I Want You to Get Upset and Take a Stance!

If you know me at all you would know that I am very patient and optimistic for the most part. However, I am slowly growing tired of the political chess games in education. Teachers are the pawns and so are our children. I am tired of all the energy put into high stakes testing that has nothing to do with educating children and helping them learn. I am exhausted. I think that most teachers out there will agree. Teachers have been stripped of their professional right to assess learning themselves. High-stakes testing yields mega millions to private industry. I am not against free enterprise but let us focus on creating learning tools that work to enhance teaching. Let us develop strategic and critical readers so that they learn to problem solve and create a better world for us all. So much instructional time is wasted on teaching to the test and even some of the so called high performance districts do it as well. There is so much hypocrisy in education or as Kozol would say, "Savage Inequalities".

So I have been pondering on this idea for a while now. I want not to offend anyone but I do want people to react and get upset. Yes, I want you to get upset and take a stance. Teachers, parents, students and anyone who cares about the future of our education system. Now is the time take a stance. I am including myself because I too had failed to speak up about the issues that bothered me and was told I could do nothing about. However, 2008 is around the corner and we cannot afford to wait until 2014 to see results. I just became a grandmother and I refuse to let it be.

This is the problem. Most reforms are not true reforms at all, nor are they whole reforms. They are basically band-aids to cover up what is ailing our school system. No one wants to see the wounds or the blood oozing from those wounds. NCLB (No Child Left Behind) was another attempt to cover the uglier and deeper wounds that have been created over the years. I must admit that NCLB brought about some change. However, it has placed a great burden on states to produce results without the right budget to fund it.

Parents, teachers, school administrators, politicians, and society in general are the culprits. We did not read the fine print embedded in the NCLB Act. Thus, none of us are exempt. We have allowed education to be mishandled, depreciated, under-funded, watered-down, commercialized, demoralized, disconnected, poorly-planned, more bureaucratic, politicized, and inconsistent with the values of our democratic system.

We have allowed for teachers to be bashed, demoralized, under-paid, and unappreciated. On the other hand, we have not been careful in assessing the teacher preparation and higher education programs that issue certification to supposedly highly qualified teachers.

We have allowed for uncaring, insensitive individuals to enter one of the most important professions ever, for all the wrong reasons. We have allowed for teaching to become a non-profession. It is a job that someone does in the meantime until something better comes along. We have allowed for administrators to become produce managers and not educational leaders.

We have taken away the power of the teacher to be a thinker and an innovator in the classroom because the reforms regulate and almost script what teachers must say and how books should be used. I had a principal tell me once that I had not followed the format plan in the teacher's textbook edition and that I had not held the book the entire period as she had ordered. I followed all the steps of a good lesson. I used my brains, common sense, creativeness, and fulfilled the objective but, "the approved tools" had not been used according to the observation. Then she finally admitted that I was a good teacher but that I had to learn to conform to the rules. All teachers had to hold their books while teaching so that students saw that even teachers used them as a reference. In some cultures it would be considered uncultured to look at a book while teaching because the teacher is the book.

We have allowed administrators to budget and save money on the basics while their offices are plush with the latest office furniture. Meanwhile students sit in very uncomfortable, rigid, inappropriately proportioned seating, all day. Most school buildings in this country are dilapidated mind factories. We started thinking about reconstruction and renovation but there is little money to make strides in this area. However we are building more prisons and parking lots. 

Many inner city schools are very unhealthy or dirty buildings infested with all kinds of rodents. By the way, we see the same thing in suburbia.  Most schools built in the 1950's cannot possibly sustain the kind of technology that we say we need in order to improve learning. Where is Bill Gates? We expect students and teachers to work in classrooms that are not air-conditioned during the hot days of early summer and poorly ventilated and not heated enough during the winter months. Where is Oprah?

We care more about our roads and making sure that they are paved  and pothole free than we do about the poor working conditions of our teachers and learning conditions of our students. The politicians make sure that roads are paved especially just before major elections. Why are they not pushing for new construction of schools?

We have allowed our country to become the testing Mecca of the world. High stakes tests are reigning in the assessment kingdom. I believe in formative assessment. We must assess and make sure that kids get it. (We want to know what they know and how to make sure they apply what they have learned). I have surveyed students about a test right after the test and the majority could only provide a very sketchy outline of what they read or actually did on the test. This means that the test had no type of impact. Most of the test data does not inform teaching or planning of curricula. The results never get back to the students either. I mean the kind of information that would have an impact on them in terms of learning. Parents get a report that says that the student is proficient or not. But do they know what that means in terms of concrete skills. Test results become the tools of political agencies or real estate firms to use to sell neighborhoods. When test scores are a little better in one district houses sell at higher rates.

