Education – Part III or so…
Sometime after he was elected President of the United States, George W. Bush enacted legislation that I believe constitutes the most overarching incursion into education that the United States has ever seen. NCLB – No Child Left Behind – has since influenced the educational landscape more than any other federal initiative with which I am familiar. So why isn’t George known as the “education President?”
Well, influential isn’t necessarily the same thing as supportive, effective, or energizing. NCLB has been the catalyst for some changes in education that will ultimately prove to be powerfully positive, I hypothesize, but the method and/or manner by which that ‘improvement’ has been coerced is appropriately considered dubious.
Here’s the biggest reason that NCLB and almost all of its subsequent implementations, on the national, state, and local level, reveal the stupidity of even some of the most educated and wise people in the business: when they went looking for a model for school improvement, the powers that be determined to use a business model – quality control – as the paradigm. Their thinking was that setting measurable standards, with reliable assessment mechanisms in place, would enable schools to identify the specific objectives, respond to performance gaps, and thereby prevent any and all children from falling behind as they wend their way through their public school years.
Sounds like a decent idea, right? Well, not really. I will tell why after one other major point. The other notable component of the proposed NCLB process was that systematic – read scientific – evaluations, adjustments, and safety nets would allow schools at the local level to implement correctives that would serve to ‘fix’ learning problems for individual students by resorting to identified ‘best practices,’ methods that have proven to be effective according to statistical analysis.
The problem with these two components is fairly simple: Schools are NOT businesses, and teaching is NOT a science. Having been in the education business for all of my adult life, and having often volunteered to utilize most of the school improvement initiatives that I have learned – at whatever point my district decided to promote them – I have concluded the opening statement to this paragraph in a certifiable truth.
The problem with the school as business model approach is that businesses have great control over the materials, approaches, and processes they use on their way to create whatever widget they are inclined to make. For the teacher, the collection of students assigned to him/her at any given point in time is not clearly controlled. Try this analogy. How effective can a manufacturing plant be if it has been contracted to make steel beams for a high rise without knowing the grade or quality of the raw metal ore that it will be using for the task?
The plant can test or diagnose the quality of the raw materials, and then determine the best process for creating the highest possible grade of steel. After all, the raw materials, once identified, aren’t going to change. Consequently, the most effective method for managing the classified raw material is going to be the same method employed the next time a batch of the same grade of material comes through the plant.
If you have been following the analogy, you already know where I am going with this, but if you know nothing about the role of the teacher, I will try to complete the comparison.
I have had students walk into my classroom with identifiable strengths and weaknesses. In many cases, directed efforts to maximize strengths and improve or eliminate weaknesses have predictable effects. However, the student him/herself is constantly changing. While strengths tend to remain strengths over time, external forces ‘create’ weaknesses that were not diagnosed earlier because they weren’t there!
I will be specific. I had a student once whose most noticeable strength was his ability to retain information. He was highly organized, very focused, and predictably capable of working with a high volume of content (information.) Then he lost his father to a terrible accident, and his change in temperament culminated in his longtime girlfriend’s decision to end their relationship. The boy’s state of mind was enough to disrupt his skill set. For a protracted period of time, he lost his ability to manage information effectively.
I contend that while few students have to manage the death of a parent, the daily trials and tribulations of life for an adolescent or young adult exert similar influences and therefore, similar effects. A good teacher notices a problem, provides emotional support, and may even implement some different methods to address the problem. No best practice will take the place of an alert, compassionate, and resourceful teacher.
The point here is that teaching has never been a scientific enterprise, even though scientific principles are of great value to the classroom teacher. The raw materials are not static, and the most effective processes for dealing with that raw material are therefore not scientifically predictable. Furthermore, no development of a best practices arsenal will guarantee that a teacher will know when, where, or how to select the most effective method of dealing with a student’s individual problem. Quite simply, despite the higher level administration’s desire to make schools function as businesses do, and despite the school innovators’ desire to make teaching function as science does, the two fundamental principles of the NCLB movement are fallacies. It would be nice if the fallacies were viable truths, but they are not.
