Americans seem to be experts at starting and fighting wars over our children's education, rather than experts in building it.
In the 1980s we fought the reading wars, and in the 1990s, we battled over mathematics: Do students learn to read out of their experience with language or should they be taught phonics? Do reading textbooks do the best job, or is it more effective to get children to read voluminously? In math, we argued about whether "real world problems" should drive the curriculum, and fought about whether it was useful to let students invent their own methods for calculation.
And these wars had costs. American students were, overall, neither learning to read or to do math well enough. The education wars absorbed resources that could have been better deployed in the service of a system that could support the development of better instruction in reading and math, and in better results for children.
Now we are slipping rapidly into a new education war, this one about how to get better teaching for our nation's students. The good news is that we agree on something very important: Teaching matters. It matters in the poorest of communities and for the middle class. It matters for students of color and for white students. Skillful teaching can make the difference for students between being at the top of the class or the bottom, overriding differences in family income or skin color.
The disappointing news is that we are not using these agreements to figure out ways to get lots of skillful teaching in classrooms. Instead we are lining up for battle: Fire teachers. Pay good teachers more. Close colleges of education. Open alternate routes into teaching. End tenure. Measure teachers' performance based on their students' gains. Use portfolios to assess teachers' competence. We lob missiles with singular solutions instead of teaming up to build the systems we need to improve teaching and learning at the scale of this vast nation.
What we need instead of a new war is a realistic action plan to build a system that can deliver good education to the 50 million school-age youth in this country. The Common Core Standards, which specify a set of learning goals in mathematics and English language arts, are an important first step. Armed with unprecedented agreement about what students should know and be able to do, we must now build usable resources to support the teaching that it will take to help all students reach those goals. Tests of students' progress are needed, but to be useful, they must be geared to the actual curriculum. Useful tests must provide information not only for evaluation but also for instruction.
And we need a new system to equip the huge workforce of teachers in this country with the skills and knowledge needed to teach this curriculum effectively. Firing those who cannot do it, and hoping that the rest figure it out on the job -- or just increasing salaries of those who do figure it out -- will not make large numbers of teachers more effective.
Teaching demands substantial skill. We have knowledge about effective practice and must establish a range of ways for teachers to learn to practice skillfully, methods to assess teaching proficiency, and means to improve ineffective instruction. We also know a great deal about school leadership and schools that are built to support high-quality instruction.
Simply allowing great but isolated examples to flourish will not lead to a fundamental redesign of our system. We admire international educational systems, but recoil against the hard work it would take here to build our own strong system. This is like aspiring to run a marathon, and hoping to get there simply by envying elite runners. Being lambasted for not running better, or promising a large reward to run a sub-three hour marathon, cannot enable high performance running. Instead, successful runners follow tough training programs, staged and realistic, with the right supports and appropriate goals. To build a successful educational system, we need to do all this, and on a large scale.
It is time for a new campaign, not a new war. Its elements include common standards for students, and common professional systems to support high-quality teaching and schools. Doing this one classroom, school, district, or even state at a time is not a strategy for collective improvement. Instead of waving battle flags and shooting rhetoric, let's turn to the tough job of building the tools and resources for success, and the realistic incentives and structures for their effective use.
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More equal societies work better for everyone. http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence/education
Conservatives demonize teachers to distract us for genuine root causes like poverty and income inequality.
They started not with the kids in the system but with pregnant mothers. Getting them to attend classes in child development etc. During early childhood years the parents were graded on things like frequency of reading to their child as part of participation in a heavily subsidized daycare program. In third grade the kids those mothers bore were ALL at or above grade level in mathematics. 100% of them. Beating out every other school in new york state.
http://www.hcz.org/
They call it the "Project Pipeline" with a plan going from cradle to college. There are currently 600 harlem kids in college that came through the pipeline.
The kid of the middle class family and the kid of the uber-wealthy family is pretty much on par. Public schools in solid middle class neighborhoods on average do just as well as fancy-pants private schools.
It doesn't matter how tall you are once you are tall enough to get on the ride. But you need to be at least that tall.
Here's mine for Math Class. This is how the best math class I ever attended worked.
No Tests.
No quizzes.
No Homework.
The books stayed in the classroom, they weren't owned by students.
No lecture portion.
