In the article "The End of the Education Debate", Checker Finn makes the following statement:
"The education-reform debate as we have known it for a generation is creaking to a halt. No new way of thinking has emerged to displace those that have preoccupied reformers for a quarter- century — but the defining ideas of our current wave of reform ( standards, testing, and choice), and the conceptual framework built around them, are clearly outliving their usefulness.
The problem is not that these ideas are misguided. Rather, they are just not powerful enough to force the rusty infrastructure of American primary and secondary education to undergo meaningful change. They have failed at bringing about the reformers' most important goal: dramatically improved student achievement.
The next wave of education policy will therefore need to direct itself toward even more fundamental questions, challenging long-held assumptions about how education is managed, funded, designed, and overseen."
I have two questions (you could answer both in the same comment, answer one and ignore the other, or write two separate comments). The first is: Do you agree with Checker Finn's statement that the primary external reforms of the last quarter-century (standards, testing, and reform) have outlived their usefulness? Why or why not?
The second question is: What external reform do you think will have the largest impact on public education over the next quarter-century? Why?
26 comments:
"Reading and writing and learning I allow to be necessary, but yet not the chief business [of education]. I imagine you would think him a very foolish fellow, that should not value a virtuous or a wise man infinitely before a great scholar." – John Locke
I’m not sure if the idea of character education, unless attempted or mandated on a national scale, is considered an external reform. However, I believe there are certain “soft skills” that students need to learn in order to be successful in society. Yes, obviously reading, writing and arithmetic along with some system of accountability that ensures these skills really are being obtained are essential.
As an aside, I am a proponent of accountability and assessment – I may be more open to performance based assessment vs. standardized testing…this is for many reasons and an entirely different soapbox discussion… I will just say that when special education in VA allowed us to use a portfolio assessment where students were able to demonstrate competencies vs. taking a test (kinda like how we are going to do the same thing to earn our NC Principal’s license), I think it was a better model for the kids and resulted in a truer representation of student's diverse abilities…but, I digress.
Back to my thoughts on “soft skills” – I am talking about responsibility, study skills, persistence, time management, respect, overall work ethic, etc. There is evidence in research right now that suggests that character education, teaching traits such as these, results in an increase in student achievement. See the “What Works in Character Education Project” at http://www.characterandcitizenship.org/research/whatworks.htm for just one study. Furthermore, I think even more telling is the evidence in research to the contrary that says that the kids graduating from schools today (and I realize this is a generalization)not only have mediocre student achievement, but are also one of the laziest generation of students to enter the workforce. For more information, see the April 2010 Washington Post Article that references a similar Pew study here, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/02/AR2010040201452.html?hpid=topnews.
So, to answer the question posed – what external reform will have the largest impact on public education in the next quarter century? Do I think Character Education is the exclusive reform initiative that must be attempted by all – a silver bullet so to speak, one that will erradicate all problems in education? Let me just say that by itself, No, I do not. However, there is research that supports it having a positive impact on society and I’m sure all of us can attest to the benefits of having these skills.
I do agree with Checker Finn's statement that "the primary external reforms of the last quarter-century (standards, testing, and reform) have outlived their usefulness." While I wholeheartedly believe that schools should be held accountable, standardize testing has altered the creative and innovative teacher. Teachers succumb to the pressures of teaching to the test and as a result, omit activities and lessons that could truly impact a learner. To reform something is to change it in some way. Changing the questions on a test won't change the attitudes that people have about them.
I believe that a new approach should be focused on sound teaching practices. Identifying student needs and working hard to meet them, which results in growth. The problem is that the people who are responsible for making decisions about the reforms don't know enough about education to effectively complete this task. Any true education class will explain that children have various learning styles and as a result they also have various testing styles. You can't rely on one method to teach them nor can you rely on one test to assess them. As a result, I believe that the formula for true reform starts with teachers and not government officials. Teachers need to be empowered again to be creative and innovative.
I do agree that external reforms have outlived their usefulness. Over the years we have but from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars towards "reform" via evaluation and assessment which is then used to reset standards and new approaches to education. Thusly, we are finding that students are not performing in the manner in which we would hope. However, we spend more money on learning the same information we have already attained instead of investing funds into programs that will meet the holistic needs of the child which will then produce academic improvement.
I think our intent maybe good but our approach is outdated. Therefore, 'now that we know what the problem is, how are we going to fix it?'
