The Economist has a hopeful article about education reform in the US. While I am glad that we seem to be in the early stages of a more serious debate about the future of America's schools, I am very concerned that the debate is merely accelerating a move in the wrong direction. Seemingly every day, I hear or read about someone pointing the finger at teachers and teacher unions as the problem. We need more accountability for teachers! Let's test kids more so we can use those tests to determine how well teachers teach, then fire the ones whose students do poorly on the tests and increase the pay for the ones whose kids improve the most. Yet while some talk about needing to recruit better-qualified teachers and pay them more if they are effective, governors across the country this week are targeting public employees, their unions, and their benefits (health care and pensions) in order to address dire fiscal crises. So we're going to cut teacher pensions and health care, and cut teaching positions and/or slow the growth in salaries?
I've been teaching for over a decade now. I love it. It's harder than I ever thought, and I hate grading. But it's incredibly rewarding, challenging, and interesting every day. I learn so much from my students and about myself. I get up at 5am every day and I can't wait to get to school!
I'm also incredibly fortunate to teach in an affluent school district with supportive parents and more resources than many districts in the country. I've had supportive administrators, too, including my first principal who was a mentor to me and encouraged me to take risks and develop my own philosophy toward teaching.
So while I acknowledge that my perspective is somewhat limited, I'd like to weigh in on the growing debate in the US about how to improve our sub-par educational system.
I think we've been moving in the wrong direction in terms of national policy for a decade. No Child Left Behind created underfunded mandates for states and put us firmly on the track of relying on standardized tests to judge effectiveness. That's extremely flawed and, overall, harmful to education. The Obama/Duncan approach toward education reform similarly emphasizes testing, but now to evaluate teachers, not just schools.
Standardized tests have their place. Designed well, they can be one way of measuring minimal standards of proficiency for certain skills. But, in the end, they merely measure how each student can do on one given day on a limited range of tasks. They often test how well kids memorize material that, two weeks later, they forget. They really test how well you take a test. When is the last time you took a multiple-choice test where you work?
The reliance on standardized tests, I believe, has helped dumb-down America's schools in all too many cases. Rather than raising standards, they have often lowered them. Many teachers now "teach to the test," relying on lecture-based instruction to "cover" material that might be on a test and assessing students' learning by giving them tests that mimic the standardized ones at the end of the year.
The purpose of America's schools shouldn't be to raise test scores. I believe the purpose of America's schools should be to prepare our kids for 21st century careers and to teach them how to participate successfully in our society. Kids need to learn how to innovate, problem-solve, and collaborate with peers. They need to learn how to research, analyze, and communicate effectively, in writing and verbally. They need to understand how the economy works, how to budget and manage their money, and how to invest for the future. They need to know how to take care of their bodies through exercise and good nutrition. They need to know how to evaluate a doctor's advice and how to understand news about medical and scientific studies. They need to know how to be effective citizens in a democracy - how to follow and understand the news, how to discuss political and economic issues with their relatives, friends and co-workers, and how to participate in a democracy. Kids need to know how to figure out for whom to vote, how to vote, how to lobby their elected representatives, and how to share their opinions with their fellow citizens (letters to the editor, Twitter, Facebook, blogging, etc.).
For the most part, standardized tests do not assess how well we are meeting those needs. We will not have the best chance of meeting those needs by teaching to the test by lecturing kids and having them memorize facts they can look up online in 30 seconds. If we lower our expectations to the standards of the tests, teachers and kids will lower their expectations and those needs will not be met. Basing teachers' salaries and job security on how well their students do on standardized tests is the path to mediocrity, not innovation and excellence.
We need better and higher standards. We need better ways of evaluating what we do in the classroom. We need better ways of preparing kids in poor inner city and rural districts for elementary school, so they can read and write and focus the rest of their academic careers on rising to high expectations. We need to train our teachers to be more innovative and creative, to take risks in the classroom in order to best address the needs and aspirations of the students they work with each year.
What do you think our goals should be? What's the best way to achieve them? How do we do it in this fiscal climate?
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