After teaching
for 18 years, and being a volunteer defender of schools for the last 5 or so,
it amazes me sometimes that I am still surprised by the remarkable
conversations and lack of perspective that we as localities and districts have
about teaching our kids what they need to know to survive and thrive in the world.
These are a
few of the realizations that shock and amaze me:
1.
We allow the question of “What should the
government do, and what should private enterprise do?”—a totally ideological
concept – to get in the way of providing collectively for our children.
The question of whether
everything should be managed by private enterprise has been the driving decision
maker for policy at least since the Reagan years, and though it’s tempting to
lay that concept at Republicans’ door, that would be overlooking the massive
promulgation of that idea by both the Clinton and Obama administrations. We have reached the point that many in our
society (especially among our policymakers) believe government serves little or
no purpose , other than to militarily protect us, and even that can be privatized. But the corollary of that idea is that
business’ goal is and should be profit, not providing for the “greater good”
when it does not profit the business. As
a result we have a system where no one wants to fund the local government schools,
and businesses only want to run schools if they provide substantial profit, a
situation which does not serve our children well, and leaves many out.
There have been other
ratios of blended government-private management of the nation in other times, than
the current extreme view that holds only private enterprise will work.
In the case of education,
who manages it, local governments or private businesses, should not be the
major question. The major questions
are:
·
Do
ALL children get equal access to a strong, vibrant, positive education?
·
Does
the education we provide, provide for the current and long-term social and economic health of individuals, our
communities, and the nation?
·
Are
the children and their/our future the first and compelling reason for how we
run our schools systems?
2.
We allow non-education “experts” to
hang up shingles and pretend that we do not know what works,
(In today’s work landscape it takes considerably more credentialing
to become an Interior Designer than to be an Educational Consultant), and we allow our schools to be sold packaged products that fly in the face of what
we already know.
We know what works in
education and it’s more utilitarian than glamorous. Here are a few items:
·
Regular
attendance and consistency.
o The single highest predictor of
success at learning and life is showing up. Beyond that, a regular well-organized plan of instruction
is needed. That means a student has to be able to get there and when they get
there, it’s best if they have a known person they can rely on, who has decided
what to do next.
·
Students
who are ready to learn—
o ie healthy and well-fed, not hurting,
not tired, not traumatized.
·
Optimum (small) class sizes,
o not too large, not too small. We know
that over 25 is too many, and under 9 or 10 can be useful for some types of
learning, but not optimum to all tasks.
·
Well-trained
teachers who believe the students can learn.
o Teachers who have both substantive knowledge in
subject fields and pedagogical skills, such as classroom procedures and
organization of tasks, and developmental knowledge of students at a particular
level.
·
A
space that is conducive to the work of learning.
o Clean, safe, not too hot, not too
cold, with enough room for activities, and reasonably well kept including provision
for human requirements like food, water, and bathrooms.
·
Materials
that enable the work—
o chairs, tables, writing & reading
materials or subject area materials such as labs and lab supplies, and in today’s
world some technology resources.
·
Programs
that include a broad range of interests and a plan for students to pursue,
o ie students learn best when they Want to
Learn. Both well planned content and electives
that provide expression of their learning, hold their interests, and hook them
to liking school.
·
Integration
of subject fields
o so that students can see how the world
fits together.
·
Teaching
of both metaskills (including design and critical thinking) and subject specific skills
o to enable students to learn basic knowledge
and know how to learn on their own.
·
Assessment
to guide both the student and teacher
o to understand what they already know
and what they have yet to learn.
Seriously, all these items are well studied and documented--
those are the basics. The rest, many of
which are pushed these days, are often not well-researched or serve other
purposes than learning.
3.
We pretend there is not enough money
to do the job well, while throwing money at outrageous initiatives that don’t
contribute to learning, and while spending large proportions of our budgets on
measuring rather than learning.
The fact of the matter is
that we are the richest nation that has ever existed on the face of the
planet. If we do not have enough money
to graciously and completely educate the current and future generations, no one
ever has or ever will. We hide money in
tax deferments and exemptions, in poorly conceived but well-sold initiatives,
and in 1000 boondoggle crony deals and made up spending needs outside the
education arena --rather than just paying the bill to provide for our
children. As a nation we have become the
worst kind of derelict parent, refusing to pay our child support.
4.
We allow businesses to demand that
schools deliver specifically trained employees to their door with
certifications, licenses, core skills, and work ethics to reduce their cost of
doing business, but we do not ask them to pay their fair share to educate the
workers they will need.
It’s become popular for
some businesses across the country to complain that workers are not career
ready, yet companies that do their due diligence in workforce training do well—only
those who refuse to do the needed job specific training are without the kind of
workers they need, and some businesses that object to paying US citizens are
more than willing to hire non-U.S. workers who were often U.S. educated, at
lower pay and pay immigration costs, along with training supports for them –
rather than hiring our own STEM graduates.
Demanding schools do career specific training is a bogus and
ill-calculated set of requirements that cannot be effective in a working
environment that is expected to change at the speed of light in the present and
near future. Do career electives fit in,
for heightening interest for students and helping them career select? Sure it
does, but providing an ever rolling set of workplace training programs for businesses
while relieving them of responsibility for job training is hardly appropriate.
5.
We insist we want to educate all children
equally well, but sabotage poor districts when they do well.
We accuse poor districts of cheating or
demand they change what they are doing when their kids do as well as those in
affluent neighborhoods, and often deliberately destabilize schools to provide
business opportunities for edu-preneurs. We quite frankly, won’t allow them to succeed,
as though it would somehow hurt our more favored children if those with less
thrived.
I have watched this in person, as schools in poorer
neighborhoods developed programs and sought and received grants to raise the quality of school for
their children, only to be blocked or accused of nefarious means when the
district or state saw the scores. It is one of the ways bias creates a no-win
situation for poor kids and their teachers daily in our society.
6.
We know from studies that the quality
of teachers is the primary determiner, outside of quality of homelife and basic
health, in whether a child/children learn well.
Yet, we continue to micro-manage, undermine, underpay, and refuse to
listen to teachers who have consistently performed well.
The members of the one
profession which has delivered for over 100 years a populace educated enough to
bring us to the pinnacle of nations as innovators, workers and creators in
virtually every field. Yet, we rarely believe teachers have anything to
contribute to management decisions or the public conversation on education.
7.
We continue to report and accept
reports of school performance based on invalid and useless test scores as
though they meant something, when in fact the measure of a good school is in the quality of their
teachers, the breadth and depth of their programs, and the sustained time and
monetary investment of the community they serve.
8.
We allow people to publicly lie about
our schools, the children in them, and the people who work for them without
contesting or refuting what they say on a regular basis—even as we know they
are lying and know it is with malevolent intent.
From the constantly circulating
memes that imply or openly say that schools do not say the pledge of allegiance
to the much more sophisticated state cut scores that are decided after the tests
based on how many children test proponents have decided Should fail; people lie
constantly and pervasively about our schools. From accusations that we are values bereft, to
those that we are academically bankrupt the enemies of locally run and funded public
schools say and do outrageously dishonest things, but expect to be credited
with having the kids’ needs at heart because they are holding teachers
accountable. The master lie, is that it’s
about the kids. Whether you are a philanthropist,
a consultant, a vendor, a trainer, a schools company executive, a politician,
policymaker, or an upper level manager,
If you lie in order to
denigrate others based on ideology, or to make money—IT IS NOT BECAUSE YOU CARE
ABOUT THE CHILDREN.
So I would
ask as loudly as internet etiquette and the gods of human decency will allow,
Are you going to educate the children of this nation or not?
Because
right now, Or Not, is winning.