I think programs and resources that speak to the needs of our Title I students and their community will make the best change in reform that we will see in the next 25 years as we will bridge the gaps in education. Consequently, we will increase literacy which will increase job readiness and earning potential and decrease dependency on welfare programs and social funds. This in turn will rebuild our national economy and strength and reconstruct our impoverished communities which are our greatest liability as a nation. Our children are our future, if we fail them today; we have failed ourselves for tomorrow.
I believe the usefulness of these reforms are outlived because there is still an achievement gap. I think part of the reason they are outlived is because we are not getting the necessary results. We have made the assumption that teachers are able to interpret and implement the standards that have been changed over time. If teachers are not breaking down standards that are tied to assessments then we will never close the achievement gap, thus leaving the same type of students behind.
I would agree with many of my classmates and echo that we cannot assess students with one way and assume we are suppose to see growth from all students. We must look at various types of ways to assess learning to show the true growth of our students.
The interesting fact, I believe is we are "discovering" the same information we knew before. Students who are disadvantaged are our minority student. We knew this issue before the era of Standardized Tests and the problem has not been solved. I agree with Felicia, we must address instructional methods and practices and change the teaching behaviors of our teachers so we can see success and growth with our students.
Although I agree with what has been said already, I think the biggest key to why the reform has outlived its usefulness is the fact that NONE of the reform efforts have been fully embraced by all. In looking at every single reform effort, there has been much aversion, even to the point of thwarting/sabotaging the efforts. This is not an accusation toward any one group---teachers are just as guilty of resisting change as anyone, and often continue to do their own thing regardless of the mandates they receive.
With the recent budget cuts, it became extremely apparent that the mindset of the United States is not on education. We may say we want to be a competitive nation, but as a group, we are not willing to accept the drastic changes needed to do so. The majority of Americans seem to have the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. Although our education system falls short compared with many other nations, it does, for the most part, “work.” (Just to be clear, I am not saying that I believe it works; I am saying that is the general mindset in this country. In the article, he points out “voters' confusion…even though most of the graduates do just fine.”)
In looking at the competitive countries, many of them are not as culturally diverse as the United States. According to the world education ranking from the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) South Korea, Finland, and Japan are all in the top 5 countries for Math, Science, and Reading (US is 25th, 17th, and 14th respectively). These countries are much more culturally homogenous. People are of a more similar mindset, thus they more readily buy into the educational system policies. There are dissidents; however, they are far fewer, and more outside the social fabric than in the United States.
Before we can structure any successful reform, we first need to decide what our country truly desires for our educational system, and what we, as a whole, are willing to do to achieve it. Looking at all the political issue drama our country has experienced of late, sadly, I am not sure that this will ever be possible.
I do agree with Checker Finn’s statement that the primary external reforms of the last quarter century have outlived their usefulness. In another class, we have been asked to read about the history of schooling in the United States. It has had a tumultuous past mired with many disagreements, but one that came to mind when I read Checker Finn’s article was the disagreement between Noah Webster and Thomas Jefferson about the purpose of education. My understanding of the opinions of the two were basically Noah Webster felt it was the role of education to tell students what to think while Thomas Jefferson felt it was the role of education to encourage students to think for themselves. I think most of us would agree that it is important for education to teach students how to think for themselves, after all, that is one of the keys to being a 21st Century Learner; however, I feel the external reforms that have been put in place have done the opposite. The common standards and use of standardized tests has caused many teachers to “teach to the test.” Instead of teaching students how to think and engage them in real world problem solving, they go over and over possible multiple choice test questions. I don’t believe that these are bad teachers, they are just teachers who have succumbed to the pressure involved in high stakes testing. I completely agree with what Felicia said about the current system is taking away the natural creativity and innovation that many of our teachers already have. I agree with Xavier that reform has to come from within the classroom. We have to look at ways we can meet the needs of all the students and help them to become thinkers and natural problem solvers. I don’t believe common standards, standardized tests, and reform strategies developed by politicians and lawyers will at all be effective in closing the achievement gap and bringing the American Education system to where it needs to be.
