What's in a Picture?

Today's local newspaper (Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, MS) carries a classic pair of photos in its Metro/State section. Anyone who has closely followed education politics in America for the past 25 years would quickly spot the relationship between the two pictures.

Page 1B features a handsome 8 x 6 color closeup of a well-coiffed, well-dressed US Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling as she gestures a point while seated before the Mississippi State Board of Education yesterday. The headline reads "Education secretary: Federal goals realistic."

Page 3B carries a dark 5 x 3 b/w photo of folks in the audience. Anyone who knows public school teachers and administrators would likely say that's who forms the group in the picture. Looks on their faces are the key. Smiling? Not one of them. Skeptical? Most of them, judging from facial expressions in the picture.

Unmasked, the struggle between powerful politicians and near-powerless professionals is a huge problem for American public schools and children who attend them. Under current federal law ("No Child Left Behind"), there are stringent goals, directives and timelines for testing students and tracking test scores, but the professional in the school has little or no time to focus on the child--rather on the teaching of testing skills and test content to children. That's not to say that school professionals don't care, but rather that the system in place won't permit child-centeredness.

The presidential election next November will tell us a lot about when or if the two sides in the two pictures will ever "morph" into the happy, smiling face of every child who WAS left behind in recent decades. When that happens, it will be a wonderful day--and way overdue.