One of the most infuriating aspects of the discussion about education reform or change has been that there really hasn't been a discussion. Money and power have trumped experience for far too many years now with the media and the U.S. Department of Education rushing uncritically to get every quote and opinion from billionaires and politicians, while worse helping them label anyone with an opposing or experienced opinion as being for the "status quo" or not having the best interests of children in mind.
Media is often behind on issues like this and rush to celebrities for opinions because it is easier and cheaper than actually digging and asking the hard questions. That seems to have changed recently with the testing and data collecting scandals, and the failure of vouchers and corporate model charter schools to "fix" education. And note I am not at all against charter schools, in fact I am a full-time public school district teacher and I sit on the board of a local charter school. The charter school concept has been hijacked by some with money to push a very narrow model that has unfortunately poisoned the charter school concept in many peoples' minds.
Perhaps, though, the biggest stretch of the facts that "reformers," including the Department of Education for over ten years, have successfully foisted on society has been that their methods are models of "innovation." I'm generalizing here some, but typically the models for education they promote look like school has for well over a hundred years. Sit kids in rows, sit up straight, be quiet, memorize facts, stick to a readin', 'riting, 'rithmetic type of narrow curriculum and so on. And there might be a small percentage of students that that would help, much the same as "boot camp" style schools for troubled youth end up helping some, but that doesn't make them the right fit for every child, and it certainly doesn't make them "innovative."
One thing the current "reformers" have right is that we should be innovating. We should be learning from innovative teachers, schools, programs and countries already showing success, as well as promoting real innovation through our policies and investments. Currently "Race to the Top" makes it very difficult to really innovate because it demands conditions that support too narrow an approach. It actually stifles true innovation.
Innovation in education is not going to happen in the "top-down" model currently being overly encouraged and even enforced on teachers and schools. Teachers and other experienced educators should be driving innovation, but they are being shackled with programs, requirements and "we know better" than you attitudes. By the way this also makes it more difficult to hold teachers accountable, because teachers are learning to embrace "programs" because then any failure (if I've followed the program) is mostly the program's fault. If we give teachers the responsibility, the time and most importantly the autonomy to design, implement, evaluate, tweak and improve their pedagogy and curriculum, that is when we will really see innovation happen.
When Finland saw its schools failing 10+ years ago they did not go to a "no excuses" test everything approach. They didn't fire teachers and blame teachers. They gave teachers the responsibility and the support to change their schools. Teachers took on their professional development, training and peer review, and the school administration was there to help get the resources and time to make it happen. They turned our current top/down model on its head and transformed their schools. Administration is there to support what teachers and students require to learn instead of telling them what to do. Yes, we are not Finland, and yes, we have issues they do not, but that shouldn't change the basic approach. What they found (and really schools here that have autonomy found long ago) was that teachers won't put up for long with colleagues that are not pulling their weight, and that others blossomed when given quality, ongoing training and support in what they do (what a concept).
If we truly want to foster innovation in and from America's schools. If we want schools that foster engagement and creativity, an important step will be to give teachers and schools the autonomy and time to build great schools from the ground up. If some of those are charter schools, great, but non-charter public schools should be at the forefront as well. The technology available to us now that connects us all in new powerful ways will leverage what teachers can do and plan by including successful colleagues globally in making and incorporating genuinely innovative practices. Put actual experienced educators in charge; they are the heart of real reform.
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@Brian: Brian is on target. Our edsucational system is like a tree growing in darkness. With no photosynthesis, even the roots die out. Our educators on the top are like that tree so nothing innovative is happening there. They also disregard that the population is increasing while the funds are dying out. Yet they keep funding hefty grants based on rhetoric not on what the grant would accomplish.
Days of one to one teaching are over. Our late vice president Hubert Humphrey had said it best when he opened a camp for the inner city kids in Washington around 1968 where I went to give a workshop to 400 inner city kids showing them germs from my and their mouths under a microscope. In a letter, he wrote me: We need your kind of programs which can transform masses not a selected few. I am paraphrasing this because I do not remember the exact quote. But he was so committed to equal rights and opportunities that he followed up with another about six months later asking, how the project is going?
We need more Humphrey’s now. But in the meantime, businesses and the wealthy have taken over. Some agencies won’t even consider your grant application unless your operating budget is upwards of one million! Grass root ideas, like the saplings need surviving money. Somehow that lesson of Biology never sank in them.
The reformers we are forced to endure are not true innovators and it's time more of us stand up and shout that truth out loud.
Teachers had the autonomy to teach what their students needed. They could treat every child as an individual and teach to that child's strengths. They would make sure they had the basics and skills to acquire more of what interested the child. So the child that loved math could pursue that and the child that love to write could do that. Every child had a chance to be best at something, instead of mediocre at everything.
Of course, that was when we went on field trips to the local dairy (when there still was one), went on a submarine, did art projects and sang from the music books. We had show and tell, did creative writing, read out loud and were read to.
When I grew up you could go to summer school to take art or music or creative writing or whatever you wanted. Each school offered whatever the teachers wanted to teach that summer.
Now you can't go unless you've failed a subject and you can only take the remedial class that you failed to regain the credit. Summer school is a punishment instead of an enriching exploration.
Teachers are no longer artists. Now they are drones manufacturing widgets.
When administrators, parents and teachers all cooperate to work out clearer concepts and new means of achieving them they are showing students what is possible. With every advance will come a corresponding increase in the freedom to think and do and to develop capacities and judgement.
Unfortunately, as you know, interest in edtech innovation is waning. Overshadowed, ignored, and slowly extinguished - as school computers and networks are being swallowed up, to be used more and more for high stakes testing.
Those who want to continue to innovate have to do it under the radar, on their own time and dime, and working twice as hard. I'm making plans for next year along those lines, and I bet you are too. Keep on pushing back.
Earned autonomy is the original sin of "reform." We might as well speak of "earned dignity," "earned humanity," or "earned respect." Their autonomy means that principals have complete power to fire teachers who stand up for their own professional autonomy, or their students' autonomy as human beings to be treated as more than a test score.
"What I wish people would realize is that "good" schools with high test scores don't think of their instruction as some kind of reward for the test scores. They don't focus on basic skills and then suddenly reach a point where they...develop deeper knowledge, enrich learning, engage students' interests, etc. It's not basics and then enrichment. The basics can be addressed more covertly, more authentically, and more effectively, when those skills are developed in a meaningful and motivational context. That type of environment shouldn't be the exception, the unearned privilege of the children of privileged parents, and those lucky enough to attend schools that test well. That type of education is the birthright of every child."
The other racket is the not for profit gimmick. Famous Amos knew how to sell his cookies. So do the rich and famous. They come up with programs which require an arm and a leg to just stay afloat. Yet they flourish because NSF funds them, universities, colleges and businesses partner with them and they hold highly publicized programs for teachers in practically every city in the nation giving teachers ego oomph who wait in line to join because often the space is limited to only 25 participants!
Yet my program which costs pittance and can reach masses is dying on the vine. See: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=149281. I must commend Gates Foundation though for funding the Khan Academy which is doing more for the masses and education than all those rich and those getting rich at the expense of our struggling students.