EDUCATION SUMMIT REPORTS
WE WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS.
On January 24 and 25 of this year (2007), the North Pacific Union Conference sponsored the first of several meetings of an Education Summit involving a select group of Northwest educators and administrators. Coordinated by Lanny Hurlbert, NPUC education director, the summit group focused on six different areas of concern that speak directly to the quality and value of Adventist education: Enrollment, Finances, Leadership, Marketing, Message & Mission, and Spirituality. Six study groups were formed during that initial meeting to explore each area and return with a preliminary report of brainstorming ideas at the next meeting.
On May 10, the summit reconvened to hear reports from each committee, and instructed that these reports be made available for broader comment and response from concerned church members throughout the Northwest.
So here we invite your comments on the the committee reports listed here under the headings of: Enrollment, Finance, Leadership, Marketing, Mission and Spirituality. To go directly to a specific report, click on one of the report topics in the “Categories” list to the right.
To enter your comments, go to the end of each report. Click on the “comments” link, add your own “reply,” then click “Submit Comment.” If the link below the report says “no comments,” that simply means no one has yet filed a comment–go ahead and click to become the first one to comment.
Although we want to hear your honest opinions, please keep your comments constructive and non-personal. The GLEANER staff reserves the right to delete comments not in keeping with these guidelines.
Deadline for comments on these six reports is July 31. If you would prefer to email your comments, you may do so at talk@gleaneronline.org.
Thank you for helping us better understand the concerns of parents and members around the NW, and for helping Adventist educational leaders move ahead with informed choices and a mission for positive change.
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:19 am
Thank you for reviewing our Adventist Education system. As a SDA parent and an educator, I had every intention of ensuring my children were educated in our schools. However, we recently made the decision to enroll our younger daughter in our local public school system.
The bottom line is that my child’s educational experience should include quality curriculum and instruction. We have had no concerns with the care and concern of Christian teachers or the Christian environment.
However, there has been little evidence that instructional practices have changed since I was in elementary student. By contrast, Public schools have changed rather drastically in response to accountability requirements. The emphasis is now on higher level thinking and problem solving skills, higher expectations in core academic classes, along with understanding of the teaching-learning cycle that includes frequent formative assessment and differentiation of instruction to ensure that every child is learning to her fullest potential and is highly engaged in the learning process. Compare this to my child’s experience in our local church school where the teachers deliver a given curriculum based on direct instruction and paper-pencil tasks that rarely ask more than a fill-in-the-blank response. Where children either “get it” or not.
Where teachers report whether my child has progressed through the curriculum and turned in all of her assignments accurately and on time but cannot tell me what skills or next steps need focus. I am not impressed when my child is at the 99th percentile on a national “fill-in-the-bubble” test but has never been taught the writing process and how to clearly articulate and support her thinking. I am not impressed when I am told my child is “above average” in her church school class but is unable to complete grade level test items from our state’s assessment (not a fill-in-the-blank test). Our decision to withdraw from our Adventist school finally came when I realized that my child was no longer in love with learning and in fact, was dreading school and the piles of worksheets (despite the positive relationships with staff and students).
After 3 months in her new school, I am pleased to say that our daughter is a completely different learner. She still loves and misses her church school teacher. However, she loves learning again and as a bonus, her new teacher is a lovely Christian! I would be happy to re-enroll my child in our SDA school if I could be sure that I wouldn’t have to sacrifice quality instruction for the SDA Christian environment.
July 8th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
As a product of sda education system I read your gleaner article with interest and wondered what took you so long when it has been evident to all of us that there has been a problem.
As a business owner when I lose a customer I start to investigate why. I don’t convene a committee. I go straight to the source and start asking questions. I talk to my sales people and I get into the trenches on a regular basis to make sure we are staying focused on the goals I have set: superior customer service, giving my customers great value for their dollar. I make sure my team is behind me, and that I support my people to the utmost. When someone that works for me isn’t on board I try to help them get the vision, but if they don’t, I am not afraid to fire them.
I can tell you in some of the above cases you have failed measurably. I don’t mean to be critical but it’s been my experience that the “Peter Principle” is alive and well in Adventist education. You all tend to raise people to the level of their incompetence. But instead of firing them and getting a better educator in their place you just move them along. Our kids deserve better.
Now on a more positive note I do believe we have some very fine schools
and the teachers really do care about their kids. But Adventist education is fast becoming out of reach of the regular folks out there. When you have a man that is making $12.00hr and is making a car payment and a house payment, and tithe, there is not much left, even if the wife works.
I send all of my grand kids to church school and have helped other families and it can be a real struggle. Do I believe God blesses
our tithe by opening a way? Most definitely. God has blessed me time and again, but our churches can’t do it all. Even with a large subsidy it is still a lot of money.
