What's Wrong with Our Schools

For a variety of reasons, educators tend to be very insecure. This reveals itself in over sensitivity to criticism and denial that there is anything wrong other than a lack of parental and community support. These things aren't sufficiently forthcoming, but that is hardly the whole story.

Lofty Goals

Lofty goals expressed in beautiful language seem wonderful, but if these elegant words are undefined they are meaningless. When they are badly defined they are misleading.

Nearly everyone agrees that high school students should exhibit good citizenship. For some, good citizenship means obeying the rules and doing what you are told. Others see good citizenship as standing up for what you believe in and confronting authority. Undefined, the term glosses over underlying conflict that it would be better to discuss and understand.

The practice of education is full of such platitudes.

There Should Be More Testing, Not Less

Lofty aims serve to convince the public of the importance and benefits of schooling. That they are vague, to the point of not being measurable, avoids any responsibility for achieving them. On the other hand, state mandated tests are criticized for not taking these greater purposes into account.

Some will tell you that these goals cannot be objectively defined. Others will counter that they sound good, but they don�t mean anything.

When the measurement movement began in education and psychology (and the social sciences, for that matter) the test makers said that, if things like intelligence, aptitudes and abilities existed, they could be measured. Believing earnestly in the existence of these constructs they set out to prove it by creating instruments that would meet scientific standards of reliability and validity. After a hundred years of failure, they still insist on believing in these global fantasies.

There is no such thing as mathematics achievement. This where measurement is easiest to specify. Rather, there is a large number of very specific skills that we choose to categorize as mathematics. For most, there are various prerequisites for their acquisition. But it is entirely possible to be further ahead in one branch than another, to know some things at a given level and not others.

There should be more testing, not less, but it needs to be of a very different kind than the examinations now being used. They are too broad and unfocused to be really useful. Instead, tests should, at appropriate grade levels, thoroughly examine the students� attainment of those skills that are the fundamental building blocks of future learning.

For example, at a selected grade level, say third, all children in regular education should be tested for their knowledge of the complete times table, 0x0 though 10x10. Those who do not pass at a high level, say 95% or above, should go into a special curriculum where that is the only subject until they become proficient. Children, who cannot (for any of the many possible reasons) achieve this level of mastery, should not continue in the regular program.

These examinations should not be given in multiple choice format. There is a considerable difference between recognizing the correct answer and producing it. And the items should not be sequenced, 0x0=, 0x1=, 0x2=, etc. A student may have learned only a pattern without understanding, thus 9x4=, 6x7=, 3x3=, etc.

Anther test might give a passage to read with the requirement to respond in writing to a question that logically calls for producing a simple declarative sentence. Specific consequences for the child should follow from the results of their performance.

Pay Kids for their Work

People say that children should learn for the sake of learning. They also say that teachers should teach for the sake of teaching, because it is a calling. But it stops there. Everyone else should get paid well for their labor.

A Harvard economist is promoting a different idea: Students should be paid for their performance on standardized tests. If we want children learn about the relationship between work and reward, capitalism and the American way this is a fine way to go about it.

Education Research

The US government spends a considerable amount of money on educational research. Much of this is wasted because of poor science. Almost none of the studies manage to study a random selection of students, an essential requirement in order to statistically generalize the results beyond the sample. Most of the experiments funded even fail to randomly assign subjects to experimental and control conditions, another necessary element for useable results. An argument is often made that this can�t be done with school children.

The curious thing is that in medicine, where it is a matter of life and death, well designed and controlled experimentation can be done. And it is medical research that provides the most useful pattern for educational studies to copy. In a way similar to medicine, education is composed of delivering instruction (treatments) to students (patients).

Islands of Excellence

Highly motivated, very intelligent, students will do well with little more than access to resources. But there are islands of excellence in education, other than elite private schools.

The military is one. Objectives are carefully developed and unambiguously defined. Instruction is tightly designed to the objectives. The performance of the students, the instructors and the curriculum is thoroughly tested at regular intervals and at the end of a course of study.

