RSS Feed MenuThe conservative argument against the proposed Obama education reform plan is that it does little to promote school choice. I am a firm believer in school choice, but I work in a large urban high school because kids here are the ones who need the most help and the most care. So, in my eyes, the Obama blueprint for education reform is good for two main reasons. First, it is less punishing and devastating to students struggling to earn the required “passing” measure on mandated state exams. Second, it more broadly measures a schools’ performance beyond standardized test scores, something that is especially important in low-income schools.
Evaluating students for academic growth, instead of labeling as a “passing” or “failing” student, will allow educators to tailor lessons and curriculum to meet the needs of students. I currently have a student who is such a gifted poet that his work is splashed on city buses. However, he has been unable to do well enough to “pass” the mandated state assessment in English; therefore, he is wrapped up half the day in very dull scripted curriculum courses trying to figure out ways to crack tricky standardized question stems. Excited every time he is given the smallest amount of freedom to do something with regards to creative writing, his demeanor changes enormously when given yet another packet of long reading passages with questions attached. I can’t help but feel we are deadening this student’s interests in school and life. He hates school, and rightfully so. He is not alone whatsoever. When we try to standardize curriculums, it limits the amount we are able to do to reach students of all abilities and gifts. Schools should be doing all they can to expand student’s minds – it’s hard to argue that standardized reading passages do this.
In the inner city especially, schools need to be measured on things that go far beyond a test score. I’m the last person to ever make “excuses” for my students, but I’d have to willingly blind myself to not see their struggles. Too many of my students have adult responsibilities — from taking care of siblings to holding down full-time jobs after school and into the night. Pretty much all of them rely on public transportation to get to and from school. Many struggle with the effects of entrenched poverty — hunger, malnourishment, poor medical care and more. Does this mean we as teachers coddle them and go easy? Of course not. But it does mean that a lot more goes into this job than opening up the curriculum to so and so page in order to teach the skill to pass the test. Students come to our schools with many, many more and different needs than wealthier counterparts from more privileged areas. Most conservatives don’t like listening to these sob stories, but, oh well – it’s reality.
So, as Obama’s blueprint says, it is necessary to evaluate schools based not only on test scores, but also on things like attendance, graduation rate and learning climate. School climate is arguably the most important thing to foster in a struggling school. I’d say that climate in many ways determines test scores, so to judge a school only on the score makes little sense. Kids in a poorly run school don’t need a test to tell them that their school stinks.
Of course, school climate can only be improved and revolutionized if entire staffs and administrators are on board. This is something that no policy from Washington can ever address. Mentioned often these days in school reform debates is the need to “fire bad teachers.” It is one of the ways Obama plans to deal with failing schools. Newsweek devoted an entire front page to it the other week. Everyone seems to know what a “bad” teacher is, but few actually talk about what can or does make a good or great teacher. All I know is that as the bell rings to start this last period, I’ll “teach to the test” again, because that’s my job. That, and much much more that is immeasurable.
JeninCT // Mar 16, 2010 at 5:29 pm
“…splashed on city buses”
Graffiti or text of paid ads? I have to wonder. The way you worded that is rather slippery.
As a parent who is committed to my kids’ education, I applaud your obvious passion for teaching and your committment to your students. I always tell my kids that you have to do the work you hate as well as the work that excites you. Life is like that. Your poet still needs to learn how to master the work that doesn’t excite him because he’ll need to learn how to get paid for his poetry once it is written. Your job includes teaching him that fact of life.
The problem we have with judging ’school climate’ is the same problem we have judging good teachers. It’s not quantifiable. Teaching is a natural gift like peotry is. Some have it, some don’t.
wonda // Mar 16, 2010 at 5:32 pm
As a fellow teacher, I agree. Nice post.
kevin47 // Mar 16, 2010 at 6:33 pm
I think just about every student would rather write poetry than learn grammar.
okiephd // Mar 16, 2010 at 9:13 pm
“The problem we have with judging ’school climate’ is the same problem we have judging good teachers. It’s not quantifiable. Teaching is a natural gift like peotry is. Some have it, some don’t.”
JeninCT,
I am not sure that I agree with your claim that we cannot measure good teaching, nor do I agree that it is “a natural gift…” A study has very recently been completed on Teach For America teachers; the results were synopsized in last month’s _Atlantic Monthly_.
Researchers do know that certain factors are not correlated to learning outcomes (i.e., graduate degree in education); rather, what the researchers are finding is that highly effective teachers are able to assess learning outcomes almost on the spot, and that they adjust their teaching styles accordingly.
My husband and I are both educators. He teaches violin to people of all ages (3-85). I teach college students, both those of a traditional age, as well as “non-traditional” students (older, returning adult students). I think that we are both effective teachers; we both have quantitative and qualitative data attesting to our effectiveness. When I observe those teachers of my son whom I regard as ineffective, I perceive several differences between them (son’s public school teachers) and my husband and I:
1. First, husband and I both have advanced degrees in our fields. Because our own undergraduate and graduate school experiences were rigorous, we, as educators, have rigorous expectations for our students. (Prior to obtaining my Phd in my discipline, I took graduate education courses, which were completely mindnumbing; critical thinking was discouraged; we were assessed by take-home multiple-choice tests.)
2. My husband and I continually engage in professional development in our respective fields, which means that although we accrue knowledge not necessarily relevant to our curricula, we remain invested in our passion; in turn, we pass this passion on to our students. Our students see two adults who themselves are occasional students, and who love to learn.