Teachers end up teaching to the test, and district leaders will swear on the bible (oops, maybe not a bible) that they did not spent three quarters of the year on test prep. Test results arrive three months after the test was actually administered. Generally, teachers do not see the actual tests results nor have immediate access to the test itself until the following year. They have little time to sit with colleagues to decide on a corrective plan to help students understand their errors. The tests are sent to parents but they seldom get any real feedback on what the results mean and more importantly to assess their role as parents and their children's teachers at home. Literacy and the love and respect for learning begins at home.  

These high-stakes tests do cost tax-payers millions of dollars each year. School districts pay for these tests to be scored by out-of-district entities. The tests are scored by people (we hope educators) that they tell us are highly qualified, but these people do not know the students at all. Test prep materials are cranked out by major publishing companies to help teachers teach to the tests. There is a need for this type of material I am sure. But, when administrators ask if the workbooks will last the whole year, I get suspicious. Most of these workbooks are consumable and not reusable.  The workbooks drill and drill. These workbooks cost anywhere from eight to twelve dollars per workbook and to buy one for every child tested uses up a big chunk of the budget that could be spent on library books.

Reform model-developers and consultants are paid millions to help the teachers get back on track. There is a place for teacher trainers. However, most of the ideas and training for professional development are simply recycled ideas of educational philosophies; they put into fancy binders with initials of catchy acronyms to reinvent the educational framework. The reform model representatives sell their ideas to districts for thousands of dollars a year but if there is no money to follow up the next year they quickly disappear and no one is left to measure its success. Where are the true assessments and evaluations? We also know that the highest bidder usually gets the contracts. Who are we kidding?

So you see we are all culprits and culpable. Can we truly reform anything?  Education is big business and no one knew it would be so lucrative. I am for lucrative and making big bucks. That is what our nation is all about, isn't it? But baseball fans get more of a say in how much a valuable player's contract will pay him over three years  than parents do when it comes to approving a decent contract for their children's teachers. After all teachers only work ten months out of the year and have all those days off.  Where are the economists? I started teaching and received a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month and worried had to worry about how to make ends meet during the summer months. So much for lucrative.   

In the meanwhile, students complain about boredom, irrelevant curricula, poorly structured courses, and too much time spent on "stupid stuff" that will not help them in the future or the present for that matter.

I say revolutionize education. We need a power tank of good thinkers, great teachers and some insightful pupils to renew education and begin to link what kids need to learn for this fairly new century. Put the kids' "street smarts" if you will, to work. We need to connect what students love to do to what they need to learn to be successful. We need to go back and rethink standards and develop a to do list for learning. Of course, we will always need to teach the appreciation and understanding of the classical, mythical, philosophical, and ethical values of all time. We will need to help students understand all the isms that matter. Our children will need to know about the collective works of great writers and thinkers of the past. But, first we must be clear on how relevant these things are now and how they relate to our children's present. We must entrust the future to them. We have no choice.

We also want to address bullying, gun violence, racial intolerance, and the other social ills that brew in many schools. We need to bridge the gap educationally, socially and racially. Some of us talk about developing the whole child. What does that mean in today's world? Does it mean that our curricula must also address character building and teach more of the humanities?  I mean the humanities as in teaching us about how ti be better human beings to each other. How do we teach tolerance and acceptance of others in the midsts of war?

Schools need to pay strict attention to health and well being. We need to change the menus in the cafeterias to include more healthy diets and allow for a decent time period for the digestion of that meal in school. Some schools serve lunch and rush kids to eat in a whole half hour. Is not health care at its highest premium? If our children keep eating junk, our future citizens will be devoured by diabetes, and other illnesses that we know can be prevented by a healthier and balanced diets. Where is McDonald's or Burger King or any other of the fast food giants?

We want to make schools aesthetically appealing and vibrant habitats for learning. Where is Donald Trump? We want to create flexible learning and teaching schedules that adhere to modern living and busy lifestyles. One size does not fit all anymore.

Finally, we need to create curricula that is thought provoking, enhanced with the infusion of the arts. We must not forget the great minds of young children and their natural inquisitiveness. We need to embrace the multicultural perspectives of education from around the world. Global education begins at home. This country is global. Lets capitalize on the multicultural values that others bring to our land. Let's listen carefully.

We need to be willing to be the risk takers (not just when it comes to war) and become more outside of the box doers and thinkers. Education is a need. We need to learn to revoluntionize education as if we were ready to produce a music video. Students will listen better and more eagerly when learning relates to their new world, evolutionary and technological. Lets do it. Take a stance.