Pangburn for School Board.
My name is Don Pangburn and I am running for the Gilford School Board. I have 3 children currently in the Gilford public schools and am alarmed at the available statistics that speak to the current state of our educational system.
Four months after taking office, President Abraham Lincoln wrote about the purpose of government. He said that the foremost purpose of government is “to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.” Although referencing the principles upon which our nation was founded, he also described the spirit that must animate people today, if we are to give every child in America the chance to rise and succeed in life.
Ronald Reagan once observed that: “If you believe your local school district is better qualified to run your schools than is the federal government you’d better get ready to do battle. … [The proposed education department would] create a bureaucracy of gigantic size to oversee thousands and thousands of public schools now administered by local school districts.”
Since the inception of the department of education, on October 17, 1979, under President Carter, the spending per student has quadrupled, but consider the results:
In a math bee of 24,000 thirteen year old students from America, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland and Canada, all chosen at random, the same 63 question exam was given in their native language. When testing was complete, the American kids placed last, with South Korea winning the contest. Prior to the testing the children were asked to answer a yes or no question: Am I good at math? Two-thirds of American kids answered yes and only one quarter of the South Korean kids expressed confidence in their skills. The argument could be made that these results and self-assessments correlate with the attitude of the educational establishment. Those in charge of educating our children are overly confident—even arrogant—about their enlightened modern methods and theories but the results don’t lend support to their self-assessment.
Another example is the third International Mathematics and Science study, a worldwide competition among 21 nations. America’s twelfth graders performed well below the international average, and in math finished in 19th place, outperforming only students from Cyprus and South Africa.
Even more disturbing statistics show that two out of every three 17 year-olds did not know the meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation. Only half even recognized Patrick Henry’s challenge, “give me liberty or give me death”, and even fewer knew of the Marshall Plan that saved Europe, the War of 1812 or Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”.
In 1998 the Massachusetts Department of Education introduced a new exam for the licensing of would be teachers, most of whom had received a bachelor of education degree shortly before. Of the 1800 who took the test, 59% flunked.
On the local level things are not much better. Quoting the NECAP test scores in Gilford Grade 11 for the last 3 Calendar years the results are pathetic. From best to worst:
| Percentage of | ||
| Students below | ||
| Subject | Year | Proficient |
| Reading | 2007-2008 | 40% |
| 2008-2009 | 20% | |
| Current | 25% | |
| Writing | 2007-2008 | 84% |
| 2008-2009 | 60% | |
| Current | 49% | |
| Mathematics | 2007-2008 | 77% |
| 2008-2009 | 72% | |
| Current | 73% |
All these statistics paint a very grim picture but beg the question: if we are so inept at educating our children, how have we been able to maintain dominance in the world of high tech? Unfortunately the answer is that we rely on the foreign students who regularly beat us in world competition.
While our public schools leave most youngsters behind, the nation still has the finest technical institutions, such as MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon and others, which attract the brightest minds from around the globe. Only a tiny segment of our students make it to these elite schools, with foreign students taking up the slack. Of the roughly 13,000 PhD’s awarded every year in physics, computer science, mathematics, chemistry and engineering, 45% go to non-American citizens. In the vital high tech fields of computer science and engineering their number is above 50%.
So what to do?
- Raising the bar on the providers rather than lowering it on the recipients would create measurable results.
- Eliminating the tenure system and replacing it with a meritocracy wherein teachers would hold their positions or advance, and receive compensation based the academic success of their students.
Effecting this kind of change against the entrenched establishment will be a daunting task, but if our children are really the priority, we can return our educational establishments to their past greatness and elevate our own future generations to be the brightest and best throughout the world.
The consequences of doing nothing will cripple the future generation’s ability to solve the multitude of problems heaped upon them by the errors of past—and present—generations.
We have lost sight of the fact that the educational system has three parts: the provider, the participant and the people who fund it. Ronald Reagan summed it like this:
“Personally, I believe in academic freedom but oppose limiting it to any one segment of academia. The teacher who interprets it as covering only the teacher’s right to teach is ignoring the student’s academic freedom and the right of parents to have some say as to what their children are learning. Then there is the academic freedom of those who finance the whole operation and have some beliefs about the kind of schooling they wish to make available with their contributions — all these are entitled to some share of academic freedom.” (Letter to the editor of PEGASUS, Eureka, Illinois, March 31, 1971).
Respectfully submitted,
Donald H Pangburn
School Board Candidate