In case I have been guilty of being obtuser [sic] than I intended, I will try to make this as simple as possible. A student will never be analogous to a shipment of iron ore, the raw material most necessary to the creation of high quality steel. Each year the teachers of the world try to diagnose the relative strengths and weaknesses of the student assigned to them. While the teachers’ diagnoses may be accurate when they are conducted, the student, since he is chronically evolving, can’t possibly follow a predetermined learning curve. Yes, once the number crunchers input volumes of data, trends and predictable patterns become apparent. Despite the fact that students do follow significant growth patterns collectively, the premise of NCLB is that No child, not one, will be left behind. If the reader has noted the analogy drawn through the last few paragraphs, s/he knows that there is going to be some behind leaving.
If the preceding paragraph didn’t make sense to you, I will try one other approach. If my class of thirty shows a predictable improvement in skill development or knowledge acquisition during the course of a year, that trend or general truth does not guarantee that one or two of the students will be on the same pace. In short, good scores by the mass of students will disguise the reported difficulties of the few who are not making gains. Therefore, so long as the testing mechanism or the benchmark for efficacy of various methods of instruction is determined by global statistical analysis, the process of “sciencizing” teaching is destined to fail.
Now, the gurus will tell the unsuspecting school administrators that ‘their’ program will create a series of safety nets, all scientifically tested and proven, that will ‘guarantee’ that a student who doesn’t benefit from intervention one will undoubtedly be corrected by intervention two, or by intervention three. The gurus are lying, and they know it. They are in the business of selling their programs. The districts who buy it are then trained in how to sell the same program, using the same fallacious reasoning employed by the consultants and gurus, with the promise that this program will help the administrators to create or develop ‘high performing’ or cutting edge schools.
The really insidious thing about the gurus’ collective programs is that they really are generally good ideas. The problem is rarely with the program itself. These guys have done their doctorates, and engaged in educational testing, and they are correct – usually – in selecting ideas that are viable and noteworthy. What the gurus and the district personnel never seem to consider is that EDUCATION CAN’T FUNCTION LIKE A BUSINESS, and TEACHING IS NOT A SCIENCE.
I taught high school English for more than twenty years, and I would like to think that I was an effective teacher. However, by the time I hit my tenth year or so, I happened upon a realization: For three or so of the twenty-some students enrolled in each section of my classes, I was an ideal teacher. No matter what I did, we clicked, the students learned, and I learned to love those students who validated my efforts. I also realized that for three or four of the students in each section, I was the least likely to be effective teacher. Nothing I could do, no best practice, was going to circumvent the fact that my technique, my personality, my approach, my person - all of these things - were barriers to the education of those three students. Therefore, I had little control over the success of six out of twenty-four or more students. The remaining eighteen were neither resistant to my efforts, nor inclined to benefit. In their cases, my effective deployment of best practices was the difference between educational success and failure. So the current trend is statistically defensible. Teachers should do the things that statistically stand to be effective for the majority of the students.
But I spent my last five years in the classroom experimenting with adjustments that might help me to reach the students who were disinclined to benefit from a year of instruction with me. I think I made some headway, but none of the practices that I adopted are significant components of any of the materials I have read. The reason is that my adjustments were all designed to deal with the identified personality conflict, the most consistently detrimental aspect to the education of those three or four students in each class.
For instance, adjustment number one was to interact in a positive way with any student I could identify as resistant to my natural approach. For some students, it was as simple of a gesture as saying ‘hello’ each day when they walked in the classroom. For those students who seemed to be put off by these exchanges of pleasantries, I would try to refer, without mentioning the name of the student, to a valuable idea, contribution, or response that the student had provided in recent classes. If neither of these approaches seemed to be productive, I might provide a positive evaluative comment for a parent on the interactive grade book on the website created to enhance parental communication. Finally, in some cases, I might add an encouraging comment on a graded assignment. In short, all of these efforts were designed to circumvent that my teaching persona never really came off as warm and fuzzy, and my lack of warm and fuzzy was a critical detriment to some of my students.
