As a former teacher in the public schools, I am going to briefly touch upon here issues that confront American society in the realm of public education. Much of it will be based on my observations and experiences and I will try to provide some support for them from available educational research. I feel that there are possible generalizations that can be made because I know that others see them as well.
Despite the glaring inadequacies of our public education system, community dialogues have not occurred. Often this has resulted in parents being pitted as individuals (consumers) against teachers and administrators. No one is addressing the root causes of the problems at a systemic level. Instead, there is a blame game where teachers blame parents, parents blame teachers and administrators blame them both.
The first and most critical observation is that American public schools have passed the point of no return. They are dysfunctional and non-productive institutions that have lost their prior raison d'etre. They are not producing workers for the American economy, unless minimum wage jobs now qualify as the American economy. They are not producing leaders for business or the public sector who are capable of functioning in a highly competitive environment. Neither are they demonstrating any capacity to provide the foundation for the advancement of science and technology in the twenty-first century.
Instead what has evolved are youth warehouses where populations of young people go for the purpose of socializing. Just looking quickly at one study it found much more of a positive view towards school from immigrant children as opposed to American native-born children. "White American students were the most likely to have negative responses to their own school (42 percent) and had the lowest percentages of positive responses (20 percent). For immigrant youngsters, 88 percent gave a positive response when asked about their school and only one student included a negative term. The rest were neutral. http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1996/02.29/ImmigrantStuden.html
In regards to this I have seen how portables have replaced new school buildings. Today there is an emphasis on public budget cuts flowing from the dominant tax cutting philosophy of elected officials. The result is the continued deterioration of the public infrastructure.
This has touched on two distinct dimensions of the public school issue- student attitudes and public investment. There is more to be said about both. The fact is that there is a certain percentage of high school non-dropout who have a distinguishing role in current educational settings. But, with the dropout rate reaching the 30% rate there is obviously more wrong than just federal funding here. Likewise, it would be erroneous to blame accountability as the culprit.
The recent testing of No Child Left Behind is only demonstrating the extent of the problem, not creating it. While teaching to the test is clearly an unintended consequence of NCLB, it has not been the reason for testing scores being as low as they are. "Of the 49 states and the District of Columbia reporting the number of schools not making AYP for at least one year in 2004-05, a total of 20,948 schools failed to make AYP." http://www.nea.org/esea/ayptrends1104.html
The effort of No Child Left Behind to focus on accountability is long overdue. The problem however is not just that students are failing to learn the appropriate level of material commensurate with their age/grade level. It is also that the schools have not retooled to address the changing of the world economy that has gone through a period of technological innovation. Even those students who are demonstrating proficiency in mastering core subjects are not being prepared for the post-high school employment resulting in many young people with high school diplomas underachieving.
Gone are the sources of employment that pay and require little formalized training such as in the industrial sector. The material needed to function in the high-tech world of business and commerce are simply not found in present-day public schools. "The core problem is that our education and training systems were built for another era. We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself. " http://www.skillscommission.org/pdf/exec_sum/ToughChoices_EXECSUM.pdf
There is in this understated evaluation of the report entitled "Tough Choices or Tough Times" a harbinger of the bad news to come and the impact of the failings of the American educational system on the future generations.
The pressure to increase performance has not yet reached the students outside of the formalized tests. It has reached the teachers with the expectations increasing yearly to improve student performance. "Every year I ask my college class how many students have seen a high school teacher cry, and most students raise their hands. When I ask what provoked the crying, most stories are about teachers who threaten to give students bad grades and students who do not care. When I ask my colleagues the same question about their high school teachers from one or two generations ago, virtually none can recall such tears. This is not a systematic survey, but it suggests a big change. " http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/spring2004/tellthekids.html
There is a gap between the students' views of their chances for success and the reality. Even with all the testing young people have not grasped the relation between their work in high school and their future by students or their families. "As of 1992, 84 percent of high school seniors planned to get a college degree (NELS, 1992); but data from the high school classes of 1972, 1982, and 1992 tell us that only 45 to 49 percent of students who enter college and earn more than 10 credits actually earn a bachelor's degree--many even fail to earn 10 credits (Adelman, 2004). For students with high school averages of C or lower, the chances that they will earn even one college credit are less than 50-50 (Rosenbaum, 2001)...... "Despite the availability of open admissions institutions and increased student aspirations for college degrees--factors that increase college enrollment--the easiest-to-use predictor of a student's likelihood of graduating from a two- or four-year college is still his or her high school grade point average.* " http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/spring2004/tellthekids.html
This brings us to the policy issues in education which until recently have been focused on the issue of vouchers versus public schools. The public seems to project a significant minority opinion regarding the solution to public education. "3. A slight increase over 2004 finds 68 percent of the public saying that reform of the existing public schools is the way to go to improve public education and just 23 percent saying the focus should be finding an alternative to the current system." http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2005/09/b1066293.html
This clearly puts me in the minority position. In an educational system where everyone but educators are driving policy, I have no difficulty with coping with being among the few. This gets us to the real issue of my treatise.
No one is developing educational policy, funding, teacher education or assessment of the system based on the current state of affairs. There remains an avoidance reflex that seeks to minimize the contention in educational policy. The disconnect between policy and research results in establishing policy based on decreased funding and avoiding the more glaring contradictions in the system to perpetuate themselves indefinitely.
The military holds bake sales and similar fund raisers for things they want, and the schools don't have to because we redirect where our taxes go? (You know I'm going to say it, support Kucinich if you like that idea.)