I agree with my classmates and Finn's assessment of the educational reform debate. What I see in many of the "reform" initiatives is really just a change in how we test. We want newer and better ways of comparing student/district/state A to student/district/state B. In order to do this, common standards are created so that all students across the nation will be taught/tested on the same things. These new standards cause state B to reshuffle the same things they've always taught, so a concept that was once taught in 8th grade social studies is now covered in 7th, etc, but overall, the content and how it is taught doesn't change. This allows teachers to often make minor changes to his or her curriculum, or worse, ignore the changes and wait for the educational pendulum to swing back and allow this new/old fad to fade away (hence, "they (the reforms) are just not powerful enough to force the rusty infrastructure . . . to change).
The external reform that needs to happen instead is an educational revolution, a total rethink of not only what students should learn, but also how students should learn it (process), what they should do with it once they've learned it (product), and how the process and product are assessed. As Xavier posted, we still have the achievement gap because the what's and how's are still not culturally relevant. Our reforms are just reshuffles of the same old middle-class white curriculum applied in the same middle-class white learning environment with new, often culturally biased tests at the end. As others have posted, the real-word application of knowledge (creativity, innovation, ability to problem solve, etc), which is much harder to assess and quantify, loses out to material that can be tested on multiple-choice test. The sad part is that schools are even using cutting-edge, 21st century tools to do many of the same old 19th and 20th century tasks (Researching, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Regurgitating: the 21st century 5 R's).
So in a nutshell, all we really need to change is. . . everything?
If we define current school reform as testing, data, testing, data, testing, data... then yes, it has outlived its usefulness... if it ever was useful. The original intention was to use data gained from testing to drive educational reform. Educational reform went out the window when we started focusing all of our attention on who was to blame when scores did not rise and none of our attention on what really matters: instruction that truly can reach each child in the room. If we are truly doing what we need to be doing during the 6.5 hours that we have them, the tests will take care of themselves. We need to focus on the students who, like Xavier said, are still who they were before we started this mess and are still waiting for us to reach them. What is the use in administrators observing and participating in collegial conversation about the improvements and the profession if all that matters at the end of the day is what our scores were? How about if we focus on family and community outreach (all families, not just the same 10 who always show up)and take care of needs so that students have school and family support.
I agree with Finn’s statement that “current wave of reform (standards, testing, and choice), and the conceptual framework built around them, are clearly outliving their usefulness.” I think this is in part evidenced by North Carolina’s recent passage of House Bill 48 which eliminates the Algebra II, Civics and Economics, Physical Science, and U.S. History End of Course tests for the 2011-2012 school year.. Furthermore, in the last two years, the Grade 3 Pretests of Reading Comprehension and Mathematics, Computer Skills, Chemistry End-of-Course, Competency Tests of Reading and Mathematics, High School Comprehensive Test of Mathematics, NCCLAS, and Physics End-of-Course. Geometry End-of-Course, NCEXTEND2 Alternate Assessments of Occupational English I, Occupational Mathematics I, and Life Skills Science I and II, and the NCEXTEND2 OCS Writing Assessment at Grade 10. (See the NC DPI Testing and Accountability page for more information: http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/accountability/reasonselimtests).
The National Governor’s Association Center for Best Practices* website (http://www.subnet.nga.org/educlear/achievement/) discusses the fact that from 1975 to 1988 the achievement gap between minority students and white students “narrowed dramatically” but from 1990 to 1999 the gap was maintained or grew. This goes to show that for the last twenty-three years, one of the primary focuses of education reform (standards & testing), have not been at all successful in closing the achievement gap.
As for what the next wave in external education reform will be, I think it will be teacher evaluation. Colorado has recently led the way in reforming the way teachers are evaluated (and earn tenure) by including student growth as a part of the equation and many other states are following suit. I have no idea what this might look like on a national scale, but because Race to the Top points awarded to states who have reformed their teacher evaluation systems, I anticipate more and more states will start making changes. (“In Race to the Top’s 500-point scoring system, states can earn at least 58 points for developing more robust evaluation systems and using them to make staffing decisions, like who should get tenure” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/education/01educ.html)
* I don’t think this website has been updated in quite a long time, because this statement was included in a section labeled “What Some States are Doing” – “Governor Michael Easley has appointed an Education First task force to examine best practices from high-performing schools, in order to learn how to close the achievement gap. The goal of state education leaders is to eliminate the achievement gap by 2010.”
