GUEST EDITORIAL: It May Be Time To Reform The Reformers
Education reform has become a very large industry for big business and political careers. Public education is an extremely complex field because of the many ways to measure and debate student success and remedy poor outcomes. And we have conflicting philosophies world wide about what is best for students. Do we just teach the basics and focus on reading, writing and computing at grade level or do we offer a rich curriculum ? We know that public education has been highly successful in the United States because of our country’s success. We have nearly cornered the world market on creativity and entrepreneurship. Nearly every ethnic group in the United States out-performs their peers in their native countries when measured by test results. And for the exceptions not all students in those countries are tested.
And yet since Ronald Reagan declared the USA as a nation at risk in 1983 education reform has taken hold and seeks to sacrifice everything successful about public education in pursuit of “reform”.
Reform demands competition. Charter schools and corporate vouchers come on the scene offering parents a choice. Parents who are involved in their children’s education make the best partners in order to educate children. Choice results in involved families leaving the conventional schools. Our minority schools in Key West have 70% free and reduced lunch (an indicator of poverty) and our charter schools have 7%. Some competition. But choice is good right ? Well choice results in segregated schools in a small community. But segregation is bad right ? Yes, it is but we can’t seem to find the answer to having both.
Reform demands we dissolve teacher job security. Florida is taking away tenure and yet our outlier example school Stanley Switlik that has the same challenges as the rest of our schools maintains an A rating. And the staff there is union strong. Hard working dedicated teachers can be pro union. But annual contracts are a good thing right ? Well yes, but a great teacher wants the same job security as a poor teacher. The harsh truth is there aren’t enough great teachers for every class because we don’t pay enough to staff a system with 100% excellent teachers. We also historically do not weed out the less effective teachers. We all know who they are but finding the empirical evidence to show them the door is difficult and school leaders must fully staff their schools regardless of the applying talent pool.
Reform demands rigorous high stakes testing. We must measure the students to know if they are making gains right ? This is clearly the most complex issue to tackle. Our investors want proof that their tax money is spent wisely and produces results. This bottom line mentality demands assessment. And educators also want some measure to know if they are making a positive difference in the lives of their students. What is an appropriate measure? What measure makes the most difference? So much is riding on the test. Individual school and staff reputations. Our entire school system is judged by the entire community when scores slip. If so much is riding on the test then by God we want to do GOOD on that test! So yes, we will pretest and post test and spend a lot of time on test preparation. We will teach to the test and practice the test and educate kids on test taking skills. We’ll have pep rallies and encourage proper sleep and eating the night before the test. It really is unbelievable how a high stakes test puts everyone in high stress mode.
What school board is willing to say they don’t care if their school system is in last place in the state because we don’t believe in test prep ? Who would want to relocate to the keys with their children if we had that reputation ?
The State sets the rules make no mistake about that. School Boards allocate the limited resources and direct staff to make resource allocation effective. Some School Boards are looking into opting out of the testing. We can control the amount of testing but then the final result could be a surprise so we like leading indicators. There are no easy answers.
Perhaps the demands of reform are gutting the very successful essence left in our public schools. An integrated society for children and parents that teaches good citizenship and prepares our students for the adult world.
Perhaps we need to reform the reformers.
Andy, Andy, your capacity for rationalization knows no bounds.
Once again, you see the shortage or absence of money as the principal cause of all problems and the infusion of money as the solution to all problems. For example, if only MCSD paid more money, all of our teachers would be Nobel laureates. Were it so simple.
Lyndon Johnson believed that if you threw enough money at any problem you could solve it. That did not work in the 60’s and it does not work today.
“The harsh truth is there aren’t enough great teachers for every class because we don’t pay enough to staff a system with 100% excellent teachers. We also historically do not weed out the less effective teachers. We all know who they are but finding the empirical evidence to show them the door is difficult and school leaders must fully staff their schools regardless of the applying talent pool.”
We also do not “weed out” the less effective members of the school board. We all know who they are but showing one or two the door is difficult when almost every election is based on the bubba system. Years on the board do not necessarily make one a great board member. Is it time for voters to select more forward-thinking board members? There just may be a huge improvement!