TEACHERS NEED HELP, NOT CRITICISM.

Byline: Davy McClay Local View

MAYOR Antonio Villaraigosa and other concerned citizens have been escalating their tirades about the Los Angeles Unified School District lately. So why would I, a mere teacher, be responding to these comments?

Because I'm an integral part of the district, along with 42,000 other teachers and our valuable support staff, our fantastic publicly elected board, our superintendent and his staff, and most importantly, our students and parents. I need to clarify just ``who'' the LAUSD is because we're sometimes given the implication that the district is a ``thing.'' These critical comments often imply that the ``thing'' is malfunctioning and must be repaired, like a broken washing machine.

To be sure, the LAUSD must be held accountable. However, as soon as charismatic and articulate political leaders become popular and begin feeling their oats, they inevitably want to ``rescue'' education. The problem is they keep thinking of education as a factory that produces widgets. The solution is quite simple, they tell us, and off we go with a new set of policies for us teachers to implement as we try to give our students an education.

There are many political would-be micro-managers out there. Now we can add our mayor to the list. But the politicians' understanding of the education system they want to rescue is deeply flawed.

Flaw No. 1 in their simplistic and limited view: We are not a factory. We are an intricate weaving of all the stakeholders to produce something that defies simple quantification: learning, which takes us to ...

Flaw No. 2: Although quantified results are valuable guides for us along the way, the easy-to-read test scores themselves, like widgets, are not the product. Our product remains that evasive thing called learning. The basics we test are certainly part of learning, but a truly educated person knows how to take those tested building blocks and miraculously create something meaningful. Which leads to ...

Flaw No. 3: With all the powerful political debates and well-intentioned voices declaring, ``I have the answer,'' little of genuine substance has resulted.

The forces behind No Child Left Behind will argue, ``But look what we've brought about since 2002!'' I beg to differ. All President George W. Bush did with NCLB was capitalize on the forces already in motion before the presidential election of 2000 (such as the demand for clearly defined academic standards). Indeed, both candidates in that election were scrambling to incorporate the momentum of these powerful trends in their education platforms.

So far, our charismatic leaders at the national, state and local levels - as a group - have yet to produce a definitive answer to education's ``problems.'' And yes, those problems inhere primarily in education, not just in a single district like the LAUSD.

So how do we really solve these ongoing ``problems''? We already know the answers. We stakeholders just need to do the answers better:

Parents, continue preparing your children for kindergarten, starting at birth. Then as your children's schooling progresses, keep actively supporting them and their teachers with actions. (This takes time!)

We teachers need to continue remembering that parents often may not really know the required actions, and we need to teach them as needed, while respecting the home culture. We teachers need to continue fine-tuning our delivery skills and fine-tuning our hearts. True learning is centered on truth, and truth is only taught from heart to heart.

Finally, administrators and union leaders, continue looking beyond the adversarialism of the past and continue striving for these simple goals, over and above all else.

If our mayor and other complainers would like to really help us accomplish these seemingly simple tasks, we'd be most appreciative. Most of us are working way beyond our job descriptions to succeed, and we would welcome constructive help from any source. But simply using your charismatic personality to tell us all we're doing wrong, and to ``save'' us, has never worked yet. At best will only divert precious resources away from our ultimate goal.