The class would start reading the lesson on their own. If you didn't understand something you could go up to the teacher and talk quietly 1 on 1 about it.
When you were done with the reading you started on the problems. When you finished you took them up to be graded. The teacher immediately graded your paper and recorded the result. The paper was returned with incorrect problems marked.
You worked on the wrong problems and re-submitted until you got 100% (only the first try counted for grades). If you did not finish by end of class you had to stay after school until you managed it.
If you did finish before the end of class ... you could do whatever you wanted. Literally whatever you wanted. You could *leave class* even. If you worked ahead you could not even show up to the next class.
No lectures meant the teacher could work with students on different chapters.
Almost everyone in the class kept a "ditch buffer" and the few who loved math got books ahead.
After teachers have lodged all their complaints about parents and given all their excuses about poverty -- one plus one will still equal two. Teachers can use whatever method they want, but the bottom line is this: failure to teach students their lessons is cause for dismissal.
If I study learn and master a program and teaching methodology - prepare work adjust it for my students, offer help when needed or requested - stay after school to assist anybody who wants to learn - prepare handout material so parents can help their kids with the math - at what point are the students themselves and their parents slightly responsible for their learning. At what point if at all does personal responsibility apply to other people.
Malcolm Gladwell explains how more practice leads to better outcomes in Outliers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eHa9n4jbGw
10,000+ hours in class.
And yeah, the summer break is very damaging.
However, working together would necessitate a willingness on both sides to fix the current state of schools in this country. It seems to me the stagnant teacher and principal unions have stated loud and clear that reform and change will be hard to come by. NEA and AFT have shot down numerous education reform proposals (often without even allowing them to come to a vote), and have shamelessly protected ineffective teachers. How else, but by lobbing proverbial missiles, can we subvert the current state of education that is so obviously broken?
These are always on the table as a point of negotiation - increase salary but cut tenure, cut pension, pay into healthcare, evaluate teachers on x, y, & z.
There are inherent problems with one side of the negotiations so NEA/AFT won't budge, and can you blame them? Look how poor the average layman's working conditions/pay/benefits are compared to union jobs. I'd shell out union dues if I could get unionized where I work...
Most things the union opposes either haven't been studied, or have been studied and have been shown not to work. Digging in their heels to prevent destructive changes to education should not result in the union being demonized. But with media being complicit in spreading politicians' misleading education, that's often what happens.
That those children come to class woefully prepared is a condemnation of the parents over the past 30 years. Parents today have great difficulty in identifying the Atlantic Ocean but can, with a great deal of pride, tell us who won American Idol for the past 5 years.
Tie the basic class content to culturally relevant topics -- and the students will engage with the concepts.
Stop giving excuses about poverty and race and start finding solutions.
Parents in general, particularly those under 45 are especially poor parents.
One would think that by now hard data would exist to explain how kids learn and how best to teach them. If so, why don't we all agree to do that? If not, then we're all just wasting our time.
Pathetic.
What relationship do you have to the teaching industry? How do you 'know' the unions are the source of all our problems?
Explain why the DoE is a waste of money?
On the other hand, if you were looking to improve education, you'd do exactly the opposite.
The "academic" model persists: classes listening to teachers/textbooks/credits/units/lesson plans/multiple-guess tests/writing papers/grade by grade promotions/so many hours of seat time/school year/grades of ABCetc. all having nothing to do with knowing & understanding.
Despite the "short bus" thinking of many, my daughter came through that system as a scholar, scoring high on her SAT's, and earning a scholarship for college.She graduated with the rank of 8 in s high school class of over 300. Had we left her in district, I am certain she would barely have graduated.
Teachers are constantly being told to do more with less...less money, less resources, less everything---except students. Those they get more of than they can possibly handle. It is a recipe for diminishing returns, and disaster. Too bad we don't give teachers the credit they deserve.
The answer that jumps off the page is this:
If you properly fund and staff your schools, and if you implement a good curriculum, you can have good success in educating kids. On the other hand, if you underfund, understaff schools and present a poor curriculum, education suffers.
Oh. And you're proud of your kid.
Well, yeah.
My state laid off hundreds of teachers---ignoring the eventual cost, as a "budget issue".
The answer is not to load up the classrooms, and hope for the best---or to assume that the "bright" kids will simply rise to the top.
