The city spent several million dollars renovating labs at the school where I work, installing equipment not related to subjects we teach, replacing workable furniture with inferior junk...... and wouldn't give science teachers the "authority" to select, perhaps, $300 worth of lab supplies. Yet the superintendent's office screened our requests and sent (months later) poor quality approximations. What more do I need to say?
Teachers use curricula written for different places and different times. As politically incorrect as it may be to say it, many students just aren't going to college. Treating every student as college bound, even if well intentioned, serves no one. I have seen schools discard materials from vocational courses, such as wood shop or metal shop. This is sad. All adults would benefit from a greater variety of skills, either if they will use them for a job right after school, or simply to allow them greater independence in their personal life.
Many students graduate from public school and realize that they are not ready for college. This is because standards have been watered down- horribly. Schools themselves and their leadership are evaluated largely by grades and test scores. Those numbers, however, are derived within the schools, by teachers who are often influenced to "be easy on kids." There is too much subjectivity in self evaluation. It would be like a defendant selecting his own jury. The opposite, specifically letting the city evaluate schools, is not fair either. That's like packing a jury with friends of the plaintiff. Schools and students need honest, fair evaluation, This evaluation needs to be made as fair as possible by including teachers, parents, students, administrators, and the community in the evaluation process. It also needs to take into account the fact that not all students present with the same level of challenge. Some students require more time and effort than others.
Schools by and large do not give students what they need, for work or for life. Many students realize that they are struggling for a diploma by taking courses which will not specifically help them. Resources are wasted when truants abuse free transportation passes and free meals and barely attend class. Parents who have largely given up on their children treat public school as if it is day care. The public is complicit but allows schools no flexibility to modify for this expanded role. Anger and conflict develops with older students who know that a chemistry class is holding them back from a future which may only have a minimum wage job in store. Education should provide tools for independence, but sadly it falls short.
I would support:
1. More autonomy in purchasing for schools and teachers, coupled with financial incentives for frugality.
2. Better assessment of need prior to giving away food and other materials in order to avoid waste
3. Cutoff of transportation passes for long term truants
4. Progressive charge for serial class repeaters, as well as programs outside the regular school day or calendar
5. Statistically valid, off site evaluation of standardized exams and overall school performance
6. Implementation of practical curriculum, such as job training, for students who will not attend school immediately after high school.
7. Inclusion of representative active teachers in all upper level reform discussions
8. Promotions of privately run educational seminars on public spaces or in public buildings, to both make back money for taxpayers and build independence
9. Property tax rebates for those who are not using public school system in lieu of vouchers
10. Direct parental incentives/disincentives for academic achievement of children to offset cost of remediation
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Statistically valid, off-site evaluation has become a veritable industry and drain upon the Dept. of Education, already! Do the people from Cambridge really know anything about Brooklyn schools? No one at Horace Mann decides on what a good exam is except for those teachers. Private schools generally want nothing to do with this kind of standardization because it limits as much as it seems to encourage. I know that you will argue our schools are not as academically strong as these private schools, but part of the reason they aren't is their acceptance that there ARE standards -- their framing of arguments from a place that says there's a minimum or maximum to what a student should learn. There is nothing in education which is truly objective except the most banal of skills. Haven't you ever had a student who gets the concepts, but misses the details? Who loves the environment and would recycle and follow Green guidelines but who can't manage the Reference tables? No curriculum is perfect -- lessons and learning should be always be evolving. The fact that we lock our subjects into "Regents standards" shows how unwilling we are to admit our own ignorance. English has literally been boiled down to four essay types? No one ever read Shakespeare, or for that matter, a contemporary poet, if all he/she wants to do is pass the Regents. If that exam wasn't there, I would have greater freedom.
ReplyDeleteI too value creativity and a broad base of exposure. And I don't intend to quash any of that by what I am advocating. What I am criticising is the epidemic of subjectivity taken to the extreme, which we are seeing in public school. What I am referring to are kids who move along through 13 or more years of school because of teachers who believe they "get it," but who still are functionally illiterate and can't do arithmetic without a calculator. The problem is that teachers and administrators are in the position of evaluating themselves in order to "save their own asses," and play with numbers so that they or their school appears effective.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in school, lessons were broad and deep and we took regents. The regents were the easiest exams we took the entire year. When there were minimum standards to which students believed they would be held, we eventually buckled down and learned. Though I can't speak for English, I believe that with Science and Math it is very difficult to have a discourse with students on a complex subject if they have not mastered and internalized the basics. Regents standards are intended not as a hindrance, but as a minimum foundation for greater things.
This need not be a cash pig either. It could be regular teachers, blind to names and schools, grading without bias toward anything but the right answer.