eduskeptic

I have been teaching for a while now. I earned my first credential in 1974. Since then, I have added two more, plus a masters degree. I have taught at the community college level, lectured at the university level, taught adult school, summer school, special projects, substituted at just about every level, worked with adults, incarcerated youth, and at risk youth. I was head of a School Attendance Review Board, ran a grant funded program to keep kids in school, have been the president, vice president, or site representative of our teachers association for quite a few years, have been the teacher in charge or back-up for 20 years, and was head of our peer assistance review committee. I have sat on every budget committee in our district for the last 23 years, and been on our student support team off and on for the same amount of time. I have been teaching Kindergarten full-time for the last 23 years. This has all, except for the incarcerated ones, been in public schools. All of this is simply to establish that I have a basis for what I write about. It also accounts for my blog name: eduskeptic, as I have heard more than a few claims about education and the educational process that are simply founded on faulty information, selective use of information, or pseudo research and are false. Teachers are prone to taking anecdotal information and assuming that it is real, longitudinal, replicated research that is credible. Considering that we spend our professional lives in a room with 20 to 30 or more students all day, every day, it’s not surprising that more of us don’t take the time to do our own research regarding any number of things. We run out of time and energy at the end of the day to do so. Listening to the consultants is sometimes just the short, convenient path to take. The consultants, of course, are selling something, and their pitch is tailored to their product. Our research skills could use a boost.

The same cannot be said of the government, any level of government. The No Child Left Behind Act, (PL 107-110, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001), should have been a very well researched and implemented law. While it may be impossible to account for all of the unintended consequences of anything that we do, one should expect that the ramifications of such a far reaching law at least be explored. Considering the title of the act alone, I would have certainly expected that. It is a wide ranging law that could do some good. The United States Government has the ability to task real people to do real research on anything that is being considered. It’s not a side job, but a full time job for which there are people available. What happened? Did someone forget to research developmental processes, or simple math concepts? I do think that for abysmally performing schools there should be a level of help, and if necessary, a very heavy hand, in implementing change for the better. First, it would be important to identify the reason for the sub-par results. The next step would be to figure out how to fix the problem. The last step is to fix it. Not such a radical idea. Put the money and the expertise where it is needed. Oddly enough, the fix might have to involve the community as a whole, not just the school. NCLB, however, is fatally flawed, and in its present iteration cannot do what it is supposed to do. It does not address the whole. It starts out with a mathematical impossibility, and founders from there. It completely ignores something called the bell curve. It is not possible for everyone to be at average, or above average, or below average, or at the t op. As more students move to average, the average moves, as do the rest of the elements being charted. In order for there to be an average, there must be some below average, and some above average. High is defined by low. Dark is defined by light, fast by slow, and so on. I can certainly make sure that all my students know more by the end of the school year than at the start. I should, and do, strive to reach each and every one them and make certain that they all know their letters, sounds, and simple words, are able to count etc. They will not all be in the same place, educationally, at the same time, at the end of the school year. Yet, that seems to be what is expected. Everyone is expected to be “proficient”(proficient has to have some sort of definition that involves not proficient). My colleagues in first grade are expected to have all the children reading at the same level by the end of the year. Not only are the children to be reading, they must read at a certain rate in order to be considered proficient. Each successive grade level has similar expectations. Now, the expectations are not necessarily the problem. Reading is a necessary skill. Children should be able to read, and, perhaps most importantly, comprehend what they are reading. If the emphasis is on speed, and a child is not developmentally ready to put all that together, the pressure goes up. This makes no sense at all. This is a good way to teach children to dislike reading. The net effect is that the child starts to get more than a little rattled when it comes to reading. There is no documented gain in putting undue pressure on young children. The developmental processes, like the bell curve, have been ignored in the NCLB process. It is impossible to speed up the developmental processes a child goes through. On top of that, each child is different. Not all 6 year olds (or any age young child) are the same. Anyone who has spent time during lessons at an elementary school knows this. The research (Piaget, anyone?) says this. Pediatricians will tell you this. The cognitive abilities of these young children cannot be “pushed” or hurried up just because NCLB wants it to be so. We are cautioned against teaching to the test, teaching only those things that are specific to the test. Teaching to the test does not teach thinking, creativity, problem solving, or any other skills that our society needs to foster in order to excel. It teaches only what is on the test, how to fill in a bubble on a scantron card. If my teaching job depends upon my students reaching NCLB proficiency levels, and my school must meet these definitions or be labeled non-performing and subject to the feds taking it over, how can I not teach to the test? It is a high stakes game, and unnecessarily so. Rather than the confrontational nature of the threat of having my school taken over by the feds (we are not a target just now, but unless things change, all schools will be, as the stakes start going up quite sharply form here on out), the administration replaced, teachers moved, terminated etc. it seems to me that a true partnership could be hammered out that redirects problem schools, and their communities, into a more successful model. For me, the threat is empty. If the feds, or the state, think that they are capable of doing a better job, I think they ought to come on up and get on with it. Our little district has a very high proportion of our students who end up being Valedictorians and Saludatorians at high school graduation time. We did this prior to NCLB, and continue to do. President Obama has said that education has to be a national priority and that NCLB must be revised if it is to be successful. I hope that he manages to fine tune what could be a very useful tool in education. As it stands, it isn’t doing any of us much good, especially in the long run. While there have been some gains posted, it would pay to look into just exactly what and where the gains are purported to be. What is a gain in one state could translate into a loss in another. There has been quite a bit written on the pros and cons.  It is being challenged in court also.  You can let President Obama know what you think of all this. Let me know too.