To be entirely truthful, I don’t know that any of these practices paid off. What I do know is that I was usually able to reduce the perceived animosity that the student felt toward me. If my teacher’s intuition was accurate, the student then had some energy left to direct toward English class. I should note here that those efforts mentioned immediately above are not innovative, and they are included as ‘best practices’ for teachers in general. The part that I like to think was different is that I particularly dedicated those efforts to the students I thought were reluctant to benefit from having me as an English teacher.
I should also add that in some cases, any effort I made seemed to antagonize the student, and I usually resigned myself to using one of the conventional interventions suggested by the gurus. I am happy to say that they were often effective.
So what’s the real lesson to be learned from my experiences? I think teachers, if the goal is to reform schools and learning, need to focus on the human side of the teaching/learning mechanism. The teacher can have an arsenal of best practices, and really truly know how to use them, but if s/he ignores the personal dimension, students will be left behind. It won’t really be the teacher’s fault, since the source of the barrier to education has little to do with methodology, curriculum, experience, expertise, or anything other than a globally human condition. Sometimes people don’t like other people, and sometimes those unlikeable people are charged with teaching the other person. There is a truth that will stick around and which will be true no matter which program your school district buys.
So ‘best practices’ are significant, but they DO NOT answer all questions, or even pretend to.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Teaching 101.5
Teaching 101.5
I had a conversation with a new teacher to whom I was offering some advice during his first week of teaching. [This teacher was thrust into service, as many new teachers are, without a great ‘feel’ for what goes on in high school. Yes, he had had his student teaching experience, and he had had his orientation, and he had had his appropriate dose of mentoring, but ‘feel’ cannot be packaged and bestowed upon the neophyte.] While trying to motivate his tenth graders to work on their writing, I suggested that he may want to do some of the same assignments he gives to his students. I proposed that modeling the process might give him a forum for explaining to students how he made some of his writing decisions and presentation choices.
After giving the advice, I thought that I should probably practice what I preach. Though I have regularly written with my students, and though I have found it to be a great method for fostering discussion of what constitutes good writing, I realized that I hadn’t employed the techniques in some time. As a result, I have created the following personal essay, and I think it complements some of the other pieces already composed.
And so, after a lengthy introduction, here is the subject worth considering and writing about: do we make an honest attempt to practice what we preach? As a long-time teacher, I am often telling students to do things a certain way, or to think about things as I say. Do I successfully demonstrate those same principles as often as possible? I try. In fact, after reflection, I think I try pretty hard, and that I often succeed in following most of my own advice. The connection here to the larger topic is that people, teachers included, often undermine their own efforts by demonstrating hypocrisy. This reluctance to do as they instruct is a prime example.
For instance, I tell students that attendance is critical. Like the Denver Broncos and the Buffalo Bills in the late 80’s and 90’s, I always show up. I don’t always win, but I have a pretty good track record for staying in the game. In checking my number of accumulated sick days, I find that I have missed fewer than two days per year throughout my career. Considering that I missed multiple days when my kids were being born, I would calculate that most years I miss one day or fewer.
I also tell kids that if they are going to do something, they should do the absolute best they can. In other words, regardless of the evaluative grade given by some outside source, the measuring stick for achievement is always relative to what a student could have done on his best day. If the effort has been there,days as far as ultimate performance is concerned, but I do manage to give a good effort a high percentage of the time.
So, do I generally live up to my own commandments? I try, and I think I often succeed. However, I also tell kids to set their goals high, and then exceed them, and I don’t know that I have stayed true to that. Life sometimes gets in the way. Yet I will maintain that I am rarely satisfied unless achievement exceeds expectations. Of course, that just makes me a grouchy old man.
Practice what I preach? I’ll keep on trying.
