Changing Education

I found an interesting article today on twitter (yes, twitter! I am becoming so tech savvy!) You can read the article, A call for President Obama to change course on education, here. Now, let me just say that I am not posting this as a political statement against Obama or against charter schools. This author made some arguments that I don't necessarily agree with but the part I found interesting was this paragraph:

"What separates education in the United States from so-called competitor counties is that on average, socioeconomic status explains far more of the variation in test scores in the United States than in other industrialized countries. But, as many researchers have pointed out, it is not the presence of unions, tenure, or collective bargaining that explains that difference. A more plausible explanation is that the more successfully scoring countries have far more substantial social support systems to mediate the negative effects of poverty. A far stronger argument can be made that we need to change our focus — especially in struggling schools — from the drudgery of high consequence driven test-prep to engaging students to be critical thinkers and active investigators in meaningful subject matter. Or, even better, from spending millions on testing to spending millions on support services. In addition, the evidence is mounting that schools can also teach essential non-cognitive competencies, such as persistence, ethics, empathy and collaboration. Since the latter are not easily subject to measurement, the continued focus on testing narrow, more easily measured subject matter diverts important attention from their development."

This has been a topic of conversation brought up many times throughout our education courses. How do we reach the students that are living in such extreme poverty that they can't focus on their education, but must instead focus on everyday survival? How do we reach those children whose only reality is a constant stream of drugs and violence? How can we convince good teachers to stay in struggling schools when the consequences for bad test scores lead to even less resources and funding for that school? Is there a better way to evaluate our schools and our teachers?

There are never any easy solutions. I think that most educators have come to the conclusion, however, that high consequence standardized testing is not the answer. Like the author points out, we are spending millions of dollars on these tests, which only show how good our students are at taking a multiple choice test, when we could be using this money in more efficient ways.

I also liked how he pointed out that we should be teaching things like persistence, ethics, empathy, and collaboration. Things like this cannot be tested through multiple choice questions yet they are equally as important as traditional subject matter. If our students are not engaged in topics such as social justice, diversity, equity, the environment, and community/global citizenship then what have we really accomplished? What have we really prepared our students for?

I hope that we continue to ask these important questions regarding standardized tests and the inequalities that exists between our schools. Maybe if enough people begin to question this thinking we can become loud enough to change our governments way of thinking about education as well.