or how successful the school is, but based on where they live. We have got to get away from this ancient idea that somehow children can learn based on their housing pattern. The only reason we're even having the kinds of debates and they're great debates, despite the fact that some of us might disagree the only reason we're having it is because the pressure of greater parent choice across the country in a variety of venues has taken place. We have got to let parents be in the driver's seat, vote with their feet and have some critical options. It's the only thing that's going to pressure the system to get that equal opportunity for all kids.
[Greenfield:] We're down, literally, to our last minute and because, James, you are actually in these schools, so I want to give you the last word on one key question. In terms of money, does your school get about what a regular school gets, more, or less, to do what you do?
[Verrilli:] We get significantly less to do significantly more, and I think it's a problem. I think if our society is going to ask us to meet these higher expectations in the way that North Star is attempting to do so, we need greater resources to do it. Money alone will not solve the problem, but money to programs like ours, that are successful and working very hard in achieving, should receive a greater share of the public dollar to do so, if we're going to serve the children well.
[Greenfield:] And just one last point, because we really have just a few seconds. Are the schools in education, which train most of our teachers, training them to meet the needs that you're trying to meet at North Star?
[Verrilli:] I think there's a great variety of that. Different schools do it well. Different schools do not.
[Greenfield:] All right.
[Allen:] No.
[Greenfield:] I'm sorry?
[Allen:] No.
[Chase:] I think James' answer was right. Some schools are doing an excellent job in preparing teachers. Others are problematic.
[Greenfield:] All right. That's a sufficiently ambivalent note to end this conversation. Thank you very much to all of our guests: Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association; Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform; and James Verrilli he's co-director of the North Star Academy Charter School in Newark, New Jersey. When we come back, a really heretical thought: Are schools really the key to America's future? After this. "And Another Thing": If there is one thing that unites almost everybody about education and it may be the only thing that does it's that our future as a nation will be shaped by the quality of our schools. If our schools are failing, then we must be, as one influential report was titled 20 years ago," a nation at risk." OK, but consider, in the late 1950s, after the Soviet Union put the first satellite in space, there was a national outcry at the state of our schools. "Life" magazine showed our high-schoolers frittering away their time at school dances while back in Moscow Ivan was studying physics and rocket science 10 hours a day. Conquest was just a matter of time, "Life" implied. Well, now the Soviet Union No longer exists. Come to think of it, neither does "Life" magazine. In the 1980s, when Japan seemed to be buying up America's economy, we were sure that their far more rigorous education was the key to their imminent economic conquest. Now, Japan is an economic basket case. The high-tech revolution happened here. Year after year, decade after decade, our students show breathtaking ignorance about history, geography, math, science. It must be only a matter of time before it catches up to us, but as the song says, "Time goes by so slowly." I'm Jeff Greenfield. Tomorrow, who decides whether a patient lives or dies when the patient cannot speak for herself? "SPORTS TONIGHT" is next. Thank you for watching. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com