I had a conversation with a new teacher to whom I was offering some advice during his first week of teaching. [This teacher was thrust into service, as many new teachers are, without a great ‘feel’ for what goes on in high school. Yes, he had had his student teaching experience, and he had had his orientation, and he had had his appropriate dose of mentoring, but ‘feel’ cannot be packaged and bestowed upon the neophyte.] While trying to motivate his tenth graders to work on their writing, I suggested that he may want to do some of the same assignments he gives to his students. I proposed that modeling the process might give him a forum for explaining to students how he made some of his writing decisions and presentation choices.
After giving the advice, I thought that I should probably practice what I preach. Though I have regularly written with my students, and though I have found it to be a great method for fostering discussion of what constitutes good writing, I realized that I hadn’t employed the techniques in some time. As a result, I have created the following personal essay, and I think it complements some of the other pieces already composed.
And so, after a lengthy introduction, here is the subject worth considering and writing about: do we make an honest attempt to practice what we preach? As a long-time teacher, I am often telling students to do things a certain way, or to think about things as I say. Do I successfully demonstrate those same principles as often as possible? I try. In fact, after reflection, I think I try pretty hard, and that I often succeed in following most of my own advice. The connection here to the larger topic is that people, teachers included, often undermine their own efforts by demonstrating hypocrisy. This reluctance to do as they instruct is a prime example.
For instance, I tell students that attendance is critical. Like the Denver Broncos and the Buffalo Bills in the late 80’s and 90’s, I always show up. I don’t always win, but I have a pretty good track record for staying in the game. In checking my number of accumulated sick days, I find that I have missed fewer than two days per year throughout my career. Considering that I missed multiple days when my kids were being born, I would calculate that most years I miss one day or fewer.
I also tell kids that if they are going to do something, they should do the absolute best they can. In other words, regardless of the evaluative grade given by some outside source, the measuring stick for achievement is always relative to what a student could have done on his best day. If the effort has been there,days as far as ultimate performance is concerned, but I do manage to give a good effort a high percentage of the time.
So, do I generally live up to my own commandments? I try, and I think I often succeed. However, I also tell kids to set their goals high, and then exceed them, and I don’t know that I have stayed true to that. Life sometimes gets in the way. Yet I will maintain that I am rarely satisfied unless achievement exceeds expectations. Of course, that just makes me a grouchy old man.
Practice what I preach? I’ll keep on trying.
Education Foray 2
Education Foray 2
The following will attempt to elaborate further on a concept mentioned in the first installment on Education. That concept is somewhat damning of the educational establishment. Prevalent attitudes displayed by school personnel suggest a level of stupidity even among the highly educated. What I am referencing here is the educators’ ability to misconstrue academic rigor.
Perhaps one example will suffice. For years, teachers have heard about the importance of writing, in all disciplines, for all students. Many teachers have responded by trying to find ways for students to write MORE. I believe, however, after 20+ years as an English teacher, that writing is more like riding a bike.
Learners do need to write, and they do need to practice, but they really need to learn how to write well ONE TIME! My point is that volumes of poor writing don’t automatically lead to a higher performance, the same way that sitting on a bike for hours on end won’t naturally lead to quality riding. To be sure, practice will definitely help, but the practice should be more for the sake of practice than for the sake of assessment. If a person has written ONE THING extremely well during young adulthood, he or she will be able to write well forever. Of course, after periods of inactivity, s/he may need to scrape away the rust and regain the balance with a little bit of practice.
The preceding example may not seem to jibe with well-indoctrinated attitudes toward writing. Yet I will maintain that the students that I have taught have made their writing progress in big steps. The progress may have been facilitated by the multitudinous practice sessions, but when they ‘get it,’ the quality of the writing is altered forever. Therefore, my only conclusion is that the acquisition of quality writing skills comes in little epiphanies, which, after concerted practice, develop into observable huge improvements.
