Principal Jack Martin is on his way out at Prospect High School, and one big fear among the students is that such academic exercises as the bashing of the Loopymobile will now be history.
Martin, 52, was reassigned to teaching duties for next year by Northwest Suburban High School District 214 in a dispute over teaching methods last week, and parents and students at the Mt. Prospect school have rallied to his defense.
”He`s a great guy who`s done a lot for this school,” said student council president Laura Kapps, 17. ”Things finally came together here, and then this happened.”
Kapps said Martin was a friendly, understanding administrator. One example she cited was that he permitted the senior class to raise money last fall by selling sledgehammer blows at the Loopymobile, a junky, outrageously decorated old car.
”Most principals wouldn`t have allowed that,” she said.
Martin parted company with school district officials over the more serious matter of how classrooms should run and how students should learn.
”My bosses and I have different values,” said Martin. ”They believe that everything can be programmed out, measured, computerized and put on paper. I believe the human factor is very important. Teachers and students aren`t clones.”
Specifically, Martin disagrees with the district`s ”Outcomes Based Education” (OBE) curriculum-reform program, in which students in every school work toward very specific goals that correlate precisely to letter grades.
”In education there are sometimes elusive goals that don`t lend themselves to measurement,” said Martin, who added that this opinion made him a little old-fashioned in District 214. ”Different teachers have different methods and skills, and students have different needs. Not everything fits onto a data base.”
Supt. Stephen Berry, who asked the school board to remove Martin, disagreed with the principal`s assessment of the OBE program. He said the success of the system is well-documented; far from attempting to clone students, he said, it recognizes they have different abilities and styles in the classroom.
He said OBE allows students to re-study and re-learn material if they do not pass a test the first time, instead of simply failing and moving on to the next step. The system therefore must set up exactly what teachers must teach and students must learn.
Berry also said that he had other ”personal and professional”
differences with Martin.
Nieva Mehta of Arlington Heights, who has two children in Prospect High, said parents had no clue that district officials were not pleased with Martin. ”I don`t know much about this new curriculum program,” she said. ”All I know is that we are all happy with how our children have been educated.”
”We want some answers,” added parent Mary Rasmussen of Des Plaines.
”As far as we`re concerned he`s done a fabulous job.”
To calm the tempest, Berry has agreed to meet with concerned parents later this month to explain further Martin`s dismissal and the OBE program. He has also indicated he will meet at the high school with interested students.
Martin said he has been heartened and surprised by the demonstrations of support but said, at this point, he wouldn`t take the job back if it were offered.
”I don`t want to work, ever, for someone who doesn`t want me,” he said. He will keep his $71,300 salary when he goes back to teaching English and journalism for the three years until he retires.
”I always thought that part of my job was to challenge things and stand up for my ideas and concerns, even if they`re old-fashioned,” he said. ”But maybe I didn`t ask good questions. Or maybe I didn`t ask them politely enough.”
![Today’s Highlight in History: On April 24, 1995, the final bomb linked to the Unabomber exploded inside the Sacramento, California, offices of a lobbying group for the wood products industry, killing chief lobbyist Gilbert B. Murray. (Theodore Kaczynski was later sentenced to four lifetimes in prison for a series of bombings that killed three people and injured 29 others.) On this date: In 1877, federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South. In 1915, in what’s considered the start of the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman Empire began rounding up Armenian political […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/2023/06/12/5LTPEE42BQ2O25ECG7SKBN4RV4.jpg?w=535 "Today’s Highlight in History: On April 24, 1995, the final bomb linked to the Unabomber exploded inside the Sacramento, California, offices of a lobbying group for the wood products industry, killing chief lobbyist Gilbert B. Murray. (Theodore Kaczynski was later sentenced to four lifetimes in prison for a series of bombings that killed three people and injured 29 others.) On this date: In 1877, federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South. In 1915, in what’s considered the start of the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman Empire began rounding up Armenian political […]")