One joy of blogging is to go out on a limb and step outside yourself to gauge others reactions. So, here I go being radical! First, I agree with what everyone has said thus far and share the sentiment that current reforms have outlived their usefulness. Here we go. Why not get rid of public education? One definition of public is relating to community interests or shared by and accessible to all members of a community. If you take any school district in NC and examine the elementary schools for example, then I would argue you will find huge differences and discrepancies between schools. If a district is a sample of a community, then what shared interests are there when all the schools are different? Unfortunately, teachers and administrators make them different through their beliefs instead of transforming to the needs of the student population. I am not saying schools should be private because that creates barriers, but give the public a choice. If school x is accessible to my family and serves my interests, then give me the choice to go there for my education. My education is private to me and may have many different meanings than the person sitting beside me. Obviously there are enormous challenges to this idea, which probably make it near impossible. However, as Nelson Mandela said, "It always seems impossible until it is done." Food for thought...enjoy blogging!!
Here we go. Outlived their usefulness, definitely. School reform is something that has about as much momentum as government reform. You have one side that feels reform is necessary in order to improve the readiness of our children as they compete for jobs in a global workforce and on the other side you have individuals that claim it to be too expensive and way too time consuming. While I don’t agree with individuals that say school reform is not worth the effort I also do not agree with the fact that all school reform happens in a vacuum. We all know that we can change aspects of public and private education that schools and districts control, whether it is the way we grade, the resources we use, the way we evaluate each other and the way that we evaluated the effectiveness of instruction i.e. testing but all of these things are only part of the 3 legged stool we often reference. We as educators make a choice every day. We decide whether we will be an educator, meaning we teach content all day or if we will spend our day as a mother, father, friend, coach, mentor, behavior interventionist, referee, hall monitor, lunch monitor, PTA representative, social worker, family counselor, janitor, nurse and most importantly personal assistant. I am not against educating the whole child and providing the needed support to students on both an academic and social-emotional level, but I am against the assumption that it is the responsibility of a teacher, or school executive to serve the above roles simply because someone else is unwilling to. I am not one to pass the buck and I hold myself and all of those around me accountable, but I struggle with talking about school reform when we are missing a very large component of meaningful reform which I believe the most important, the community.
When educators are sent into the workplace to TEACH and produce results absent from all of the other demands is when we will see a significant increase in student achievement. Doctors have nurses to assist, Pharmacists to help monitor prescriptions, insurance companies to help figure out the costs, and television shows to help glorify their jobs. When we think of healthcare reform we seldom think of Doctors as a part of the problem and if we do we still envy them and sometimes wish we became one. When was the last time you spoke to a doctor that was watching a TV program about a teacher and thought, “Wow, I should have been a teacher. Great pay, awesome benefits and no one blames you for a broken system.”? When we mention reform the first words out of our mouth are “We need better educators.” Education Reform is bigger than teachers, bigger than schools and bigger than the US Government and all of its agencies and programs. Educational reform starts with getting back to basics. We need to focus on providing a free and appropriate public education. Other wise we should do what Michael says and I agree with… Make all school private, at least then we could choose our battles.
After reading Diane Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, I feel that the current external reforms have outlived their usefulness. In particular, I would like to focus on standardized testing. Schools should be held accountable, not hostage to the test! Currently, schools are so focused on accountability and standardized testing that there is little value to the data created. Many states have established very low proficiency rates in order to increase the number of schools that meet proficiency. The data from EOGs primarily informs schools as to how well students can perform on the test. Furthermore, the over emphasis on the material on the test has created a less rigorous curriculum for students. It is not an accurate measure of what students should know. Also, some schools are so intimidated by this process that they result to unethical measures in order to improve their school’s performance. During the first few years that I worked at the Central Office I was shocked by the number of parent complaints that I received as a result of principals refusing to enroll students in school! Typically, these students were considered at-risk, low performing, and/or potential dropouts. I think it would be more helpful to create a performance based system for assessing students.
I probably should not have read everyone else's posts before I started to write my own, because now I'm not really sure what new thoughts I have to add. If we consider the current reform movement to include testing then yes, that movement has outlived its usefulness for every reason already mentioned - it was never fully embraced, it was not used a tool to guide future teaching and learning, it was not aligned with the ENTIRE curriculum a student learned (what about those Social Studies, Healthful Living, and Science classes?!?), etc. But, the current reform movement has also included curriculum alignment and mapping, which I would argue are very useful and are still very much needed. That is not to say that those two things have been completely successful, because they have not (my AP helped write the old 6th grade SS pacing grade, and I LOVE hearing her explanation as to why students were able to spend 20 days learning about one country but only 10-15 learning about the entire continent of South America).
