Tuesday, April 20, 2010

There is no crisis in public education

After a decade of the nonsense of No Child Left Behind and its deeply flawed offspring, Race to the Top, I am waiting for one courageous politician to come out and say what has always been the case- There is no crisis in American public education.
Most likely, that will never happen. Any politician who defends public education is quickly derided as a tool of the teacher unions. All the while, elected officials on both sides of the aisle make names for themselves by criticizing public schools, and battling to carry the “reform” mantle.

It would be inaccurate to say that all is well in public education. We have serious problems. We have failing inner city schools, high dropout rates in some areas, and a standardized test culture that is not preparing our children to do anything but take more standardized test and is rapidly disabling their ability to master critical thinking skills.

That last serious problem, as you probably noticed, is a direct result of the so-called reformers and their concept of turning American public schools into business operations, notwithstanding the fact that the very business principles they insist will rescue our educational system are the ones that have left many American workers behind as their jobs were outsourced to other continents.

The most crucial “evidence” politicians cite as they urge draconian reform in our educational system is our low scores in comparison to other countries in such areas as math and science.

Seldom, if ever, do they mention that the comparison is being made between elite students in these other countries, since nearly all of them have winnowed out those who are not destined for higher education.

Public schools are being punished for following the truly American belief that all students, whether they are born with silver spoons in their mouths, or in an inner city crack house with two strikes against them, deserve a quality education.

Glory-seeking politicians, seeking to climb that next rung on the ladder of success, are pounding the public schools and teachers because we sincerely believe that all students should receive the best education possible whether they have IQs in the genius range or if they are barely functional.

Which of these other countries that are supposedly providing their children with a better education than the United States can claim such a democratic approach to education?

The biggest threat to American education is not teacher unions and tenure like those who would blow up our current system and replace it with a business model are insisting.

If the American educational system is falling apart, it is due to the dumbing down of teaching caused by a tunnel vision testing process that has taken the joy out of learning both for students and teachers.

Instead of teaching children to critically think and be able to handle the problems of tomorrow, we are providing them with neverending drills designed to get the students to score better on poorly-written standardized tests provided by companies which are making a killing on selling tests, test preparation materials, and even curriculum designed toward the tests (instead of offering tests that determine if you have mastered the elements in the curriculum).

No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are now waving the carrot of billions of dollars in front of cash-strapped states to force them to move education even further in this direction. Unless you force schools to use failed business models and pay teachers based on standardized test results, you have no chance of getting the money. This is not the way to produce innovative results; this is a recipe for disaster.

Now is the time, before we go too far down this path, for intelligent, courageous politicians, if such a breed truly exists, to step forward and say what has been right before our eyes all along.

This country is not suffering because of a crisis in education. Our problem is a crisis of leadership.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh yea, most kids are so bad they can't even spell PUBLIK SKOOL1

acline said...

Nail. Head. Hit.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Randy. There is a crisis in public education. But it's not all the teachers' fault. Parents, television, video games, iphones, and a lousy social environment (single mothers, poverty,etc) play a major role, too.

Janice DeGraff said...

Randy, you are correct. I have seen many changes in the education system. I do not feel the changes have been for the good. We need to get back to the basics of education and start teaching what children need to succeed in the real world, reading, writing and math. Let's give education back to the teachers and leave politics out of it.

Anonymous said...

While you are right that "No Child Gets Ahead" is a disaster, and "Race to the Top" will likely be one as well, the greater problem is an old one.

Why Johny Can't Read was published in 1955. Things have only gotten worse since then, as a steady stream of well sourced reports show.

You're short term focus on the recent testing mania and your denial that there is a very long term and systemic crisis flies in the face of the solid evidence and shows that you're part of the problem.

And while I'll agree that the teacher's unions are not the #1 problem, they're certainly in the top 3 and no progress will be made without fixing the problems they pose.

Anonymous said...

Little Jimmie Cummin's friends think there's a crisis in education. Jimmie didn't get the job he thinks he's entitled to get. Thanks to the board for making a wise decision to trim at the top....

times likes these are the greatest hope we have to get the education ship back on course.

Steven Barber said...

Fantastic post here! The genius politicians advocating public schools return to a more "business like" model have not even done their homework regarding the history of public education! Does this surprise or shock real classroom teachers on the front lines battling public apathy & ignorance regarding what we really do each day & how we do it? Certainly not! The politicians need to quit pandering for votes & help SUPPORT the foundation of our democracy- public education!

Turnersaurus said...

Turner talks like one of the public school teachers who have created the problem, then like pigs, proclaim that the wallow that they made suits them fine.

Public schools make up the bulk of state and local taxation and their aim is to turn children into drones like Turner. This is why the provisions and basis for public school education need to be destroyed and a new basis of parents choosing where to send their children into private and religious schools and simply have the property taxes go to that end.

Turner has admitted to forcing his students to write term papers on the glories of civil rights nonsense and other political ends. So Turner is NOT for teaching 'thinking for the sake of individual benefit' but rather for a lavish system of political indoctrination. Allowing parents to home school and get paid for it, for homestead property taxes to be zeroed out, and for students to self-segregate as they please, prohibiting immigrants from partaking of any social services whatsoever, is what should be granted, and let these failed public schools die for lack of funding. In the days of Internet learning, what need is there for brick and concrete buildings not used for most of the day, for most of the year?

There is a new and better way which is waiting to be born, which Turner will fight and bellow against. Yet, because the money is no longer there, the public school system is doomed nevertheless.

Andrew Roedell said...

I agree with your overall point wholeheartedly; and would add that you might have cited another cultural artifact from 1955: the cinema classic "Blackboard Jungle," which was regarded by many when it came out as a realistic portrayal of a tough inner-city school. Anyone who thinks the challenges of today's high-needs schools did not exist in the fifties should give this film a look: Gang violence; the physical and sexual assault of teachers; the problem of students bringing weapons into school; multiracial and multicultural classrooms, some of which include ESL students and students with learning disabilities; and in general a high level of disaffection and disengagement among students--every one of these is clearly present in the public school depicted in this Eisenhower-era film. Yet somehow the schools of this era produced the bulk of those Americans who constituted the Civil Rights Movement, who won the Space Race, who would prove victorious in the Cold War, who would sustain the economic growth of the 1980s and 1990s, and who produced the explosive growth in new technologies that continues to this day. This should all be borne in mind, I think, as we consider to what degree, and in precisely what fashion, our schools today should be deemed to be in a state of "crisis".