Medical schools follow a similar pattern. Like the military they take their teaching responsibilities very seriously. Some exceptionally skillful tests have been designed by medical educators to examine the outcomes of instruction. And like the military, unsatisfactory performance by a group of students results in changes to the way the students are taught.

Failure is not bushed aside. Remedies are not untested, sweeping changes that are little more than new slogans are not adopted. And it all begins with the detailed specification of objectively defined aims. It is absolutely essential to start with an explicit definition of what the educational program is supposed to accomplish. Perhaps this is avoided because it can be contentious. It is a lot of work to be sure, sine qua non.

Computers and Schools

We are at the beginning of a period of change in our world and in our way of life that will be as profound as those transformations initiated by the industrial age. At the heart of this revolution is the computer. They are about to become larger in capacity, smaller in size, faster, and cheaper, i.e., more powerful and more ubiquitous. They will enable enormous progress in scientific research and technological innovation in every area, including education.

In our schools, computers should deliver much of the instruction. It is possible to create complex educational programming that will effectively individualize instruction for each student. This will also enable quality education research to be done. Through programmed instruction the responses of the students can be monitored and studied in order to systematically improve the instructional materials.

Chaos in the Classroom

It is impossible to have quality teaching and learning in chaotic classrooms. All too often that is their condition, due to inadequate discipline practices and poor organization.

A faulty notion of mainstreaming actually results in children frequently being pulled from their regular class for specialist assistance. Worse, they are often removed for extra curricular activities. None of this should ever occur during core classes.

Discipline would be easy if most children wanted to be in class. If that were the case, depriving them of participation for a day, like a temporary banishment from the waterfront at summer camp, would be sufficient. This is not the case, however.

Unfortunately, teachers have few disciplinary tools at their command. In some cases they are even unable to reward students bad behavior with staying after school. Principals, with a little more to work with in this regard, frequently fail to adequately apply the tools at their disposal in order not to annoy parents. They often turn problems back to the teachers with the notion that they, somehow, ought to be able to manage the situation.

Discipline is so bad in some schools that routine attendance laws are ignored. Parents and sometimes their physicians, provide excuses for imaginary sickness that equal half of the school days.

Parental Responsibility

Parents should consider themselves the persons most responsible for the education of their children. It is inappropriate to simply turn them over to a school, no matter how excellent that school might be. They ought to be monitoring their children�s progress and providing additional or alternative instruction as they deem necessary.

On the other hand, it is generally unwise to try to tell the teacher how to educate your child. They are professionals and rightfully resent it when a parent treats them as one would a servant. Rather it should be a relationship of equals, with differences of opinion and methods fairly considered and mutually respected.

A Teacher Shortage--What a Surprise

School teachers have never been particularly well paid. Status and respect in the community, tenure and summer vacations used to compensate somewhat. For most intelligent women, who wanted to work and prior to the enactment of nondiscrimination laws in employment, nursing was the only other option. Middle and lower class men with an intellectual bent, also had fewer alternatives than are available today. The economy needed more muscle and less brain power than is presently the case.

Society and the nature of the economy changed. Except for those few for whom teaching was a calling they could not ignore, anyone who could prepared themselves for better paying jobs. Many excellent teachers left the profession. Student learning as measured by standardized tests began to decline at the same time.

Declining achievement by students was to be remedied, in part, by increasing standards for teachers. Teacher training was to be more rigorous and they would be required to pass tests of knowledge in their subjects. Elimination of tenure would make possible the removal of those who were ineffective. The school day and the school year would be lengthened. Schools and teachers were to be accountable. Much of this makes teaching an even less attractive career choice.

Meanwhile, Bush's Education Secretary, Rod Paige, called the nation's largest teacher's union "a terrorist organization." So now, when a well educated work force is more important than ever, there is about to be a huge teacher shortage. What a surprise.

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