3. My husband and I are both idealists; that is, even though we have both encountered student behaviors and attitudes that we find distressing–smugness, recalcitrance, disinterest, outright anger–we are committed to reaching ALL of our students. I guess another way of saying my point is that we are not burned out. Sure, we have days when we would rather not be teaching, and we always have a few students whom are our least favorite; however, we do not pass our temporary malaise on to our students. Our students may pick up on our bad days, but they never internalize those vibes to mean “my teacher/professor does not like me, or does not think that I can learn.” Such inherent idealism is rare in the American public school system. My son, the kid of two teachers no less, has over and over encountered burned out teachers; last year, when he was in sixth grade, he said to me, “Mom, why would some one want to teach if he/she didn’t like kids??” Why indeed.
Claiming that good teaching is “natural” is dangerous reasoning (and it is also a logical fallacy…). If we claim that good teaching is “natural,” then we can easily claim that some people are, for whatever apparent reasons, inherently good teachers, or inherently bad teachers. We might think that only women can be good teachers; we might even think that pregnant women, because of their more “natural” state, are particularly good teachers, or even horrible teachers…(oh wait…I think that we did that in the 1950s and 1960s….). Ultimately, thanks to Teach for America and to the Gates Foundation, we are on the way to determining what specific behaviors and personality characteristics constitute effective teaching.
JeninCT // Mar 16, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Ok, so maybe teaching isn’t necessarily a ‘natural’ gift, but it’s a combination of personality traits coupled with desire. Either way, some have it, and some don’t. And in spite of Teach for America and the Gates Foundation, determining which behaviors and personality characteristics constitute effective teaching won’t necessarily improve the teacher pool. There will always be ineffective teachers, just as there will always be problems with co-workers, bosses and while we’re at it, neighbors, spouses and other family members. Part of the learning process is learning to get along and get what you need in spite of being difficult and not much fun.
I have kids in public middle school as well and frankly I’m tired of dealing with teachers who are burned out. I just never expected them to be the 35 year olds.
Carney // Mar 16, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Jewish and East Asian students faced poverty, hunger, discrimination, language barriers, and other problems, but excelled. Rather than complain about oh-so-boring and repetitive drills and tests, or whining about how they wanted to play around instead, they overcame their disadvantages.
Of course, having a high average IQ helped.
I pity those who throw away their entire adult lives in the Sisyphean task of trying to get a population group of average 85 IQ students up to those of average 100 IQ performance. A career of fading idealism, desperately struggling to get up and stagger on after being brutally kicked over and over by the unrelenting reality of innate differences in intelligence and temperament. Trying to use the relatively rare bright spots as “proof” to oneself that the others are just like that too, if only they could be “reached”. But reality that keeps tearing down the paper barriers of excuses and rationalization and periodically grabs one by the lapels and shouts its existence in one’s face. The mental and emotional effort of throwing one’s head from side to side, trying to ignore it, must be exhausting.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Mar 17, 2010 at 12:14 am
Carney wrote: “Of course, having a high average IQ helped.”
Are you suggesting that conservatives and people who believe in God will have a greater difficulty learning than liberals and atheists? We know that conservatives and religionists have lower IQs than liberals and atheists.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/high_iq_liberal_atheist_monogamous_/
sinz54 // Mar 17, 2010 at 10:01 am
Carney: Of course, having a high average IQ helped.
I dunno about the East Asian students.
But a Jewish boy is forced to learn to read Hebrew, to learn enough of the Torah to get through his Bar Mitzvah rituals at age 13. Otherwise he’s not considered a responsible Jew. It’s got nothing to do with IQ, but with force. Jewish boys of slightly less than average intelligence aren’t excused from Bar Mitzvah.
Bar Mitzvah accounts for the nearly 100% literacy rate among Jews for centuries.
sinz54 // Mar 17, 2010 at 10:04 am
Carney: I pity those who throw away their entire adult lives in the Sisyphean task of trying to get a population group of average 85 IQ students up to those of average 100 IQ performance.
What do YOU want done with these students? What do you want to do with them after they reach adulthood?
In a society that is increasingly computerized and automated, with fewer and fewer jobs for the unskilled?
Without even enough education to fill out simple forms, these people are going to go on welfare. I wasn’t aware that right-wingers like you were fans of the welfare system.
JeninCT // Mar 17, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Sinz, you make a terrific point. I recently attended the Bar Mitzvah of a boy that teachers considered “unfocused and in need of medication”. It was my first Bar Mitzvah and I was truly astonished at the amount of work he must’ve had to do to get to fluency is Hebrew. Wow. Unfocused? Not!
jakester // Mar 17, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Where the parents care about education, the schools are usually good. Where the parents really don’t care beyond the basics and are more concerned about sports, you get mediocre schools with good football teams. Where the so called parents are illiterate, indifferent and are just as screwed up as their kids, you get bad schools, full of Precious’es. Schools and their attendant school boards are political animals and if they go around flunking all the morons and deadbeats and expelling the miscreants and felons, you are going to get a slew of angry parents who think their obnoxious brat is somene who deserves to graduate; and lawyers screaming about their manufactured rights.
Trouble is that No Child Left Behind is a recipe for massive spending and school failure. There should be a point where a school can tell a parent, “Your kid really sucks and we don’t want him unless he changes his attitude, but since he learned it from you. doubtful that is going to happen soon.
jakester // Mar 17, 2010 at 4:43 pm
SpartacusIsNotDead ,
Are you being a bit paranoid? I don’t think Carney was referring to that group. Though I notice that that group seems to walk around with a 100lb chip on their shoulders, looking for anything to feel outraged about.