As far as the next best external reform movement - who knows! There will probably be 10 new ideas floated before I finish this post. Teacher evaluation (and perhaps even teacher recruitment) will almost certainly play a critical role in changing schools, as will increased school choice (whether that be charter schools, vouchers, magnets, or something entirely different). Mostly, I hope we will learn from the Finns (in more ways than one): http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3749880
I believe the Common Core Standards, or any national standards, will have the greatest impact on public education over the next 25 years. I don’t necessarily believe it will be a good thing, but it will have the greatest impact. The way our national government is operating today, with more regulations and control, it only seems natural that they would take a larger role in education.
American citizens are tired of the inconsistencies from state to state, and therefore could be easily persuaded to back a national standards plan. Parents could be assured that no matter where they moved to their children would be responsible for the same educational standards. Politicians could use the stagnant education results from recent history to inspire American citizens to try something new.
I guess the next question is if Common Core Standards are the next big push, will they be successful. I don’t have enough information to take a side. On one end I am wary of any program that the national government takes too big a role in. Education might just become another talking point in political debates. I certainly would not want to see politicians using educations as a means to secure votes. Education is already too bureaucratic, and creating national standards may only create more waste. On the other hand it would be nice to compare different states. That way if a certain state is consistently outperforming others, we can look to see what they are doing better. National standards will be the next wave, but I’m not sure it’s what we need.
I don't think that the primary external reforms have outlived their usefulness because they still provide accountability for students, teachers, and schools. That's not to say the accountability that standards and testing provide is perfect, but it's a reputable framework given what we have--it's the only objective one we have. These reforms are still relevant because they continually force us to look at student outcomes, analyze data, and make changes. Truthfully, I shudder at the thought of any teacher or school never being objectively measured or evaluated during the school year.
I do agree with Finn in that future reforms will have to be in how "education is managed, funded, designed, and overseen." But I think accountability in implemention of any reform is the most important piece. We can have fully funded, wonderfully designed initiatives that have strong leadership at the national level and oversight at the state level. But, if the initiatives are not implemented consistently and correctly, they simply will not work. As been mentioned in readings, states have "lowered the bar" for proficiency rates, while NAEP paints a different picture of student achievement. If we can't all be "on the same page" when it comes to reform, how can we ever work together?
Ultimately, what Finn is essentially arguing for at the end of his article is a mission and vision statement for US public education. Ironically, I wholeheartedly agree with him--even though in class last week I thought vision/mission statements were unnecessary. The reason I agree with him here is because we have to be focused moving forward, as we're currently in a self-imposed state of divide and conquer.
I think that how we pay and hold teachers accountable will be the most important reform over the next quarter century. If we get it right (which is still up for debate at this point), then we will begin to attract increasingly higher numbers of talented college students into the teaching profession and retain them. While it may not improve the behaviors of those currently there, as research suggests, it will send a message down the system and into the minds of high potential educators that the classroom is a place that you can professionally and equitably flourish.
I don't think that reforms of the last quarter century have outlived their usefulness. Critics complain about how testing is a pedagogical straight jacket; they say that the tests are flawed or biased; they decry teachers "teaching to the test." But the reality is that standardized testing based on a standard curriculum is the best way we have right now to establish an objective comparison among teachers, schools, and districts. I'm not saying that the test is perfect, but I am saying that when teachers know that their students are going to be tested on something, they are motivated to teach it. Common standards and high stakes testing are not a reform in and of themselves--but they create conditions that will precipitate real change, at least in some instances.
I would say the same is true of allowing choice through charter schools or school vouchers. Merely allowing parents a choice of where they send their children isn't a "reform," at least in my opinion--though the individual charter schools themselves may, in some cases, demonstrate instances of revolutionary reforms. Allowing choice creates an environment where leaders in public education feel some pressure to make their school better. And again, that pressure creates an incentive for change.
I'm certainly not saying that the tests, standards, or school choice programs that we have now are perfect. But they are making schools take a hard look at what they are teaching and how they are teaching it. Of course, that doesn't mean that every school, district, or state is going to make the right choices given those observations. See "ladder of inference."
