After a few week's break here is the continuation of my ideas on education reform. Here are the former posts:
Part One
Part Two
So now that I have shared some ideas here's my opinion about why I think it won't happen.
I Don't Think the Schools Want Change
School administrators spend time analyzing test scores and talking about what those numbers say about their school. They talk about needing to improve student's scores. The only thing they seem to offer for helping is making a topic a main focus next year or doing more test practice or maybe changing the curriculum (at an immense cost to the school as textbook changes sometimes require face to face training via in-services to teachers).
I say that based on what went on in my Connecticut town. They'd do a big report on this year's test scores then make a change for next year. According to my friends who attended the meetings year after year and saw the changes over time, what happened was when math was the focus year 1, math did go up, but writing went down. When writing was the major focus next time, it went up, but math went down, so forth and so on.
What does not get discussed about how to help the students learn is perhaps how to change the basic structure of school. They tweak just what the teachers do, in a small way, not a large change such as teaching to different learning styles or other more complicated things that may be the foundational source of the problem.
I daresay that no one wants change, really, or they'd look outside the box and make some daring changes, bigger changes rather than just sending more math worksheets home for test prep practice.
Why don't the change? Maybe they are afraid of change. Many people fear change and avoid leaving their comfort zone. Those in charge want the system to look like the old school style they had when they attended as children yet they go nearly crazy trying to figure out why the kids aren't learning and asking what they can do.
Private industry has been changing and employees have had no choice but to change when the market changes. Companies who make changes don't always like to make a change for change's sake; they do it as it makes something better: it's cheaper to deliver, it gives better customer service, it allows them to make more profit, and other reasons. Schools don't have that mindset. They act like they want to keep things the same old way no matter what. Even when pressured from above to improve things, how they try to change it is so limited and narrow.
Change is not easy for employees in the private sector. Change never seems easy or convenient. Change takes effort. Employees only change when forced by someone above. Well, maybe that's not fair to say as often employers don't empower employees to make many decisions on their own so employees would not be able to change unless it came down on them from higher up the corporate ladder.
Whoever said that schools get to keep doing things the same old fashioned way, even when it is not working? Where do they get off thinking they are allowed to do that? Why are people (parents and taxpayers) not demanding a change? I think it's because even the parents of kids who are unhappy in the system are ingrained with this is the one way it is. "It was good enough for me; it's good enough for you." Perhaps people can't even conceive of a way that it could be different and be better.
Before you say that a big change can't be done, think of what we know. We see some magnet schools doing things differently and the students are thriving. For example a science magnet in Connecticut has the kids doing physical science and biology in grade 9 then chemistry and physics in grade 10. The kids are thriving not just surviving; they are not suffering by doing two science subjects in one academic year. Whoever decided that high school kids can only do one science in one year? Why do public schools prohibit doubling up on sciences in one academic year?
At that magnet school, the different schedule gives them time in grades 11 and 12 to do serious lab science such as working with scientists on real medical studies. Isn't that fantastic? Why aren't there more schools like that?
The magnet school students also have a longer school day, going to one campus for four hours, and then traveling to their town of residence's campus for some studies for another four hours. Yes, you heard me right: the students willingly attend school for longer days and have an inconvenience of traveling between two campuses. Why? Because they think they are getting a better education in their area of academic interest and they are willing to work harder and longer. They like learning, they want to go to school there, they want to learn more than regular public school offers so they are doing school for longer hours and they love it.
A big change would be hard, but I would argue that some of the stresses inside the classrooms would lessen. Teachers say they wish they had students who really wanted to learn. What if the new method that better aligned students with their abilities meant the learners were happier and more academically challenged and intellectually stimulated? Is that not better for the entire class of students and a better teaching experience for the teachers?
Maybe school would go longer in the day. Maybe some teachers would not work all the same shift, maybe some are noon to 8pm shift. Maybe some teachers would like to work different hours! I did not say they would work longer hours for the same pay, I said work different hours. Maybe a teacher would like to work a four day work week but work 10 hours (plus lunch) instead. I know that model is loved by those in the private sector who are offered it.
Moving things around would not just be negative, it might help. Before you say the child's extra-curricular activities would suffer, consider this. The hockey players would not have to rise at 4:30 in the morning in order to do practice at five because it's the time the rink was available. Imagine that rink being used all day long by various area schools, instead of standing vacant for most of the school day. Since so many clubs and sports are done through the school already (as they wanted it to be) this would just be moving the schedule around.
The University Model
If students could learn until something was mastered, to re-take or have more concentrated learning on a certain skill area, it would mean students would not be so known by their peers as the kid who is stupid, something that hurts a child's self-esteem and sets a kid up for failure (and for learning to hate school and learning). By being around the same exact peers less, but with being around kids on the same wavelength more often, less of the typical meanness and social pecking order, negative socialization would occur. Some students who are suffering in school would be able to focus on their own progress and moving forward instead of feeling overpowered by the negative socialization they face daily in school. The messages on posters that some teachers put up on classroom walls often represent a utopian ideal that some students never feel represents their reality. How pathetic is that?
(I am speaking of course of students always progressing and moving forward. I know some kids can struggle with concepts but once they are over the initial hurdle they may surge forward. Thus the kid who had trouble with fractions the first time around may fly through the next time. It could be the teacher, the style of teaching, the fact that the child had some developmental change that allowed for more abstract thinking or that the kid needed to have it taught more than once, or spread over time. Once that is gone through, they may go quickly through the future material. It could also be that the student sick or dealing with some personal issue like divorce, and the next time they take the topic when the rougher patch is finished, they fly through it.)
Splitting students up and spreading them out to mix with kids of different grades (which would naturally self-select so the ages of the kids didn't fluctuate ridiculously widely, I'd like to think) would also reduce exposure time to being with the same kids day in and day out. This means that bullying would be reduced.
If you don't see the bully jerk for four classes every day she has less of an opportunity to bother you, and you have less of a chance to develop into being her target. Even if you have bullies in the class, it is easier to take the exposure to them in one class, instead of being locked in stride with them for every class all day long (as is the structure of some middle schools and most elementary schools).
If the students who excel in an area get to be around others who are like that too there would be no stigma in being intelligent either, the science kid would not be labeled a geek, so the benefit is not just for those who get labeled stupid because they didn't get fractions right away, another benefit is there would be less risk in shining academically.
Public school is so big that any change seems impossible to make. Who has power over the change? Perhaps the problem is there is not one person or one team of people. It's not just the administration of one school; it would have to be someone like the superintendent of that school district. But since the school has to answer to the state there is the state education department to answer to. If no one feels they are in control and empowered, no changes can be made. If the source of power, if the puppet master if you will, is an unknown entity so disconnected from the ones actually doing the job, whether it's running the school or teaching the students, then how would change ever come about? If those in control are so distant that they don’t even walk the same halls as the students how can them really know what's going on and that a change needs to take place? Oh, that's right, they look at the numbers and they judge the school and the student's learning by test scores.
One of the things that are most apparent in charter schools and magnet schools is that the administrators know the students and the teachers see the students for more than one class. Perhaps smaller is better and that's just one reason why charters and magnets succeed.
The public education system is so broken and yet it feels like no one is really steering the ship, so how can anyone really think that a change will ever happen?