Of course, Martin is completely correct. And across the country we have top heavy administrations, with highly paid administrators who often don't know the difference between a kid and a paperclip.
At the same time, there are untold thousands of excellent teachers who somehow manage to sheild the kids from the administration and do good things in the classroom (more teachers need to view this as their actual job).
I'm not sure making kids ready to fit into the economy should be the goal. If the goal were simply to have fun in the classroom--and by that I mean make learning fun--and putting more flexibility into the curriculum so it is driven more by kids' interests than testing, we'd change for the better overnight.
Test scores on standardized tests are a huge part of the problem. Let me rephrase: The importance we attach to those scores are a huge part of the problem. I would say that very close to 100% of the parents of kids I taught over 20 years were extremely happy if their child came home happy and enthused about what they were learning, which they usually did.
Ironically, I shut the door and did pretty much what I'm advocating here. And I learned (eventually) to nod my head, say yes, and smile for the administrators (who all too frequently really are the folks who couldn't handle the classroom--like college education professors who really can't handle the kids, but tell everyone else how to).
Imagine if the general public were allowed to go into operating rooms, and, for example, tell heart surgeons how do do their work? That's pretty much how it is for teachers, the ones who actually dedicate their lives to giving the kids a helping hand and treating them like human beings, and working their tails off in the process.
Of course I could go on, but let me end on this: Ask yourself if you'd rather see your child with high test scores, but unhappy and unenthused about learning, or simply enthused and excited about learning? Then talk to your kids regularly about school with detailed and specific questions. Let your instincts guide you and you'll soon be solving at least some of the problems.
I know it's more complicated regarding the huge self-perpetuating bureaucracy we've created, with the blind leading the blind, but at least you'll be helping significantly in your child's education.
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Daniel Geery (26 articles, 58 quicklinks, 121 diaries, 677 comments)
on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 10:18:53 AM
Sorry Daniel but we are on a differnet page here. I am bnot talking about making school "fun" for kids. I am talking about a society that integrates its institutions so that they accomplish the tasks of providing young people with not only a positive learning experience in school, but also a positive growth experience in life. Child-centeredness in education needs to include preparation for adult responsibilities as well. Right now its teachers who pay the price for students who have no motivation or focus in their educational work. Teacher centeredness helps to pass on the knowledge of one generation to the next and prepare the society for the future.
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Martin Zehr (36 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 77 comments)
on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 12:53:53 PM
I don't see fun and what you're saying as mutually exclusive, and I'm not sure why anyone would.
Just yesterday I learned of a girl who was in my sixth grade class who came back to look for me, specifically, and told my friend she is working on her education degree in college.
This sort of thing has happened time and time again with students I've taught. I'm not saying discipline isn't necessary--I damn well kick ass when kids don't tow the line. I give a lot of slack in the rope, but they all know I'm at the other end of it, and it only goes so far. But I also strive to make sure that I have at least one and hopefully more learning activities that are fun every day.
Twelve years of Catholic school with Dominican nuns making me hate life in general may have influenced my opinions a bit. Still, if learning isn't fun, if curiosity were not inherent in Homo sapiens, if our species didn't play and experiment, we'd likely still be swinging from branches in the jungle. Read about Issac Newton, for one example, who considered himself a child playing before an ocean of magic and mystery.
Even more specifically, here's the sort of thing I'm talking about:
Ok, I hated my school. In that country all education was free and we had a K-10, all happening in one building. You know, on the graduation day we had to welcome the 7years old to school. I hated that too. To take a 7year old kid on your shoulders, just imagine that. And we had a class that did not change. The same kids who entered at 7 will graduate at 17- it was a journey together. And I hated that...
We were supposed to help each other. If there was one student who did not understand, we the students were supposed to explain until he/she understood. Those explanations made us understand things better. I used that method many times after that. But at that time I hated it.
Among us we had camaraderie. Snitching and complaining to teachers was undiginified. We had 25 students in the class and 12 of those were girls. Among the 4 valedictorians there were 3 girls and one boy. Valedictorians received real gold medals. But boys were not among them because it was considered that boys were supposed to be more engaged in something specific and girls were neat and persistent, so they excelled in all. We had physics geniuses and math too. And we were taught science from the grade 5. I hated it. We were taught history extensively and I knew the names of Lincoln, Jefferson and others, their lives in detail when I was 15. Didn't like them very much. But I knew who they were as well as Bismarck, Philippe II, Francis Bacon and Dideroth.
We were forcibly taught arts. We were taken for free to museums and theaters including opera and ballet. I hated those trips but now I remember all operas and all ballets.
We were taught that we were citizens. The teachers were never supposed to yell or curse. Violence in the classrooms was unacceptable. We had fights and sometimes brutal fights but it was an unwritten code of honor that to make permanent physical harm was forbidden. It was forbidden to insult teachers or to humiliate them. If the teacher visits your parents with complain that was a family shame. And vice- versa - to prevent the student to go to the bathroom or to keep a student in detention was inconceivable.
All 25 students who entered the school building graduated while passing 10(!) final exams. Most of them ( about 80%) continued studying in colleges. They had different fates but none of them ever committed any felony. None.
I graduated in 1973 in the country which was atheistic, had no God, considered all people equal and considered that public education was a right. Yes, I hated my school. I guess I was pretty stupid.
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Mark Sashine (46 articles, 19 quicklinks, 235 diaries, 3358 comments)
on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 2:17:37 PM