It seems that education reform seeks uniformity and consistency on a large scale, but increasing the scale of reform can result in a more variable response. Previous to the common core standards, each state created standards and created their own tests to assess these standards. As separate instruments these tests cannot be compared across states so then we use the NAEP test to compare student achievement across states. In Missouri, the scores on the NAEP test were consistently higher than the state tests. Meanwhile other states had the opposite occur, the scores on the state tests were higher than the NAEP. In Missouri, there was a large writing component for all tests, but in North Carolina it was all multiple choice. In Missouri you could only take the test once, but in North Carolina students can retake the test if they do not score at proficient. These are only a couple differences between state interpretations of external reforms, but it is obvious that an attempt to create uniformity in reform still led to variability in practice.
The comparative nature of the recent reforms makes the variability undesirable. So as a country we need to decide if we want uniformity for comparative/competitive value, or if we want variability for more differentiated results. We also need to decide if there is room for both. I agree with Jason that a common purpose and vision for US education is valuable at this juncture. What is the purpose of education in the 21st century? Is our goal to be the best test takers or the greatest innovators or productive citizens or something else all together? However, I also question whether it is possible to answer these questions as a nation in unison.
As others have noted, the standards/testing /data reforms of the last quarter-century have had an impact on education but not necessarily the desired impact on the achievement of all students. So have standards, testing, and reform outlived their usefulness? No and yes. No, in the sense that educators increased use of standards and data-driven instruction has impacted effectiveness of instruction and student achievement. Educators at all levels have been introduced to a variety of educational initiatives to help with data driven instruction. The initiatives in and of themselves can be very valuable tools for teachers. Additionally, the testing provides valuable information about student understandings. Yes the reforms have outlived their usefulness in the sense that many valuable educational opportunities are missed because of the test-centric environment of public schools. Ultimately, these reforms have provided only a partial picture of a child’s education.
Education reform is never ______ enough. Fill in the blank with the word that works for you. It might be comprehensive, radical, clear, funded, or relevant. But whatever, you choose, the idea is that education reform will never be enough to achieve the desired results in all schools, for all students, for all perspectives. There will always be something that needs to change or be addressed. Additionally, time will always be a factor because there is never enough of it either. Whatever the next initiative is, I believe the school leaders will need to seek a balance between the priorities of the country (as identified in the reforms) and those of the individual school.
I want to stand out on a limb and suggest that the use of standards and testing has been abused and not outlived. The issue is to have an authentic accountability system of student achievement that supports educators and is trusted by the public. North Carolina standardized tests were created to measure whether the curriculum was being taught. The early tests found the curriculum was not being taught, specifically in math. The tests have since been abused and turned into individual measures of student performance. There is no individual diagnostic information given to the teacher to help improve instruction.
There is a saying that goes something like this “when you are riding a dead horse, it is time to get a new horse”. Now is the time for education reform to get on a new horse! The fundamental need is that students must know how to read. The drop-out rate heavily correlates to reading ability regardless of race or social class. The emphasis needs to be moved from testing, standards, and all the hoopla (STEM, technology, Race to the Top, Early College, etc.) to true educational reform. Non-performance is consciously permitted because of social pressures and low expectations from classroom and school leaders. Why does the establishment permit students to pass from grade to grade who cannot read? The reform that needs to take place in the next quarter of this century is to implement strategies that ensure that 100% of our students can read. Academic performance will improve when reading improves and not when we have better tests.
When reading this article, I thought of Chicken Little and "the sky falling." I agre with Checker in that we've had the same debate over and over, and while new ideas have been tossed around, the problem has not changed. In the fable, an acorn falls on a chicken's head, and she creates a mass histeria about the sky falling. The state of education has undergone a similar histeria. Too often do you have policymakers cry out about how of how school systems are failing our students. The blame game shortly follows, with the inadequacy of teachers, lack of funding, and low-achieving students become scapegoats.
Do I think there is an easy solution to fix education? Of course not! If I did, I'd be sitting on a large nest egg or off in a tropical beach being fed grapes by a handsome well built island man. :) What I can say, is that as Americans, we do not value education. We are too quick to point fingers, and we are plagued by a lack of motivation and work ethic.
