Let me make one thing perfectly clear. (Nixon) To blame the classroom teachers for the crisis in education is equivalent to blaming the combat soldier in Iraq for the mess they find themselves a part of.
"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions"
This was a phrase my grandmother would say when I would do something wrong and then say, "I didn't mean to do it." NCLB or "No child left behind" was fraught with good intentions. Unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences has ruled the implementation from the beginning.
Let's take "National Standards." It is good that we have a set of written standards to guide the development of curriculum. It is good that states have followed by implementing state standards that meet or exceed the national ones. It is good that the laws have put teeth into the accountability to those standards. However, at the grassroots level, the classroom teacher powerless, voiceless, facing a hostile and often uninvolved public, defensive administrators, uninformed school boards, and pugnacious politicians, find themselves going against their own professional judgment and teaching the facts contained in the standardized test that measure the accountability to NCLB.
There are five nationwide goals for all children embodied in NCLB:
- proficiency in reading and math by the 2013-2014 school year
- English proficiency for limited English proficient students
- qualified teachers in every classroom by 2005-2006
- safe and drug-free learning environments
- high school graduation for all students
I propose two separate but equal solutions to meet these goals. (no pun intended)
1. Fully fund a K-4 war on basic literacy (administered locally)
2. Fully fund and develop an accredited K-12 online school that meets the national standards in all major languages. Make it operational 24/7/365 and available to every citizen. Have computer centers in every school that is open to walk-in learners and staffed by accredited Mentors. (administered nationally)
These two programs would exist concurrently. In addition establish a "National Center for Excellence in Curriculum". This would be a research center providing technical assistance, online and by phone, to educators and families needing assistance. In addition this center would continuously investigate and empirically assess educational theories and practice to find and implement the best at the grassroots level. This center would also inform the two programs.
The center should be autonomous from any educational institution but draw upon the intellectual capital of them all.
This would cost much less than the current fragmented solutions and could easily be within the national timeline
Copyright Reid Cornwell 2006
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 7
I remember the new math. IT wasn't a failure. The elementary school teachers WERE TOO DUMB TO LEARN IT. I understood it well enough, but then I had the basics of it in high school.
In every university or college with more than a few departments the education majors test out above the jocks and maybe above the business majors, but even the English majors test out better smartiness wise!
Some guy does a book on "Tipping Points," and gets a lot of buzz. This concept was introduced in one of my Pol Sci classes as an interesting application of math, as "here's an interesting take on safe congressional districts..."
The education school tried to get Pol Sci to set up a special curriculum for the BS Ed but they refused on the grounds that the alterations would vitiate their standards.
You are too late. And you can't spell!
My doctorate is in Psychology. I was starting college when your son was born. I can't spell and I don't type well.
I agree that the Universities are one of the primary agents of this crisis.
However, are the poly sci responsible for the mess in our politics?
You are correct about the testing of and comparative ranking of various majors. ON the Miller Analogies test a score that would put you in the 75th pecentile among education graduate students will put you in the 25th among natural science students.
Clearly we are not recruiting the best and the brightest into teaching. The poor salaries alone motivate the cream to other fields.
I'll back off a little on the spelling thing, though, by telling you that the ability to spell is similar to perfect pitch, hard wired to some extent. This country has relied too long on having many very intelligent women at its disposal to fill the gaps in male cognition. You know, secretaries, teachers, nurses. The quotas for law, medicine and other graduate curricula didn't START to fall until the 70s, and now women make up the majority of some of those fields. And now the REAL money has migrated other fields.
Social scientists have a lot to answer for, such as inventing explanations like "dyslexia" for variations in abilities that are normal distributions. That's another question.
If you never read "The House of Intellect" by Jacques Barzun, do it. The guy was the provost of Columbia and had enormous clout in intellectual circles.
The capable women in my life have always taken up the slack for me. I want a woman to be president. Us guys have screwed it up so bad.
With women in the majority (for some time) why hasn't already happened?
Pehaps Hillary will change all that. However I think there are better choices. (all are Democrats)
As to the spelling thing, my spelling problem is my lousey typing skills coupled with not proofing what I write. A deadly combination.
I appreciate your comment. I went back and edited all my writing on Gather. I think I got most of them.
My last secretary is now running my old company. She was a great deal smarter than me. She also typed better.