Take this for an example. A student, by accident, by trial and error, or by recognition in models, ‘sees’ a quality that he recognizes as valuable. Let’s just say that he decides that precise vocabulary makes his writing better. He then uses that particular method often and progressively more effectively, until one day his writing is enhanced by the perceptive use of that technique. This would correspond directly to the BIG STEP mentioned earlier. The improvement began when the student tried to adopt the desirable trait, but the noticeable improvement didn’t come until the student had had enough practice to use the approach well.
To be honest, I think that most learning works in this way. “Getting it” is the first step, and then practicing it until mastery is the next phase. Any student who has truly grasped the value of the appositive, or of the parallel element, will continue to use the technique, because it works. Therefore, the volume of writing assignments is NOT the critical issue. Presenting the material in such a way that the individual understands and is prompted to use the technique is the critical component.
This misunderstanding of the elements of academic rigor is the core of this discussion. Teachers are driven at times to justify their value by demanding rigorous performances from their students. The stupid part materializes when the teacher or administrator misconstrues the method by which rigor is measured. Which of the following describes a rigorous activity: a student composes a series of journal entries in response to three reading assignments; OR a student writes three pages of analysis that must demonstrate points of relevance among three different novels. In each case, the student will read three novels. In case number one, the teacher might require a one page journal entry for each chapter of a book. The student will cumulatively compose thirty or more pages of journal entries. In the other case, the student needs to write three pages. How could the second approach be the more rigorous one?
The answer is again simple. If the three pages of analysis require, via a rubric, a level of thinking and communicating that demonstrates higher level thinking skills, then three pages of meat is infinitely more rigorous than thirty pages of cotton candy. Perhaps that is a weak analogy, but I think I’ve made my point.
Maybe I can make a more visceral mechanical analogy. The journal assignment is analogous to asking a person to cover thirty miles in thirty days, with no demands on the elapsed time of each running session. Therefore, the student could complete his thirty miles by walking. At the end of the sessions, s/he might be in somewhat better shape than s/he would without the exercise, The three page analysis is then comparable to having the student run three miles in less than twenty minutes. S/he cannot meet the requirement, three miles in a limited time, without having done some preparation that requires sustained intensity. Walking a mile a day, for thirty days, is not as hard as training to run three miles in less than twenty minutes.
I think many teachers apply this misconception to their classroom practices. They assign thirty minutes of homework instead of fifteen, citing increased rigor as their aim. Or they require three projects when one will do. The level of required investment should be the measuring stick for academic rigor, not the number of minutes invested, not the number of pages read or composed.
In another manifestation of the disease, some teachers seem to believe that they need to have lower grades to ‘prove’ that they are challenging their students. That is absolute hogwash. All I would need to do to deflate the grades of my Honors English students over the years is to construct poor tests. I could ask questions that I knew I hadn’t covered well, or phrase questions in such a way as to promote confusion. Grades are also reflections of how well a subject is taught, how appropriately the material has been chosen for the course, and how well the test measures the skills and knowledge of the students. In other words, the grades themselves mean nothing.
I always thought that my grades should be skewed to the high end of the bell curve. If natural capacity can be represented by the bell curve, then the signal for the teacher’s contribution would be in moving all of his students up a standard deviation. Try to hang in with this. If the bell curve represents how the grades will be distributed naturally, then the teacher’s goal should be to improve upon that. Otherwise, the teacher is rendered inconsequential. The students arrive, the lessons are presented, and the grades are assigned. We all know that we have on occasion risen ABOVE our natural ability. Shouldn’t that be what the teacher is all about – giving students the tools and resources necessary to rise above their limitations?
In closing, I don’t want to give the impression that the other side of the coin is the answer. If teachers can create tests that encourage their students to score poorly, they can also create tests that inflate grades way out of proportion. The grades themselves are not the aim. Determining legitimate objectives, then devising methods by which all of the students will meet those objectives, is the aim. The grades that students earn are also grades that teachers earn.
The following will attempt to elaborate further on a concept mentioned in the first installment on Education. That concept is somewhat damning of the educational establishment. Prevalent attitudes displayed by school personnel suggest a level of stupidity even among the highly educated. What I am referencing here is the educators’ ability to misconstrue academic rigor.