I'm sure there are hundreds of studies that will agree with me; likewise, there are hundreds of studies that will disagree with me and identify othere issues. Newspapers across the nation discuss how American education is at a state of chaos and that we are failing our students. They've said that for years now; yet we haven't done anything really productive to change it. There have been great attempts at change, but these attempts are faced with so much criticism, little is actually accomplished. It is clear that in education, the sky is clearly falling, or is it? In the end of the fable, the sky didn't fall, and the moral of the fable was not to believe everything that you are told. There is clearly an issue in education, but I believe we are too busy worried about the sky falling and pointing fingers. We are overlooking what matters most: Meeting the needs of our students, and understanding that it looks different from student to student. We are looking for one big quick fix answer that will work for ALL children, and quite frankly, that may not exist. If it did, don't you think after a quarter of a century, someone would have come up with it by now?
I think there has to be some accountability system for public schools. I understand the argument that teachers place heavy emphasis on "teaching to the test" at the expense of creativity and innovation. However, I find it much more appropriate to have some degree of uniformity as to what skills and content are presented rather than affording teachers free reign over their curriculum. I think slightly reducing the creative freedoms of individual teachers is a lesser evil than allowing teachers to teach how, or much worse what, ever they want with no accountability or oversight.
Having said that, I do not think that National Standards are the answer. I was disappointed that North Carolina was one of the first states to adopt the new standards. Even though they were "created by a coalition of states", it won't be long before federal funding is directly tied to these standards and every state will have to adopt them. I can not image that it is possible to develop a set of standards that could possibly be appropriate for all 50 states. Rather, what I think would be more appropriate would be for each state to develop their own curriculum, and then have the "coalition of states" devise accountability requirements for each individual curriculum adopted. This would allow individual states to determine what its students should be exposed to, but also ensure that a third party is charged with overseeing and ensuring achievement.
Yes, I agree with Mr. Finn's statement that our current wave of reform has outlived its usefulness, especially in the area of high stakes testing.
I am reminded of something that Jonathan Kozol, a writer on education said. He said, "statewide tests force scripted journeys, where there is no room for whimsical discoveries and unexpected learnings."
In the years and years of high stakes testing, reform and standards, nothing has changed the achievement gap. Instead this whole reform movement has done nothing but the following: it has trained students to take a test; it has diminished the instruction students receive; it has humiliated schools and teachers; it has made test scores a preoccupation; it has lowered proficiency standards; it has created a culture of fear, cheating, and pressure; and it has increased the number of high school dropouts. All in all, the reform for the last quarter century, elevated standardized tests as accurate and conclusive measures of student achievement.
As a result, the external reform that I think will have the largest impact on public education is identifying, retaining, and recruiting high caliber teachers. A high caliber teacher to me is not one with just certification, degrees, experiences, etc; but a teacher who recognizes and acts upon the fact that he or she is the variable that matters in the classroom from 7:30 to 2:30. In being the variable that matters, this kind of teacher does everything in his or her power to effectively teach the core curriculum, to embed culturally relevant teaching practices, to embed equitable practices, to implement a culture of high expectations, and to intervene when students do not master the core.
True reform will depend on the human capital that we have in our schools.
I am not sure if I believe 100% that the primary external reforms of the last quarter-century have outlived their usefulness. I believe that there has to be some type of accountability as far as the effectiveness of teachers, schools, etc. The only way to know if students are truly learning is by assessing them. However generalizations should not be based on one test. Performance based assessments could also be used in conjunction with standardized tests to measure achievement. In order to assess, there have to be standards in place. Having a set of standards nationwide may be beneficial. This could make school comparisons nationwide more equitable.
I honestly believe that the new reform that will have the largest impact on education is the genuine love and care that school leaders, teachers, and support staff have for their students. Children who feel that genuine love are willing to listen and learn. They will aspire to the high yet reasonable expectations of teachers. Also, we as educators have to be willing to address the needs of those students. If they are hungry, we have to find ways to feed them. If they need clothes, shoes, counseling or just a listening ear we have to address those needs. Today I was told by a teacher that a good school is able to take care of the whole child. There are many situations that children face outside of school and they don’t leave that at the door when they enter the school. They bring it with them. Her school has programs in place to address the external needs of their students. That way, the children are able to focus on their learning. I know there are many schools that do this, but there should be more. We need more educators who understand this and who will join forces for the betterment of children.
