Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Something I ranted about this morning

Has anyone thought of a better way to measure teacher performance than how their students do on standardized tests? The idea that standardized tests are a good measure of anything besides how well students take standardized tests is absurd. How many of you take a standardized test every day at work and are paid based on the results of that test?

Much of the discussion here focuses on reforming schools and how to fix the teacher credentialing process, etc. These are good questions, but there are some far larger questions that Gladwell misses and that aren't discussed here as well.

Our students are in school longer than they've ever been before, why aren't their scores improving? Perhaps they should be in school less? No one ever asks that question because we need kids to be in school so their parents don't have to be responsible for them. Lets not forget that teachers, at a certain point, are nothing more than glorified babysitters. I am one, and the fact that I could lose my job pretty quickly if I didn't take attendance as opposed to the fact that I could show my students movies every day for years and very likely not get fired suggests as much.

Of the best and the brightest students we've had in the past ten to twenty years, many of them went into investment banking because they were taught for years that the most important measure of success is money. I-banking was a great place to make a lot of money. All these kids that scored off the charts on standardized tests and went to the best universities in the country just drove a giant financial machine off a cliff. Why? Is it because they had bad teachers? Is it because they were perhaps taught to work within a system and to not question it, particularly not to question it if it led to greater profits, the holy grail of our society?

Does anyone ask what we did wrong with these kids? They have high IQ's, they got straight A's, they got all the right stamps on their passport to financial success, but they completely missed a hundred huge clues that something was very wrong? Why? Were they not spending enough time in the office? Should they have had more math class and less gym class so they could really be prepared?

I agree with much of what's been stated here, the credentialing system is terrible and not worth the time and money spent on it, majoring in Education should be outlawed because most of it has almost nothing to do with teaching in the real world and being competent in the subject you plan to teach is far more relevant than a degree in Education, teachers ought to be compensated better so that you can encourage more talented and motivated people to enter the field and STAY in the field, all these things are true.

But there are larger problems that have to be addressed first. Why are high school kids in school at 7:30? It doesn't make any sense physiologically or psychologically, they'd be better off coming in at 9 and leaving at 2:30.

Is it rational to expect teachers to be able to adequately prepare for 4-5 classes a day every day with only 1-2 hours of prep time? Would any college professor agree to this? Would any manager agree to run 4-5 meetings a day with anywhere from 15-40 people who may or may not want to be there, and then be responsible to tracking the progress of each of those employees and adjusting practice based on that? And do that every day, every week for 180 days of the year? Of course not, they don't get paid enough to do that. So why on earth would they choose to do it as a teacher?

As long as we run our schools like factories where children progress down an assembly line according to bells that ring and we measure them by standardized tests that measure one form of intelligence, we will continue to destroy creativity and initiative in more than ninety percent of our students. As long as we pay teachers a pittance compared to professions with similar demands, we will continue to get a lackluster crowd of folks doing it with a few exceptions. As long as we think about schools as a way to get a certain product rather than a place to grow students into whatever they want/need to be, we will continue to fill the workplace and the world with a few bright successes and dump the rest into reject lots just like Detroit's has done with all the cars that don't pass inspection at the end of the line. As long as it is less expensive to run education that way, we will continue to do it.

The problem is that very soon we are going to have to pay the piper and very few people understand the scale of the problem or the enormous expense it will take to fix it. This financial meltdown is just the tip of the iceberg in comparison.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Kids and School

If a child cannot sit still in a classroom, we have a solution: drugs that will change the way they function and interact with the world. Because obviously when they are six years old, if they cannot sit still like all the "good" kids, something is wrong.

If a child is more interested in digging in the dirt than they are in reading at age seven, they quickly fall behind "grade level," and must receive special attention, perhaps by getting them to sit with a reading specialist instead of going to recess and playing in the dirt.

If a child likes to do math problems differently and not follow the method prescribed by the teacher, they are often told that they are wrong and must follow the "right" procedure or else there will be problems later down the line, or any other of a myriad of other explanations. Whether or not they got to the right answer is irrelevant.

It is because the school system, teachers, administrators, particularly in this case legislators and even the President of the United States has far too much power over children that our educational system is so poorly equipped to handle the changes coming in our world.

I work in a school system with tons of money, tons of computers and technology, lots of really wonderful teachers who work very, very hard to help students do well and succeed. Having been in a few other schools, I can honestly (and based on more than just my opinion) say that this is one of the best public schools in the state, likely the country.

But it's also terrible. There are no classes where the kids who like to work with wood or build things or even to tear things apart can explore their passions. There are very few, if any places where a student could explore their desire to write great fiction or poetry. Some of my very best students do not stand out as great students because their transcript doesn't fit the community's definition of "successful," and they aren't likely to be at an Ivy League institution this fall.

Our entire educational system is designed to help kids be successful, but then the system defines success rather than the individuals in it. That success is based on admission to certain universities and then further success is defined by the amount of money stated on the front of your paycheck.

We see commercials on TV every day glorifying those who "don't just talk about innovation" but actually go and do it. Then we look at how we educate kids and its all about trying to get them to stop innovating, unless of course that innovation fits within the very narrow terms of the system. As Ken Robinson says, we are "educating kids out of their creativity."

Until kids are given the freedom to explore and develop and test themselves against more than "standardized tests," teachers cannot even do what their title implies. Teachers are supposed to be helping kids grow and learn to understand the world around them, not telling them what it means, not telling them how to react to it properly, not forcing them to think only about acceptable things in acceptable ways.

The problem is not students having too much power but in fact having no power at all.
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