Kim’s late post- good article!

Bill Gates has been upfront about his concern for our current educational system in the United States.  Unlike a lot of others, Gates has put or at least is putting his money where his mouth is.  It seems people on all sides or at least most of them are in agreement that there is something wrong with our current educational system.  We are hearing all of this about high schools that are failing at the same time we are graduating top students who are entering top schools and military academies.  Where then is the disconnect?  Why is it that all we hear about is how our country is failing?

 While I do not agree with all of the testing ideas that Gates supports I do agree with the idea that we are not preparing for the global economy. International business students all over along with many other people are reading the book “The World is Flat.”  Agree or disagree with the information in the book it is hard to argue that the world is indeed becoming flat.  This means that we are not always going to have the most educated kids in the world.  Education is a competition and the world is more than eagar to beat us at education along with anything else.

“Too often, we lack the political will to take the steps necessay to ensure that America remains a technology and innovation leader.  In too many areas, we are content to live off the investments that previous generations made for us – in education, in health care, in basic scientific research- but are unwilling to invest equal energy and resources into building on this legacy to ensure that America’s future is as bright and prosperous as its present.”

 Innovation is seeing what the country is going to need and planning for it so that when the time comes we have a workforce prepared to be competitive.  For a long time, in my opinion, our country had a diversification of our labor force.  I really liked the way Gates in the video we watched in class spoke of a family wage.  We no longer have a diversified family wage.  It is very difficult for an eighteen year old kid to make enough money to support a family that does not significantly lack that of the educated.  For a while families could make choices to both seek employment in order to make up for these differences.  This option is less and less of a solution.  The difference between the haves and the have nots is as large as ever.

The problem that I feel is not being addressed is the class difference that is being created.  Those who are not college bound know it early on and feel the social stigma that comes with it.  This only furthers the divide.  We spoke of this in class in terms of tracking.  Gates talks about personalizing learning to make it “more relevant and engaging for students, therby to ensure no child is left behind.”  It is not relevant for students who are struggling to be placed in lower level courses and pushed to study subjects that do not interest them and are not put into a context that would.  When we do not consider what students are interested in, it makes it all the harder to have them engage in a subject they should master.

 This makes me consider the social networking and gaming that our students are clearly interested in.  We should know from past experiences that it is what people are interested in that they will excel at.  We do not always know what interests children.  Maybe we are not asking or accepting value in what they are.

Oprah recently spent some unspeakable amount of money to build a school in Africa.  Now do not get me wrong, Oprah is awesome and while she got some bad press for this move I am not in a million years going to slam someone who is helping people.  We are all people and if whoever she helps, good for her.  At the same time I heard that one of the arguments for not building a school in America, where education is hurting was that kids here only want ipods and shoes or other material items.

 I can’t help but wonder why.  Our kids see it everyday.  Has anyone read the O list?  What does she give away on the Christmas show?  What do we all want?  Our kids are interested in technology, maybe we are not making what they are interested in part of what we are teaching and therefore not fostering an education that is relevant for them.  So our schools are working for kids who are inindated with the importance of their studies at home but not for the kids who are less motivated but many just as smart.

Gates also speaks to the Early College high schools of which “there are 125 in operation in over 20 states.”  This is a great idea because kids want to get on with their lives.  They want to leave home and be independent and the faster they think they can do this the more eager most kids are.  My daughter is currently on track to complete two college Spanish courses by the time she graduates from high school.  The thought of this is very exciting for the kids, especially those like her that are planning on a career or at least a degree in foreign language.  What I see happening is that the more they are taken seriously at school the more the take themselves seriously.  For her and most of the other girls in this class getting less than an A is a problem.  Nobody has to tell them this.  They are just proud of what they are doing.

We do need as a country to look at the careers that are innovative and then pump money into fostering them.  I think education and writing for that matter is not a ton different than Field of Dreams.  Kids are interesting people and most all of them, even kids from low income families are interested in something.  Much of Hollywood exists due to low income kids.  If we build it they will come.  Kids do want a future, many of them are just unsure what they are being pushed to test well on in high school has anything to do with this future.  In all honesty how can we blame them when we are struggling with the same questions.

 Link to Article

Lets be real, what honestly can I do?

