Let's play a game. Can you figure out who said the following?
"...Teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn."
Was it Diane Ravitch? No! Alfie Kohn? Sorry! Charlie Sheen? Are you nuts?
The answer is President Obama. In his State of the Union address last week, the president hammered home some of the education reforms he has made during his tenure. The quote from the State of the Union is, however, quite ironic. Obama's policies actually require more
standardized testing, accountability measures that link teacher evaluations to test scores, and a process of 'drill, kill, bubble-fill' in classrooms. His education programs, like Race to the Top, are killing education in America.
Proposals include testing preschoolers, increasing the number of charter schools, and continuing an overreliance on high-stakes testing. As Charlie Sheen perhaps may intelligently note, "America's on a drug, it's called standardized testing. If you try it you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body."
Later in the speech, the president called for every state to require students to stay in school until they turn 18, in an attempt to address the alarming dropout rate, where every nine seconds a kid drops out of school. However, his proposal does not do anything to address the crisis, many analysts say. It's imperative to look to the reasons why kids drop out in the first place.
Contrary to popular belief, as the report, The Silent Epidemic, reveals, most of the dropouts (70 percent) were confident that they could have graduated, and 81 percent recognized that graduating high school was essential to their success. Then what was the primary reason for dropping out? Simply, because SCHOOL WAS BORING! I don't blame them. Nearly half of the young adults explained that they dropped out because their classes were uninteresting. Interestingly, 81 percent said they would not have dropped out if the subjects were more relevant to real life.
Mr. President, keeping these kids in a school system that is failing miserably and lacks relevance to their lives will not solve anything. This trend must be reversed.
Ultimately, education does not need to be reformed. It needs to be revolutionized. Everyone -- educators, politicians, students, parents, and anyone affected by the school system -- needs to ask themselves a simple, yet powerful question: How can we make school the best hours of a kid's day?
I want kids to be running to school in the morning and being forced out at the end of the day. Imagine a school like that.
And Mr. President, live by your word. Let schools "teach with passion and creativity." Call for a repeal of Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind. To make America great again, we need to transform American schools. Mr. President, you said it best: "This nation is great, because we built it together. This nation is great, because we worked as a team. This nation is great, because we get each other's backs."
No challenge is too great for this country. We have to cultivate -- holistically and whole-heartedly -- our powers of imagination and creativity within a different paradigm of human purpose. Michelangelo once said, "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." For all our futures, we need to aim high. We need to think different.
Bring on the learning revolution!
Nikhil is currently writing a book on education reform.
Steve Nelson: Educational Inequity Is No Accident
Building a movement to support this change in education is the purpose of the non-profit I work with, IDEA: Institute for Democratic Education in America - www.democraticeducation.org. Thank you for so clearly stating the case. Let's keep working for that change. We can make it happen.
Raising the bar is key, if kids don't meet it then there are consequences. Our currrent system rewards success, and rewards failure in a lesser degree. There is no consequence for failure anymore. Example: To graduate in Ohio you need to pass an 8th grade level test (taken in 10th grade). The catch? To pass you need around a 45%. Is it any wonder why kids aren't prepared for college? Is it any wonder that kids have lower work ethics, when they've been taught that a 45% adequate job is accaptable? If you performed at 45% proficiency at your job, do you think you'd be sticking around?
Raise the bar, remove the kids who disrupt learning for others, teach that failure is unaccaptable, and we will see a turnaround in our schools.
Obvious "success" in economics isn't high on their list of priorities - thus school perceived as a day jail with resistant behavior - but there's probably something more interesting that they could be doing that would help them. If it was provided they would improve - and without disruptions you might be work on college level projects. That's how to improve education - make it something that one does for themselves with guidance and support rather than something imposed to be resisted.
I have no problem with trying to make school more interesting and relevant--especially relevant. However, the purpose of education is not to entertain jaded teenagers. It is to insure they will not become dependents of society and possibly add something back into it instead.
School should be where children learn they "havetado the havetados before they gettado the wannados."
On the plus side, they can take the GED tests and go to community college or some training program, dropping out isn't the end of the world unless they make a series of bad decisions afterwards.
What I can say is that not graduating from high school is the best way I know of guaranteeing that the jobs you will do in the future will be unpleasant, boring, and frustrating - and possibly very dangerous.
I have watched reform after reform fly by in my 15 years working in public education and my 16 years as a student in public educational institutions. Most of them have been underfunded, and while they were being enacted money was siphoned away from existing programs which worked and engaged students, ending with less than we started with.
Pay up. Pay for more teachers, so there's more projects and less chanting from the front of the class. Pay for more field trips and presentations. Pay for more extracurricular activities: more sports, arts, media, hobby and political clubs. Pay to have more eyes and ears on campus, more tutors, more mentors. Pay for more classes for special needs, whether it is for the challenged or for the gifted. Pay for more stuff going on after school until parents get home from work.
In the grand budget of America, it's not that much money and we will be repaid tenfold.
45 minutes to a class. 5 minutes for seating and attendance. 12 minutes handling referrals for behavior not acceptable in the classroom. 4 minutes handling a tantrum.. 2 minutes to hand out worksheets. 2 minutes to review that evening's homework assignments. The remaining minutes are devoted to fulfilling standardized test requirements.
8 hours work days. 20 minutes for eating lunch. 4 minutes allowed for restroom breaks. No coffee brakes. 30 minutes for classroom preparation. 60 minutes for parent-teacher-student-administration-student advocate IP evaluations. 40 minutes of grading & inputting student scores. 30 minutes of attendance report paperwork. 30 minutes of attendance for extra curricular events. The reamainder of the time spent in classroom teaching.
16 hours "free" time for the teacher. 100 minutes preparing lesson plans/classroom misc. 30 minutes daily, individual student reports. 20 minutes calling parents. 20 minutes emailing/writing to parents. 40 minutes attending after-school events. 10 minutes raising funds for classroom expenses. 20 minutes state/federally mandated documentation.
No time left to defend oneself against clueless enemies of public education.
Here's a thought....instead of trying to blame the schools, how about blaming the parents....or at least holding parents accountable?
wait...wait...I know....actually holding parents accountable isn't in line w/ the right wing rhetoric.