Perhaps one example will suffice. For years, teachers have heard about the importance of writing, in all disciplines, for all students. Many teachers have responded by trying to find ways for students to write MORE. I believe, however, after 20+ years as an English teacher, that writing is more like riding a bike.
Learners do need to write, and they do need to practice, but they really need to learn how to write well ONE TIME! My point is that volumes of poor writing don’t automatically lead to a higher performance, the same way that sitting on a bike for hours on end won’t naturally lead to quality riding. To be sure, practice will definitely help, but the practice should be more for the sake of practice than for the sake of assessment. If a person has written ONE THING extremely well during young adulthood, he or she will be able to write well forever. Of course, after periods of inactivity, s/he may need to scrape away the rust and regain the balance with a little bit of practice.
The preceding example may not seem to jibe with well-indoctrinated attitudes toward writing. Yet I will maintain that the students that I have taught have made their writing progress in big steps. The progress may have been facilitated by the multitudinous practice sessions, but when they ‘get it,’ the quality of the writing is altered forever. Therefore, my only conclusion is that the acquisition of quality writing skills comes in little epiphanies, which, after concerted practice, develop into observable huge improvements.
Take this for an example. A student, by accident, by trial and error, or by recognition in models, ‘sees’ a quality that he recognizes as valuable. Let’s just say that he decides that precise vocabulary makes his writing better. He then uses that particular method often and progressively more effectively, until one day his writing is enhanced by the perceptive use of that technique. This would correspond directly to the BIG STEP mentioned earlier. The improvement began when the student tried to adopt the desirable trait, but the noticeable improvement didn’t come until the student had had enough practice to use the approach well.
To be honest, I think that most learning works in this way. “Getting it” is the first step, and then practicing it until mastery is the next phase. Any student who has truly grasped the value of the appositive, or of the parallel element, will continue to use the technique, because it works. Therefore, the volume of writing assignments is NOT the critical issue. Presenting the material in such a way that the individual understands and is prompted to use the technique is the critical component.
This misunderstanding of the elements of academic rigor is the core of this discussion. Teachers are driven at times to justify their value by demanding rigorous performances from their students. The stupid part materializes when the teacher or administrator misconstrues the method by which rigor is measured. Which of the following describes a rigorous activity: a student composes a series of journal entries in response to three reading assignments; OR a student writes three pages of analysis that must demonstrate points of relevance among three different novels. In each case, the student will read three novels. In case number one, the teacher might require a one page journal entry for each chapter of a book. The student will cumulatively compose thirty or more pages of journal entries. In the other case, the student needs to write three pages. How could the second approach be the more rigorous one?
The answer is again simple. If the three pages of analysis require, via a rubric, a level of thinking and communicating that demonstrates higher level thinking skills, then three pages of meat is infinitely more rigorous than thirty pages of cotton candy. Perhaps that is a weak analogy, but I think I’ve made my point.
Maybe I can make a more visceral mechanical analogy. The journal assignment is analogous to asking a person to cover thirty miles in thirty days, with no demands on the elapsed time of each running session. Therefore, the student could complete his thirty miles by walking. At the end of the sessions, s/he might be in somewhat better shape than s/he would without the exercise, The three page analysis is then comparable to having the student run three miles in less than twenty minutes. S/he cannot meet the requirement, three miles in a limited time, without having done some preparation that requires sustained intensity. Walking a mile a day, for thirty days, is not as hard as training to run three miles in less than twenty minutes.
I think many teachers apply this misconception to their classroom practices. They assign thirty minutes of homework instead of fifteen, citing increased rigor as their aim. Or they require three projects when one will do. The level of required investment should be the measuring stick for academic rigor, not the number of minutes invested, not the number of pages read or composed.
