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Two of the main issues that were discussed in class this week included the question of achieving educational mastery (i.e.; one of 4 goals of NCLB) but also embracing and acknowledging individual variation, and what teachers are saying about their experience with educating under NCLB. Some other commentary was made on the incongruity of NCLB’s goal of education and the implementation of the program, Obama’s thoughts on race effecting education, and different models of education namely ‘education by punishment,’ the business model, seated by potential model, and rote-learning.
Mastery-Oriented Learning & the Individual
Can we have both?
Can we have both?
We read an unpublished manuscript by Kelly Fisher, Dr. Hirsh-Pasek and Dr. Golinkoff that briefly outlined NCLB’s goal for education, its principles, as well as teachers’ opinions on its benefits or its relative failure to live up to its own standards. The authors conducted a questionnaire in which they posed two, simple open-ended questions to a varied group of educators. The goal of the questionnaire was to get a feel of educators' views as to the relative success or failure of NCLB. The educators were asked to elaborate in their answers.
The researchers noticed that there were four areas in which teachers feel that NCLB is lacking. The teachers feel that NCLB fails to “[1] embody a holistic view of child development, [2] understand children naturally vary in their individual learning and development, [3] promote mastery-oriented learning in order to build competence within each child, and [4] create a nurturing environment with age-appropriate activities that naturally tap children’s curiosity and intrinsic motivation as well as allow them to develop confidence and perseverance” (p 4).
Our class discussion began with the second issue-viz., understanding that children naturally vary in their individual learning and development-. Some students found this issue most important out of the four mentioned above. Students had agreed that testing basic skills such as mathematics and literacy, is not the only way to evaluate the intelligence of individuals. “There are (approximately) seven different intelligences, not just one,” said one student. This led us to the issue of mastery-oriented education? What are the underlying assumptions? As our TA, Kelly, argued, it is assumed that all children will be able to learn as expected, that everything the individual needs to learn is intrinsic and attainable from within. However, we know this may not be the case if we look at studies which compare the learning capabilities of children with developmental disorders, or children from impoverished communities, with the learning capabilities of other, more 'normal' populations of the same ages. What do we do about those children (such as those with mental disabilities) who do not come to the classroom with the same social, mental or developmental capital as their peers?
We wondered about the possibility of creating individualized tests streamlined to different subsets of the student population. One student compared this strategy to affirmative action. It was decided that while streamlined tests would affirm the individual needs of students, such a strategy is accompanied by its own host of problems.
Throughout the manuscript we read, there were quotes by numerous teachers citing their own experiences under NCLB. What they had to say hits close to home for some of us that went to school during the first year or two of NCLB. The following statement from one kindergarten and 1st grade teacher from Maryland is exemplary of how a majority of the teachers responded to the open ended questions: “Teachers teach to the test, not for long-term learning. I pulled my children from public schools because of this.” The teachers were asked if NCLB has helped or hindered education in their states and the answers usually fell on the side of ‘hindered’.
The four themes (see above) are the fundamental issues that teachers feel should be making headline news. Teachers were more adamant about changes to help the children, rather than changes to help the school. Teachers are teaching to the test, and this is no longer a facetious rumor. In fact, one student brought a copy of a letter written by a New Jersey teacher to 3rd grade parents, explaining the reasons behind standardized testing, In the letter, the teacher was quoted as saying, “we hope this will help on future tests. . .multiple choice is given because [it is easier] to grade”.
One student felt that the problem with NCLB was that, from the outset, it tested the students rather than the teachers. Shouldn't teachers knowledge of what is going on in the classroom be just or even more important that students' knowledge of the same? One student remarked that setting standards for high quality teaching goes beyond the Praxis. Moreover, the system of continuing education credits means that teachers often take time-off from their jobs to attend the professional development courses needed to maintain their teaching certifications. Students then suffer from teacher absenteeism, and valuable time is wasted: time which could have been spent in quality learning. However, as one student argued, pointing fingers at teachers could just be another round of “the blame game”. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize these little-discussed issues.