Now and again there arises a call for a break from the “agrarian” calendar that schools are “stuck on”. Move to the modern ways, go year round. Times have moved on. Year round is the way to go, or at least some version of it. Sound familiar? It’s an old refrain that recycles from time to time, usually just prior to someone presenting a new, exciting, and much better way to educate children. It’s job security for the consultant corps. The school calendar in much of the United States actually did operate on an agrarian schedule, long ago, prior to the industrial revolution, which started in the late 1750’s and ran through the 1800’s. When much of the country was still down on the farm, children went to school throughout the year, and it was based on agricultural needs. With the advent of a mass movement into the cities during the industrial gearing up of America, that all ceased. First, the agrarian schedule: think about it. According to an article by Paul Akers, an editorial writer for Scripps Howard News Service, written way back in 1996, the facts are different than the myth.  Most crops are planted in early spring or late autumn. Harvesting is mostly from late August to early November. Harvest festivals, oddly enough, happen in autumn. Calving and lambing happen in spring. Back when the population was mostly rural, and farming prevalent, school occurred around planting, harvesting, calving, and lambing. School was out during these times. School was in during the rest of the time. A true agrarian schedule would likely have school during summer and winter, and the school breaks, if any, would be spring and autumn. The current schedule most school districts follow came about after the rural farming population headed for the cities and the manufacturing jobs that were there. Remember that these manufacturing jobs were back east, where the summer months brought heat and high humidity. The school buildings that were built to house this huge influx of children were like the factories–multi-storied buildings. The key thing that was missing in these buildings was air conditioning. Summer time heat and humidity was, and is, a deadly combination. In order to save children from attempting to learn in these stifling, unhealthy conditions, school calendars shut down during July and August, the hottest, most humid months of the year. It had nothing to do with farming, and still doesn’t. A 1990 article by then Senator Michael Barrett, writing for the Atlantic Monthly, points out that “the always growing demand for an educated work force, and the instinct to spare children from formal schooling during the hottest months, regardless of whether they had any role in farming” are the two main factors driving the “traditional” school schedule (credit to Paul Akers for this quote). In any push for a differnt school schedule, and always during a push for year around school schedules, the agrarian schedule myth will be trotted out. It just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Next time you hear it, refer to this blog article. It amazes me that this completely weird idea of how farming occurrs, and its relationship to a school calendar, has enjoyed such a long shelf life. I can only imagine the humor the nations farmers glean from it. As always, assume nothing, verify everything. Check out the information presented here for yourself. Let me know what you come up with.