 

“Education has always been the gateway to a better life in this country, and our primary and secondary schools were long considered the worlds best. But on an international Math test in 2003, U.S. high school students ranked 24th out of 29 industrialized nations surveyed.” 

Recently while listening to NPR on my commute I learned a little about the philosophy that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation holds in regards to education. I was amazed to hear the spokeperson for the foundation speak to the role of buisiness in education. Those of us in education are constantly bombarded with what the government is doing or not doing for education reform. We form well meaning and well founded opinions on this subject almost daily in the land of the public educators, yet rarely do we consider solutions lying in the business sector. This is most likely becasue it is not the business arena breathing down our necks to raise test scores or else.  At the same time we as educators search for solutions.

 In starting this post I attempted to get ahold on what may have brought us to this point of such debates in education reform.  I wondered when and how this all became such a problem. The answer I came to, at least in my own mind was change.  Education is in a constant state of change as the world and the world economy changes.  Yes of course we all know this, what we don’t always know is what to do about it.

The above quote is from an article that Bill Gates wrote for the Washington Post where his wife Melinda is a director. He speaks to innovation. This idea of innovation brought together a theme of ideas becasue we could come up with a curriculum for any subject that is an A. We could hire highly qualified teachers that work around the clock, we could allocate all the funds in the world, yet without inovation we would lack success.

Here is where the testing idea comes into play. Standardized testing has become the model for education. I made a strong attempt in my earlier posts to understand how it is this came into play. Is standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind Act a Trojan Horse? Is this a way for the administration to convince us that they have our childrens’ best interests in mind only to switch in the form of witholding funds once in the desired offices? Maybe our elected officials are simply too far removed from public education given the economic status they hold. Perhaps after generations of the best public and private schools they have forgotten or become out of touch with the way it really is in the trenches. The idea that schools should shape up (AYP) or get the ax sounds a little like “Let them eat cake”.  Even worse, maybe our nation’s success does not require all students to be ahead. Is there a benefit to having unskilled labor around to do the jobs we would not think of? Maybe it creates balance to have a certian percentage of lower level achievers around to sweep and mop. After all it is America and when they get sick of the floors we will let them pay to attend our higher education facilities.  Because we are so education-oriented and concerned for these sweepers we may even give them government loans to do so.

I hope it is not all that sinister. I wonder if maybe we do want our nation to perform on top and we just have not figured out how to do it. I wonder if the goal not to leave children left behind is noble in its intent just misguided in implimentation. I do not think there is an educator out there that does not believe in assessments and while it is very easy to slam the administration for attatching a consequence to it, do we not all do this? In our classroom we assign grades, sadly most of the time these grades are static. We also have policies on attendence, behavior, etc. So is it hypocritical for us to expect that we as teachers and school districts would not also have consequences and rewards based on our performance. Do we tell Billy that he does not have to complete paper A because his mother works nights and his father is gone? Do we have a separate rubric for students who have to work during high school or earlier? Is the federal government just trying to make teachers more accountable for the work they do? I would hope that this is in fact the case. I hope law makers just want to make sure all students have dedicated teachers.  If this is the case, are they doing it right? Is this law helping kids? I think we all or I guess not all, not enough of us are getting the fact that its not working. We are missing the point. Innovation and teaching to standardized tests are polar opposites. In fact we are leaving children behind evey day, perhaps more now than ever in history. Our testing is moving us further and further away from innovation.

Long ago I heard someone say that students in America did not always test as well as other countries but overall we produced the most successful students/adults becasue we had a cuture in education that fostered critical thinking and problem solving. We are fast losing this because we do not have time to ensure AYP and promote innovative learning. If we do not make AYP we can forget all learning because the money we need to opporate will be yanked.

 ”During the past 30 years, U.S. innovation has been the catalyst for the digital information revolution. If the United States is to remain a global economic leader, we must foster an environment that enables a new generation to dream up innovations, regardless of where they were born. Talent in this country is not the problem– the issue is political will.”

In the classroom when we focus on the process we support innovation. When we are not hasty with grades, when we encourage students to keep working at it, when we enpower students by using tools that excite them, we suceed and they are not left behind.

In the full text Gates sites a school in San Diego that is having huge success with a project centered curriculum. This is perhaps what we as educators also need to look toward. If we can find model schools and foundations that are willing to donate huge grant dollars we are taking our own hands on approach to education reform.

Full Article