I believe a lot of the problem is commitment on both the parents and the church for not helping all of our members to see the value of Christian education. Also you are losing a lot of kids because you are not addressing kids that don’t fit in. I can tell you from personal experience.
more and more kids even in our schools are dealing with the drug issue and sex. What are we doing about that?
My wife and I adopted a boy 18 years ago that was a drug baby. He did well for awhile in school but in later years it was evident that there was a problem. He didn’t fit in. He is bipolar and when we finally realized and got him help, the damage was done. When he went to academy the kids didn’t except him and the staff did little to nothing to help him fit in. After that experience he refused to go to church anymore and still won’t have anything to do with it. He was threatened, he was beat up and called a “fag.” Great Christian kids, wouldn’t you say?
My point is not that we had a bad experience, but if there is one kid like mine that is having this problem, there must be 10 thousand more. What a mission field.
When I talked to someone at the conference office about it when it happened, they told me that unless more people speak up about it they wouldn’t be addressing the problem. You have this vast mission field and we are letting these kids that are already at risk go to public school to get worse.
My son put it real good one day to me. He said “There is lots of help for the perfect Adventist kids, what about some of us that are less than perfect?” Isn’t that sad that there is one child that thinks he is less than perfect. We have always tried to encourage him and others that they can do what ever they want if they let God lead.
So I would encourage you in all of these committees that you address the issues of at-risk kids and a lot of those are from single parent house holds.
Talk to some of these parents. Get parent opinions in a way that they feel comfortable and safe in talking. Many are afraid to speak up because they feel it will get back to someone.
I really do believe it is high time we start talking about alternative Adventist education. You have a lot of creative kids out there that would benefit from that.
I am sorry if I sounded too critical. I love our church and I want only the best but I also want it to start thinking outside the box.
July 10th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
I read the whole last Gleaner with interest. As a home school mom and a home educated student myself, education has always been a topic of interest to me. I believe that over the past few years, education has changed dirastically and we as a church have not changed with it. For example, I am a senior psychology major online at a Christian institution. When I started back for my degree, as a married mother of four, I could hardly move to one of our educational centers. There was only ONE Christian school which offered psychology online. It is not Adventist. This school I attend had a distance learning format before the internet and the WWW. Adventist education is the tail instead of the head on this one. We are WAY behind.
One thing that REALLY bothered me in reading the Gleaner is the hypocrisy in regards to the use of tithe in education. One of the articles quoted a parent as saying that they had a choice to either return tithe or send their children to SDA schools. That was seen as a travesty in the article. However, when reading the finance report it was noted that the organization uses tithe for education. I don’t get it. If we can’t use our tithe for education, why can you use our tithe for education? It just doesn’t add up. As they say, “what is good for the goose is good for the gander.” I don’t use my tithe to educate my children and I don’t think it is right for the church to use my tithe that way either.
July 12th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Why we decided to homeschool.
Finances: It is cheaper for us to homeschool than to send our kids to the local SDA school. If we send our kids to the SDA school I would have to go back to work. Which would mean for us that we just entered the rat race of society which we were trying to avoid. Our family made it a goal that mom would stay home with the kids, and be there for them whenever they needed. My career in the healthcare profession would not give me the (9-3) school hours I would need to be home when school got out.
Quality education: Homeschooling has been found to put out better thinkers and more mature, self motivated individuals than schools. Our SDA schools are lacking in keeping up with the times when it comes to technology, and teaching in the new think-it-out way rather than the memorization way of when I went to school. Most of our schools do not have a good “special education” program for children with learning difficulties. Teachers are not well taught in how to help these children.
Environment: It is getting rarer to find one of our SDA schools that really upholds a strict moral standard. Dress codes have declined, jewlery and makeup is allowed. What goes on at the playground is not monitored. The home environment for children is getting worse and worse and these children bring those infuences to the school. It is not like it was 20 years ago when most SDA homes had the same morals and trained their kids similarly. There has become alot of varience in a SDA home. I think that our schools have let down the standard by trying to cater to a larger population.
I do not know if there is an answer to our schools predicament. Tuition is very high but teacher pay is very low. I have 4 of my family members who are teachers in our school system and they struggle to make ends meet.
Are our teachers, who are going through schooling, being taught to mentor and guide our kids in our faith? I think that this should be taught as just as important as making a good lesson plan.
Is it possible to keep up with the world in education and technology but keep our morals and faith as God would have us do and not compromise? I think it is possible if we can train our teachers with high quality current education and make sure our teachers are spiritually strong.
In short, as a parent I am looking for a school that is affordable for our family’s goals in life; one that upholds and enforces our churches beliefs and practices and morals; and has high quality education with current concepts in different learning styles, and in technology.
