Karrer: Promises, promises about education

[LWolf]

This can't be said often enough, or to a wide enough audience.

It's too good to post just a few paragraphs, but here goes:

Our schools will not improve if we continuously reorganize their structure (dance of the teachers) and management without regard for their essential purpose. Educational shortcomings are not solved by enlisting an army of external business consultants who advocate free market economy as they profit.

Schools will not improve if elected officials intrude into pedagogical territory and make decisions that properly should be made by educators. Nor should curriculum be the subject of a political negotiation among people who are neither knowledgeable about teaching nor well educated. Teaching is the professional domain of teachers.

Our schools will not improve if we only value what tests measure. But what is tested may ultimately be less important than what is not tested. Such as the ability to seek alternative answers, to raise questions, and to think differently.

Our schools will not improve if we threaten to close neighborhood schools in the name of reform. Our schools cannot improve if charter schools siphon away the most motivated students. To do so will debilitate public education and give the illusion of improvement.

Well worth reading it all at http://www.montereyherald.com/opinion/ci_15684099?nclick_check=1

[mediaman007]

1. The "reformers" always talk about making changes, but

the only change that they can put their finger on is that the money will go somewhere else.

[LWolf]

2. Yes. Part of the whole "reform" agenda is to redirect

all that money so that they can profit from it.

[femmocrat]

3. Another exerpt: (Excellent article. K&R)

"Finally, schools will not improve if we use schools as society's punching bag, blaming them, administrators, and teachers for society's ills.

My salutation to all those teachers beginning the year out there on the front lines.

Endure, even the Dark Ages came to an end, eventually."


(My 2 cents: We thought Obama was going to be the end to the bush-mandated Dark Ages.)

[LWolf]

6. We DID endure for 8 years, hoping the election of a Democrat

would bring the Dark Ages to an end.

That it didn't is a betrayal of the first order, imo.

[madfloridian]

4. Excellent article.

Recommended

[LWolf]

9. Thanks.

If all those who want to see improvement would take a good look at what the system really needs, instead of cheering for destructive policy, we'd all be better off.

[snot]

5. A modern economic system demands mass production of students who are not educated and

have been rendered incapable of thinking.
– U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).

[LWolf]

8. We are both the scapegoats for the under-education of students

and the people fighting for them, and their opportunities.

"We" being teachers.

The current push to create more "tiers" of education supports a small, better-educated population and a large mass of under-educated for cheap labor pools and cannon fodder.

[LWolf]

7. More:

Our schools will not improve if we expect them to act like private, profit-seeking enterprises. Schools are not businesses. They are a public good. The goal of education is not to produce higher scores, but to educate our kids. The unrelenting focus on data and testing is distorting the nature and quality of education.

Our schools will not improve if we continue to drive away experienced principals and replace them with neophytes who have taken a leadership training course but have little or no experience as teachers. The best principals have had a long apprenticeship as educators, first as teachers, than as assistant principals.

Our schools can never be improved if we ignore the disadvantage associated with poverty that affects children's ability to learn. Children who grow up in poverty need extra resources including preschool and medical care. They need small classes, Their families need additional support (social skills, job skills, jobs, housing). Students need a curriculum rich in literature, history and science, all of which are trivialized or being diminished because of the need for students to score highly on language arts and math tests.

Finally, schools will not improve if we use schools as society's punching bag, blaming them, administrators, and teachers for society's ills.

I, for one, am sick and tired of being used as society's punching bag.