In another manifestation of the disease, some teachers seem to believe that they need to have lower grades to ‘prove’ that they are challenging their students. That is absolute hogwash. All I would need to do to deflate the grades of my Honors English students over the years is to construct poor tests. I could ask questions that I knew I hadn’t covered well, or phrase questions in such a way as to promote confusion. Grades are also reflections of how well a subject is taught, how appropriately the material has been chosen for the course, and how well the test measures the skills and knowledge of the students. In other words, the grades themselves mean nothing.
I always thought that my grades should be skewed to the high end of the bell curve. If natural capacity can be represented by the bell curve, then the signal for the teacher’s contribution would be in moving all of his students up a standard deviation. Try to hang in with this. If the bell curve represents how the grades will be distributed naturally, then the teacher’s goal should be to improve upon that. Otherwise, the teacher is rendered inconsequential. The students arrive, the lessons are presented, and the grades are assigned. We all know that we have on occasion risen ABOVE our natural ability. Shouldn’t that be what the teacher is all about – giving students the tools and resources necessary to rise above their limitations?
In closing, I don’t want to give the impression that the other side of the coin is the answer. If teachers can create tests that encourage their students to score poorly, they can also create tests that inflate grades way out of proportion. The grades themselves are not the aim. Determining legitimate objectives, then devising methods by which all of the students will meet those objectives, is the aim. The grades that students earn are also grades that teachers earn.
Education I
Education – Foray 1
In keeping with the general structure of these discussions so far, this installment will deal with our current American state of education in a more global way. Specifics will follow in later installments. However, the relevance of this topic to the title should be apparent. When it comes to education, almost everybody is stupid, at least for certain periods of time.
Now most people in America are in general consensus that the American educational system is in an awful state of disrepair. This consensus is accepted, despite the fact that it may not be true, and despite the fact that the whiners are the ones with the power to rectify the situation. Hmmm? What’s wrong with this overture? [I was going to use the hackneyed ‘what’s wrong with this picture,’ but ‘overture,’ in its musical context, is more appropriate.] The orchestra of stakeholders and constituents bemoan the current state of academic affairs, but they are really the ones who can make their local schools perform more effectively.
I will elaborate on this, but first I need to establish some important perspectives. If a coalition of people agree that the schools are the problem, and if the schools themselves agree to take some of the blame, (as they have by latching on to school improvement plans that hundreds of gurus use as mechanisms for the publication of articles, journals, and books on the subject,) then why haven’t any of the school improvement plans initiated a sustained, definitive wellspring of support - one that will continue to revolutionize the way that instruction is delivered, and skills and information acquired?
The answer is that the problem is not with the process, but with the clientele. Seriously, most school boards around the country are not being bombarded with stakeholders who are holding their feet to the fire to improve school performance. Most districts hold their board meetings in relative quiet and anonymity. Whether the perception is the truth does not matter; the fact that people don’t come to meetings to ask, implore, or beg for improvement speaks volumes.
MOST PEOPLE ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR SCHOOLS!
Think about that for one second. While most people agree that schools are failing the country and/or the state, few people believe that their own local school district is part of the problem. Remember the over-arching title of these discussions: Is Everybody Stupid! The preceding paragraph should answer the question.
Earlier, I made the comment that consensus says schools are failing, but those members of the consensus group, the group voice, are the very people who can spearhead systemic change. The real consensus is that the American educational system is underperforming, but MY SCHOOL isn’t part of the problem.
So why would most people count their own school systems as successful while simultaneously condemning the public school system in the whole. The answer is simple, and moves beyond the stupidity component. For people to recognize the problems with schools, they would also need to acknowledge the limitations and liabilities of their own children. What parents have really wanted from their local schools is a venue by which their sons and daughters can nominally qualify for the next level of education or training. They want their kids – on paper – to be accepted into college, or into the military, or into one of the many other higher education programs. They also want their children’s compilation of their educational resume to impose on their lives as little as possible. Therefore, educators are often inundated with helicopter parents who advocate for their children irrespective of ethics, morals, responsibilities, or justice. What too many parents want is the sheepskin, the report card, the SYMBOL of success. After all, if the sheepskin serves as a ticket to the next step, then the processes by which the person earned the ticket are meaningless.