And yes, I am proud of my daughter. She was failing EVERY subject in school nine years ago---and the teachers in district could do nothing for her. When she got placed in the proper school environment, she flourished. So I think it's a BIG deal, yes. I also thought it was a big deal when she was the first special needs child from our district to qualify for National Honor Society.
Her education was not cheap---but I've seen the result of the in district special needs options---which is usually to just push the kid through til they are 18, hand them a bogus diploma, and send them on their way.
Why are we not investing in our children, instead of quick fix nonsense? My daughter overcame obstacles to get an education...why are we making it so hard for average kids to learn?
Why, oh why, oh why is effective teaching such a mystery?
Many people have been studying how humans learn, specifically how kids learn, what does and does not work, etc., etc., etc. for well over a HUNDRED YEARS!
Have we learned nothing?
And if we really are so stupid, then the proper course may be to fire all faculty of every psychology department and education department at every university in the country and replace them with someone who can do effective research.
Then, after we have FINALLY figured out how humans learn and what the most effective methods are, then (and only then) can governments make effective education decisions with the money available.
But until then, any effort by any government at any level is likely to be wasted effort.
Let me ask you a question.
Say you needed spinal cord surgery.
Would you go to a surgical resident, with a new practice, or look for an experienced surgeon?
No one is "the best" out of the box. Even the most gifted resident will take years of practice to acquire the skill...and yet you expect teachers to come "ready to roll" from college.
Most residential property tax payers, especially seniors, are angry about ever higher property taxes. The middle class has been decmated as to income and higher costs of living. The shifts of manufacturing and services to other parts of the USA, and overseas and extortion or lower taxes to keep remaining ones, have meant more tax burden on the rest of taxpayers.Conservative politicans have taken the side of taxpayers over ththe educational needs of children.
Until we deal with the funding crises, find ways to reduce costs without chasing out good teachers, we will continue to see schools used as a target of defunding ruining our abilty to run schools that work for all kids.
bawhahaha
The report by The Education Trust found that 23 percent of recent high school graduates don't get the minimum score needed on the enlistment test to join any branch of the military. The study, released exclusively to The Associated Press on Tuesday, comes on top of Pentagon data that shows 75 percent of those aged 17 to 24 don't qualify for the military because they are physically unfit, have a criminal record or didn't graduate high school."
So: 75% don't even qualify to take the test. Of the 25% 'good enough' to bother with, almost a quarter of THEM don't qualify. Thus, roughly 80% of the high school graduating age population is not fit to join the Army.
Believe me, to be reasonably successful in the Army does not require a whole lot of intelligence, motivation, or anything else. Breathing, yes. Perseverance, maybe.
So, whether we test more poorly than other countries or not, we are simply NOT educating our kids.
And we will pay dearly for this deficiency.
Our classroom teachers aren't just failing around the edges. This failure has reached a crisis point.
Defenders of the status quo keep insisting that if you don't include all of the students who schools are not reaching and teaching -- then the numbers look really good! If we can blame the failure on poverty and divorced parents, then teachers can take responsibility for all the successes! They insist teaching matters -- but then claim it doesn't matter when we point to the large percentages of children who they have failed to teach.
Teachers and their union leadership won't admit that there is such as thing as a bad teacher who should be fired, are all over the place when it comes to how best to evaluate teaching performance, irresponsibly ignore the harmful effects on children that results from retaining poor teachers (or having poor teachers remediate while teaching) and display no sense of urgency in ridding schools of poor teachers. Administrators are less culpable but demand results too quickly without sufficient support or professional development for teachers and too often want to make career-ending judgments without much evidence of poor quality teaching.
There is a middle ground, but it takes people acting in good faith to get there. Right now the biggest culprits are labor organizations that fight tooth and nail against making teacher evaluation, remediation and dismissal processes the urgent business critical to the success of schools, teachers and their students that they are. Until that changes, nothing can change.
Standards make good sign posts for educators across a vast country to agree on what should be taught in an algebra or chemistry course. As soon as standards are used to evaluate they become an evil tool for people afflicted with the need to control. The become an excuse to employ bad pedagogy. Evaluation needs to be left in the local community where students, parents and tax payers have a strong voice. To move evaluation to some capital and base it on some statistical model is a recipe for destroying the greatest endeavor ever for the advancement of the human condition, the American public education system.