The first week of the school year is an exciting time for millions of families, a time of renewal and
promise. It is also a time of shallow recriminations, generally blaming the lack of budgets for the dismal
overall performance of our school system, oversize classes and short school day.
There is little doubt that our classes are too large and the school day, in most places, is too short. But in
the past classes have been even larger (our columnist Sarah Honig remembers one remarkable
elementary teacher of hers deftly handling a class of 54), with better results despite much smaller
budgets. It is also true that fixing many of the system’s ailments costs money.
What is less readily acknowledged is that there are vast amounts of waste in the education budget, and
that real educational reform could do wonders.
All Israeli governments, but to an egregious degree the current one, have resisted the critical reforms
that multiple commissions have recommended. Most recently the Dovrat Commission recommendations
were buried by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Education Minister Yuli Tamir.
Dovrat tried to give principals the power to reward good teachers and fire those who don’t make the
grade. This was shot down by the teachers’ unions, which is not just tragic for students, but for the
teaching profession.
In 2004, Achva teachers’ college head Dr. Shosh Millet said, “If the status of teaching doesn’t go up …
then raising salaries, improving classroom conditions and all the other recommendations in Dovrat won’t
matter.” But what would raise the status of teaching more than if it began to reward merit financially and
in other ways? What better way to attract quality entrants into this vital profession?
The school year opened on time, for a change, but today the secondary school teachers are striking – a
familiar blight. And the essential failings remain: How many of our children enter the system as curious
first-graders and emerge, or drop out, without fully knowing how to read, write or do basic arithmetic?
In the US, here and elsewhere, slogans like “no child left behind” have become a mantra honored
mainly in the breach. The reality is, according to the Brookdale Institute, that one-fifth of 17-year-olds do
not make it to the 12th grade, and 15 percent of all 13- to 17-year-olds are “hidden dropouts” who fail to
complete basic graduation requirements. Less than half of all 17-year-olds are eligible for matriculation
certificates when they finish high school
Yet the good news is, as the Post’s Haviv Rettig reported on Tuesday, that our educational system is
not doomed to fail a sizable fraction of its students. A non-governmental organization, working hand-inglove with the Education Ministry and principals and teachers across the country, has proven that the
bottom 25% of students can pass matriculation exams and potentially escape the cycle of
undereducation, underemployment, and poverty.
The program, established and operated by the Rashi Foundation and called Tafnit (“turnaround”), has
produced incredible results. In one of its initiatives, all of the 9th or 10th graders in a participating school
who have failed at least seven subjects are brought through an accelerated learning marathon, giving
them the belief and skills that they can pass matriculation exams and qualify for university study.
Perhaps most impressively, the program relies entirely on the existing teachers in each school, who are
convinced by Tafnit’s training that their worst students are capable of success, and that they are capable
of producing such seemingly miraculous achievements.
In the 2006-2007 school year, 93% of the 586 kids in 21 schools – all of whom had been written off
educationally by themselves and the system – successfully matriculated after going through Tafnit’s
program. This year, 1,100 students in 40 schools will participate, along with about 19,000 students in
200 schools in similar programs designed to catch failing students on the elementary school level.
It is impossible to argue with success, and mandatory to duplicate it. The Education Ministry should
immediately evaluate its myriad programs designed to bring up disadvantaged students, and shift
hundreds of millions of shekels from failed programs to those with proven results.
The lives of the children who discover the truth of Tafnit’s motto – “everyone can do it” – will never be the
same. The same is true on the levels of the teacher, principal and the entire school system.
Educational mediocrity is not written in stone. We know what works and what needs to be done. The
money is there, and the students and educational system – even without necessary comprehensive
reforms – are ready. What are we waiting for?