We also looked at the foreword of President George W. Bush 2001 speech on NCLB, and concluded that while NCLB was inspired by an admirable philosophy of education, its actual implementation has fallen short of the original vision. We even speculated that President Bush's philosophy itself, comes close to the target as to how we can create programs to better educate our children. Ultimately,NCLB has not done what it philosophized it would do, because, as we have been arguing, the answer is not to create standardized tests across the board; likewise, merely channeling more funding and special education services to schools struggling to meet standards is not the solution. The real issue we are working with is a 50-some year old system which is increasingly incompatible with new technology, new perceptions, a new political and multicultural environment, and with a host of other issues discussed here in this blog. We would need to get rid of the public education system we have and start from scratch. But then again, is a complete revolution in education feasible?
Barack Obama On Education
A Legacy of Defeat For Blacks
A Legacy of Defeat For Blacks
“And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students…But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future.”
-Barrack Obama, March 18th 2008
For more on his speech on March 18th, 2008, please see http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords/ and watch the video.
A. The 'Education by Punishment' Model
In the 21st century, we are all to familiar with this model of education: education by punishment. Dr. Hirsh-Pasek referred to this as “post-9/11 language,” i.e., "you’ll do this because" of fear. We are talking about a culture of fear. Does it not seem drastically unfair that the current system of education punishes children because they can’t read the fastest, or because they live in a crime-ridden neighborhood, or, as Barrack Obama said in his recent speech on race in America, because they have inherited a legacy of defeat? Since the cultural and political climate of the time is to do things out of fear of punishment, it is not surprising the education system has been given this type of ultimatum, (get great scores to make U.S. a world leader in education or else your school will be blacklisted and your job, kaput). We need to change this ideal on a social-familial, cultural, and political level if we want to see increases in student motivation and real educational progress in the U.S.
B. The Business Model
"Too often, we forget about the issue of money", one student pointed out. The companies who stand to gain the most from others’ loss, underwrite the research that will get published. What we need to do is fight those companies who are gaining the most money. Another student made an important point: even if we give more funding to schools, someone stands to lose that money because where one gains, another loses. Business as usual? What else needs to be done?
C. The Peer-Tutoring Model: A Case Study
It was very interesting to hear students’ from other countries talk about their own educational experiences and provide possible alternatives to the present U.S. educational system. One student, educated in Trinidad, described her high-school class, in which the teacher planned the the teaching session around students’ grades and their level of performance in a given subject. A student with low performance would sit next to a student with high performance in order to gain a better perspective of the class material and possibly organize tutoring sessions as well as learn social skills. Although this system seems to have great potential for success, one student had gone through a similar experience in a classroom in the U.S. and remarked that “it gave the tutored student leeway to not listen to the teacher” and to over-rely on someone else for his/her educational needs. The Trinidadian-born student rejoined that students who were deemed 'low performance" students in a certain subject, were often deemed "low performance" students in another subject, and thus, the system gave students a chance to appreciate both their weaknesses and strengths.
D. The Rote-Learning Model
It can be argued that NCLB is based fundamentally on one thing: political power. The politicians desire the U.S. to be number one, the "hotshot", and the country that everyone will look to with admiration and imitate with content. Although we were admired at one point for our education, our industries, and our political ideals, the tide has begun to turn at least in one area: education. Countries like India and China are no longer looking to our educational system to train their future businessmen and women, but looking to their own country since our scores have fallen below the top tier. This competitive motive for better education in the U.S. is deceitful and a disgrace to the people of this country, and the motive behind education reform affects the education system dramatically.
NCLB has indirectly emphasized the principle of "rote-learning" (which simply means memorizing facts and ideas just to ace a test) for the standard of the state, to help the state avoid punishment. And how much time is devoted to this rote-learning method just for these standardized tests? “We test 3 times a year, for two weeks at a time. Six weeks of instruction are taken away every school year . . . Teachers are now teaching toward the test in order to avoid being put on a watch list,” said a kindergarten teacher from Nevada. If the goal of NCLB is to enhance or embrace learning in children, then we may want to look deeper into what learning really means. The individual must internalize the ideas, as well as analyze them and apply them to his or her life. How can this highly complex process be accomplished via a standardized test? If teachers must always follow a strict set of rules about how to teach, will their be room for flexibility in teaching styles and methods? How is this helping kids obtain educational mastery, which was--and still is-- NCLB’s goal of education?
Reading:
Fisher, K., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R.M. (2008). Building a house without laying the foundation: NCLB’s failure to articulate the goal of education. Unpublished manuscript.
Notes courtesy Bridget Marley and Summer K. Edward
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