When it comes to American society, my biggest pet peeve, and what I feel should be one of our government’s biggest pet peeves as well, is our shoddy education system. There is a group of countries, known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, of which America is a part, to which we always compare ourselves, in an effort to determine progress or regress in terms of education, economics, and other areas of national performance. According to the scale of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, America has consistently ranked behind all of our industrialized country counterparts. At least a dozen European countries’ 15 year-olds, as well as Canada’s, scored better than our teenagers scored.
Why is this? Is it the fault of the students, the teachers, the administrations, or a combination of all three?
It is my firm belief that many errors in our education system are coming from the big guys upstairs. First case in point, “No Child Left Behind.” Simply hearing these words makes my spine tingle. This was by far the worst thing to have happened to our education system in the 234 years that we have been a country. The act, signed into law on January 8, 2002, by former President George W. Bush, is a piece of legislation that gives each state the responsibility of creating a state-wide standard of achievement for their students. This would be fine, except for the fact that state’s funding is based off of the students’ standardized test scores. Therefore, the better the students do on the state’s standardized assessments, the more funding the states receive from the federal government. So where is the problem? The problem then becomes that teachers begin “teaching to the test,” meaning they teach only what they know will appear on the, taking Texas for example, TAKS test, as opposed to teaching a well-rounded curriculum.
A second huge mistake that I feel the men in charge have made surfaced just about a week ago. Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee revealed a plan to fire almost 300 out of about 4,000 teachers in the D.C. school district on the basis of poor student performance. Furthermore, another 729 teachers are essentially being put on probation for the same reasons, informing them that they have one academic year to improve or they will face the same fate. On the surface, I know that Rhee has good intentions trying to hold teachers more accountable for their students’ performance. However, all this will wind up doing, especially for those 700 “minimally effective” teachers, is encouraging them to further teach to the test. Because now, not only does their school’s federal funding rely on these test scores, their own jobs do.
I hope, for the sake of our country, that this new threat from Rhee will end up doing what she hopes it will. Maybe lighting a fire under the butts of these teachers will finally wake them up to the reality of our ailing youth. Then again, maybe neither of these things is the key variable in our equation. For, as the great American writer Mark Twain once said, “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
8 comments:
I would agree with you that the “no child left behind” program and other test based assessment programs have not worked in raising the standards for the US education system. The US spends over $ 11,000 a student to send them to public school, making the US the second highest spender behind Sweden for education. That money however, is not ensuring that children graduate high school or if they do, they have basic competency. The US is currently 9th in high school graduation rates among industrial nations. It makes sense that the federal government would want a say in how schools operate, as they provide much of the funding and traditionally funding from the federal government comes with oversight. The problems with this federal oversight of the school systems is that every state and even every school district is different. When you multiple those differences across the demographic, and cultural divide of the United States is clear that no federal mandate or program is going to meet the needs of all or even a majority of the students.
How then do we demand our children receive the education that they deserve? One way is to look at who is doing a good job with there education system and learn form their experience. Finland has the world’s most successful education program. Their program is successful with out formalized testing, and integrates the social needs and baggage that children bring with them into the classroom. Students are fed, not kicked out for behavioral problems, rather those problems are diagnosed and remedied and assessments, not tests are integrated into the curriculum. Finland is a small country, and these methods work there, it is possible these methods would work in some states or parts of states. There are other examples of effective education systems that are working, but before they can be learned from, the government and bureaucracies at all levels need to have the courage to try new things and the ability to create a dynamic education system that’s meets the specific needs of their specific students.
In Dense America, I read a blog posting which spoke about our nation's education system and where the faults are. First of all, I do agree that our education system needs some sort of reform. There are vast inequalities across the nation and even from city-to-city from the same region. Qualities of education, teachers, resources, and motivation change drastically when comparing areas.
Now I do agree, also, that most of the fault lies in the administration, however, I do not want to dismiss teachers or students from any blame. Students are responsible for pursuing their education and to work hard; teachers declared a duty when they took their jobs to properly educate the future of America.
"No Child Left Behind" seems limiting in all the ways mentioned in "Reforming our Education." However, in Texas we already had state-wide standardized testing before the legislation passed in 2001. I remember taking TAAS tests in elementary school before the TAKS tests came out. It was in elementary school that we practiced the standardized testing questions more, and that is a crucial time in a child's education. There were many students who did not really need the practice and others who needed it desperately. Standardized testing does alter methods of teaching, curriculum, and the urgency with which teachers teach at the primary levels, but if we did not have standardized testing, there would be students who would not have basic reading comprehension, writing composition, and math skills; there are still students who lack those skills. I understand that standardized testing is not the most efficient way of measuring learning, but with the growing number of students around the nation, it is difficult to come up with another alternative.
There are a wide variety of students in our country. As a whole, American teens may straggle behind other countries educationally. "No Child Left Behind" sacrifices our average educational level by providing everyone a chance. Additionally, American teens are allowed to participate in many more extracurricular activities beginning at a young age. In other countries, social life and education is seen differently.
Administration should re-evaluate how funding is distributed for educational purposes. The method that is used is not effective because usually those schools that are scoring poorly need more/better resources than those who are scoring highly. Additionally, I think administration should take a look at the qualifications to be a teacher again. Many teachers I have had were very qualified to do their job, and did it well. However, there were always those who were not so good and did not necessarily seem qualified to teach the subject. I lived in a fairly nice area and know that areas that were not so good always had trouble keeping teachers, much less being able to convince qualified ones to come.
The quote at the conclusion of the posting is clever. It is a nice reminder that education is everything around us, not necessarily just school.
Post a Comment