Here is a five-item “test” developed by national education reform figures Susan Ohanion and Marion Brady. For each question they first outline the current state of affairs for a particular situation, then ask a question regarding appropriate response to the situation. As you read through each item, think about the Kennewick School District response and how it jibes with your own.
1. Market forces in general, and merit pay in particular, are being promoted as keys to improved school performance. However, in effective schools, educators see themselves not as competitors but as members of a team. Indeed, in many of the highest-performing schools, teachers are actually organized as such.
Question: Aren’t competition and merit pay divisive — incompatible with the spirit of cooperation, collaboration, and sharing of ideas essential to productive team performance?
2. An explosion of knowledge, much new information about how the brain works, a constantly accelerating rate of social change, the vast differences in learners, a complex and dangerous future – to cope with these challenges, teachers must use a “core curriculum” adopted in 1893. This relic of another era is now being rapidly locked in rigid, permanent place with The Common Core State Standards Initiative.
Question: Given the dynamism of our present situation and the unpredictability of the future, how likely is it that a 19th Century curriculum will see our children and grandchildren through to the 22nd?
3. To avoid school closings, job loss, and public humiliation, educators must teach to standardized tests. Since the only thought process machine-scored tests can measure with useful precision is short-term memory, instruction that helps the young improve their ability to actually think – to infer, hypothesize, generalize, synthesize, value, and so on — is being neglected.
Question: Isn’t teaching to tests that are incapable of evaluating complex thought inviting societal disaster?
4. There’s no denying the important role teachers play in effective education. But news items regularly note the perils of youth that affect test scores — sleep deprivation, hunger, hearing and sight problems, lead poisoning, homelessness, absenteeism, job responsibilities, poor prospects for the future, cultural deprivation, family instability, language difficulties, stress, fear – just to begin a list.
Question: How fair is it to hold teachers accountable for test performance when so many factors affecting test scores are beyond their control?
5. As decades of long-term studies and continuing flat learner performance clearly show, “top down,” education reform mandates invariably fail. They denigrate teachers, stifle innovation, block adaptation to “the facts on the ground,” make the profession unattractive to the most capable, and deny that those directly engaged in the work are best equipped to shape it.
Question: Instead of Soviet-style, centralized attempts by policymakers to micromanage classroom instruction, shouldn’t education policy encourage the kind of autonomy, individual initiative and creativity that have given Americans more than their share of Nobels, Pulitizers, patents, and other evidences of quality performance?
In my experience Kennewick teachers were encouraged to team, however, the team was micromanaged by the principal. Conformity, not creativity was expected. Teachers who achieve national certification are rewarded with bonus pay. Whether that results in improved learning is not yet established but I favor initiatives to improve teacher compensation.
Most teachers acknowledge that factors outside of school impact a student’s readiness to learn on any given day. My principal asserted “No excuses, I don’t want to hear it”. While ignoring the realities of working with humans instead of products may appear to be leadership it is neither productive nor effective in helping students learn.
When I was hired in Kennewick (1978) teachers were highly regarded for their knowledge and skills. Administration supported staff in their professional development and trusted teachers to make good choices for curriculum and instruction. Unfortunately, that circumstance has evolved so administrators have become educational “managers”, no longer supporting teachers but directing them. Top down management effectively reduces teachers to the role of educational robots. These “managers” speak the lingo and express cliche’s about the importance of staff but their actions and attitudes reveal their need to micromanage.
I believe most teachers, and consequently students would benefit from the leadership styles of Dr. Don Anderson and Dr. Bob Valiant who valued teachers as the essential persons nurturing students in their learning. Teaching my formative years in Kennewick under their leadership and experiencing the transition to the “managed” style of educational reform compels me to work for change to current policies and practices.
Knowing that change must come from the top it is necessary to start there.
Kennewick citizens have critical decisions to make in 2011. Let’s continue the dialogue about what is best for Kennewick students and how to make it happen.
Our state standards define the teaching targets for each grade level and each content area. In the absense of standards, how would we have any way of defining what is taught at a grade level? Standards are not a bad thing. . . they provide coherence for our system. Standardized testing, however, is not the best measure of learning.
Standards and benchmarks are important no doubt, however after all the tests have been given and graduation day comes and goes, are our children leaving our schools ready to succeed in the real world??