July 21st, 2007 at 4:54 pm
My father was an SDA pastor until his death in 1983. My mother worked at the Conference Office for some years before her retirement. One of my uncles and one of his sons were/are ordained ministers. Some of my aunts and cousins have been in the mission fields all over the world–some still are. Each of my siblings was raised in SDA education through Academy; and one attended Walla Walla College. As an adult I twice enrolled my kids in SDA education, and my granddaughter has been in SDA education about 1/2 of her school life. So I do have some background in SDA education from which to give my comments.
1) One reason SDA schools consistently score higher than public schools on standardized tests is that SDA schools seem to systematically weed out
“educationally at risk” and “special education” kids from the testing samples by suggesting that they could get better remedial help in public
schools. Public schools are required by law to accept all students, regardless of their academic strengths and weaknesses; SDA schools have the option of catering to the brightest and best. When my son was in SDA school in 5th and 6th grade we got him educationally evaluated by the public school. The public school personnel were willing to send a trained teacher to the SDA school, provide all of the training materials free of charge, and give my son one-on-one tutering instruction at the SDA school for free, providing the SDA school would provide them some back corner of a room or broom closet or other space to work in. The SDA school personnel (nice people all) simply refused.
It has been a long time since special education has become a part of mainstream reality in all educational contexts. It is long past time for the church to seriously look at the SDA (and other) kids who are being systematically deprived of Christian education because of a long-standing aversion for working with “at risk” kids. The person (now deceased) who mentored my (also deceased) husband into the SDA faith back in the 1950’s was a special education resource coordinator for the Los Angeles County public school system. Up to her death (in the late 1990’s) she had always maintained her active position in the local SDA Church ministries and had tried valiantly over the years to make some inroads into this very closed society of SDA educators, to bring the benefits of cutting edge special education knowledge to the teachers in SDA schools. Her efforts were rebuffed at every turn. This is, in effect, a prejudice against “special needs” kids–of whom only a small fraction are significantly disabled. Most
fit nicely in regular classes–they just struggle a little harder than the rest. The parent’s choice is between allowing their child’s self-esteem to be ground into the dirt on an ongoing basis while other kids do better in school than they do, or looking for alternative educational strategies from
non-SDA sources, all of the while having their kids and themselves hear at church about the excellent SDA school system which does not want to make even the smallest accommodations to allow these very intellectually gifted but academically challenged kids to prosper during their school careers.
2) I looked over the names of the people in your six sub-committees to see how many women were represented in them. I counted six out of thirty-six. Yet the percentage of female to male students in SDA schools is certainly much higher than that. There is also a palpable discomfort in the SDA Church against allowing women to be in leadership positions. Though women enroll in theology classes (and even in Andrew’s University Graduate-level theology classes), there still is palpable resistance to allowing them equal access to teaching positions in theology proper or administrative positions in the hierarchial structures of the SDA Church administration–as well as positions as district pastors. In summary, the well-paid positions in the SDA denominational employment are almost exclusively the province of men. There are extremely few female “pastors” I am aware of in the denomination; and they are really the educated wives of male pastors. Do single women not also have gifts and callings of the Lord? Do male committee members in all of these committees really understand the “glass ceiling” phenomenon which meets bright-eyed SDA trained female college graduates? Would they make any changes in curriculum or policies if they did understand? I wrote my master’s thesis on the Woman’s Place in Christian Ministry. This is another area of the Church’s educational program that needs to be specifically addressed.
3) While providing a “superior” education, SDA schools CAN engender a certain sense of superiority among their students/graduates, who hear these messages over and over and come to believe themselves something of an elite. This makes mixing and mingling in the real world (full of non-SDA people) a bit more difficult than it would already be. Nowadays more people of the world are vegetarians than SDA’s. Most of the world advocates against smoking and at least the practice of drinking to excess (if not at all). Some make-up and jewely has quietly invaded SDA circles, and the length of a boy’s side-burns no longer are the defining cue as to his spiritual proclivities (as I was told they were when I was in school in the 1950’s-60’s). In other words, SDA’s no longer “stick out like sore thumbs” in terms of their distinctive habits of dress or decorum, but there is still a taint of religious superiority about them that makes the church less attractive to potential members.
Perhaps this is not an educational issue, per se, but it seems like the church must reach outside of itself to grow, and to reach outside of itself
it must extend a warm and welcoming hand to those of different religious backgrounds, accepting them as equally valued in Jesus’ eyes.
4) My granddaughter had the great benefit of attending a Montessori school for the first 2-3 years of her academic life. The educational foundation she received there put her vastly ahead of her age group in both public school and SDA schools until her 5th grade year. Since she was an educationally “at risk” child, this was a remarkable achievement. She has for the past 2 1/2 years been in SDA school, where her academic performance has gradually declined. I believe that if SDA educators took the time and energy to become trained in and versitile in Montesory educational planning and development, SDA school kids would prosper more–so much so that perhaps SDA educators would be less un-willing to deal with “at risk” kids.