Yes, I do agree with Checker Finn primary external reforms have outlived their usefulness. I understand some of the reasoning behind some of the reform, as an educator I don’t see where they have substantially helped students. I think one article talked about student achievement and that is the key for me. After all of these reform initiatives, student achievement has still not been affected. We still have a wide achievement gap and American students are lagging behind on a national level. If these policies were so affective wouldn’t we see higher achievement among our kids? It is a fact that some kids will just perform no matter what we do, but we still have not adequately addressed the issue of how to motivate low performing students to do better or challenge high performing students. I think that one reason we have not been able to effect change is because many of the reforms are too ambiguous (interpretations are left up to individual states) or they are too unrealistic (i.e., the proficiency goal for NCLB). I am not saying I agree with national standards, but if we are going to impose some type of reform and push everyone to comply then there needs to be some type of consistency on how we implement the standards. Overall, have any of these policies had any real effect on the expectations we have for our students. Honestly, I think A Nation at Risk was like some sort of prophecy, because we have fell into a form of mediocracy in education.
I would love to answer the question about what reform will have the greatest, impact but honestly I am not sure. The problem about education reform is that everyone is waiting for the next big thing. Something is introduced, policymakers get excited, force everyone to quickly adopt something, we try it, then figure out it is not going to work or it is substantially flawed, then we move to the next big thing. I am sure the Core Standards will get a lot of play because it sounds good that we will all be held to these same rigorous standards, but who will ensure that these standards are implemented. I am not sure if I am just missing this or if it was not stated, but what will be used to measures the effectiveness of these standards? Will it be the same state test that we use now? If that is the case then we already have a problem, because different states have different testing requirements. Education did not seem like it was this complicated when I was in school. In fact I think maybe we should revisit the reform initiative of old school education. Maybe I am just ignorant, but I think the education I received was fine, and I did not have to pass a lot of test. I think something needs to be done, but I am not sure what that something should be. However, I would like to note that I like the RTI stuff because it focuses on student abilities and teacher instruction and I think that is where school reform should be focused.
I mostly agree with Checker Finn's statement that the primary external reforms of the last quarter-century have outlived their usefulness. The main reason for agreeing with this statement is that these reforms have not dramatically changed the state of education in America. Although smart reform takes time from inception to evaluation, 40 years or so should be enough time to produce dramatic results or at the very least information that shapes reform or leads it in the right direction. While some schools and districts have shown improvement by adapting core standards and testing reforms, no clear or consistent policy has been established or supported to produce the dramatic effects it would take to remove American children from the threat of losing the global competition. When communities do establish testing and standards reform, we often encounter teaching to the test, as seen in the research report of Washington State’s education reform. On the other hand, I am not convinced that appropriate evaluations of these "quarter-century" reform methods have taken place. A lot of methods are evidence-based, but once established it seems little changes and updates are made to strengthen the evidence.
The next external reform that may have the biggest impact is something that is truly different from what we’ve been seeing. Reading about the Common Core State Standards leads me to believe that it could be the establishment of a national/federal K-12 curriculum that takes our country to the next stage of educational reform. If our educational policy leaders and supporters could ever come to a consensus, then the resources that could be put into one solid, united plan could prove to be a powerful force of change.
I am a little up in the air about how to respond to the first question. I do not believe that National Standards, testing, and chioce have outlived their usefulness. I do believe that they should not be the sole measures or components of educational reform. The fact of the matter is, the system will get manipulated no matter what is done regarding standards and/or assessments. For example, we all know that each and every student is different.That is why we have, formative assessments, tests/quizzes, rubrics, rating scales, projects and portfolios. With all this somewhere along the line everyone is going to see success. Your AG students will do well on all, your EC and low performing students will do well on one maybe two and your middle of the road students will do well on half to maybe more. So your end results are going to be the same. In my opinion, I feel educational reform has to focus on the teachers. Teachers need personality training. Students will not learn if they do not want to. What do students want to do? Anything that makes them happy, anything that makes them feel appreciated, respected, and significant. In my experience teachers become cold and autonomous. (Beuller...Beuller) that would just make me want to take a day off. I have heard ridicule and constant verbal mistreatment of children. Is this a positive learning environment. If you can come in and make every student in your class smile, show them you care, get on their level and look them in the eyes and talk to them and not at them, you would be surprised at the effort that will be put forth and the will to want to succeed, not for them but for you. Children are inherently people pleasers, they want to show you what they know, what they learned or what they can do. If you send the message that you don't care...then why should they. I know that this is not a profound reform idea but I truly feel that it is relevant. The movement should be labeled, teacher reform, not educational reform.
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