So what’s the solution? Simply put, educators need to help the stakeholders be less stupid, or narrow-minded, or limited in regard to the components of a high school education. Schools need to develop ways to encourage students and their parents to EXPECT MORE from the SCHOOLS and from their CHILDREN. The skills and the information are the most important things, not the report cards and the honors and the distinctions. Quite clearly, the push has to be toward raising the aspirations of parents and students, and toward allowing teachers to demand quality from their charges. And teachers have to stop confusing volume or conformity with quality or academic rigor. The next installment on Education will address this issue more precisely.
In keeping with the general structure of these discussions so far, this installment will deal with our current American state of education in a more global way. Specifics will follow in later installments. However, the relevance of this topic to the title should be apparent. When it comes to education, almost everybody is stupid, at least for certain periods of time.
Now most people in America are in general consensus that the American educational system is in an awful state of disrepair. This consensus is accepted, despite the fact that it may not be true, and despite the fact that the whiners are the ones with the power to rectify the situation. Hmmm? What’s wrong with this overture? [I was going to use the hackneyed ‘what’s wrong with this picture,’ but ‘overture,’ in its musical context, is more appropriate.] The orchestra of stakeholders and constituents bemoan the current state of academic affairs, but they are really the ones who can make their local schools perform more effectively.
I will elaborate on this, but first I need to establish some important perspectives. If a coalition of people agree that the schools are the problem, and if the schools themselves agree to take some of the blame, (as they have by latching on to school improvement plans that hundreds of gurus use as mechanisms for the publication of articles, journals, and books on the subject,) then why haven’t any of the school improvement plans initiated a sustained, definitive wellspring of support - one that will continue to revolutionize the way that instruction is delivered, and skills and information acquired?
The answer is that the problem is not with the process, but with the clientele. Seriously, most school boards around the country are not being bombarded with stakeholders who are holding their feet to the fire to improve school performance. Most districts hold their board meetings in relative quiet and anonymity. Whether the perception is the truth does not matter; the fact that people don’t come to meetings to ask, implore, or beg for improvement speaks volumes.
MOST PEOPLE ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR SCHOOLS!
Think about that for one second. While most people agree that schools are failing the country and/or the state, few people believe that their own local school district is part of the problem. Remember the over-arching title of these discussions: Is Everybody Stupid! The preceding paragraph should answer the question.
Earlier, I made the comment that consensus says schools are failing, but those members of the consensus group, the group voice, are the very people who can spearhead systemic change. The real consensus is that the American educational system is underperforming, but MY SCHOOL isn’t part of the problem.
So why would most people count their own school systems as successful while simultaneously condemning the public school system in the whole. The answer is simple, and moves beyond the stupidity component. For people to recognize the problems with schools, they would also need to acknowledge the limitations and liabilities of their own children. What parents have really wanted from their local schools is a venue by which their sons and daughters can nominally qualify for the next level of education or training. They want their kids – on paper – to be accepted into college, or into the military, or into one of the many other higher education programs. They also want their children’s compilation of their educational resume to impose on their lives as little as possible. Therefore, educators are often inundated with helicopter parents who advocate for their children irrespective of ethics, morals, responsibilities, or justice. What too many parents want is the sheepskin, the report card, the SYMBOL of success. After all, if the sheepskin serves as a ticket to the next step, then the processes by which the person earned the ticket are meaningless.
So what’s the solution? Simply put, educators need to help the stakeholders be less stupid, or narrow-minded, or limited in regard to the components of a high school education. Schools need to develop ways to encourage students and their parents to EXPECT MORE from the SCHOOLS and from their CHILDREN. The skills and the information are the most important things, not the report cards and the honors and the distinctions. Quite clearly, the push has to be toward raising the aspirations of parents and students, and toward allowing teachers to demand quality from their charges. And teachers have to stop confusing volume or conformity with quality or academic rigor. The next installment on Education will address this issue more precisely.
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