While I'm not an expert in funding, what I perceive is that state funding is more-or-less equitable. Yet, private sources of funding provide an advantage to the economically-advantaged areas of our state and much of federal funding targets the highly-poverty stricken areas. This leaves a huge group in the middle that do not get additional assistance. In my district, we often say "we aren't poor enough." This is despite the fact that we have nearly 50% of children that are in the free/reduced lunch program.
My post tonight is in reaction to our own Education Commissioner's blog post today. He quotes from a report called the U.S. Education Reform and National Security, that “America’s failure to educate is affecting its national security.”
I don't doubt that for a moment, but without scrutinizing the report for accuracy, I cannot say that it has any merit. I'm not interested in this report and I'll tell you why. The three recommendations from the report (as posted by DocH) are the following:
- Expand common core to science, technology and foreign language.
- Engage parents and communities in education reform through more choice of education programs.
- Develop a national security audit report for schools and districts that is transparent to parents and communities.
1. I whole-heartedly agree, except...
With CCSS, we currently have Mathematics and ELA standards, and yes, Kentucky was the first state to adopt these standards. There was a great deal of effort (I think at least) to incorporate some deep-thinking skills in these, but I still question how these higher-skills will be assessed. We continue to rank schools on standardized assessments that I would bet mostly assess basic facts and calculation skills. I don't know this for certain, because we are only privy to past released test items and not examples of future ones.
When I was in the classroom (albeit a billion years ago), I put more weight in my grading practices on how students could apply their knowledge than I did their recall of facts. I'm not saying I was the perfect teacher; I was far from it. Yet my favorite methods of assessing student performance were not in multiple choice questions, it was in problems where they had to show their work (so I could "see" their thinking), it was in constructed response questions (so I could gauge if they really understood the concept), it was in performance assessments (so I could tell if they could do something with their knowledge).
Sure, expand CCSS, provide a national curriculum, but allow individual states or individual schools to be able to assess the competence of their students. Regurgitating facts does not make a country stronger, especially when those facts are quickly forgotten or obsolete in a year or two. Teach kids to really think and watch what happens.
More importantly, devaluing and degrading education (as has been common recently, with the identification of low-performing schools or low-performing teachers) will NOT improve the situation. Nor will promising rewards for high-performing institutions and individuals (based upon standardized tests). Think about this just for a second... what educator thinks that it is okay to announce to their class that the lowest score on the recent test was "Jamie" and the highest was "Peyton"?
2. Engage parents and the community, yes... through more choice? Is this a plug for charters?
If we had more engaged parents and a more engaged community, then there wouldn't be a question of choice. Parents and the community are a vital part of education. All of us collectively need to embrace the future of our country, i.e. our children. There is no better way for these groups of people to be actively involved in society and actively encouraging the young people they know than to instill the values of learning.
3. Develop a national security audit report for schools and districts that is transparent to parents and communities.
What?
I'll step of my soapbox tonight. Thanks for listening and cheers!
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