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Things educators could say but don’t [View all]
This is a great read. And not too long either. Check it out!
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Federal statutes governing public education have been based more on hope than data since at least 1965. That was the year the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was adopted as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” ESEA’s fundamental approach was to order teachers and schools to solve a host of non-education social problems that all other social institutions – especially families and churches – had failed to solve. ESEA — better known in its current form as No Child Left Behind — and its legislative progeny have all failed. All of the problems have gotten worse rather than better.
I have long been surprised that these irrational policies have been adopted and readopted without serious objection by most education practitioners. Educators could say all of the following:
1. To Parents: “If you effectively raise your children before you send them to school, we can teach most of them. If you do not, we cannot.”
2. To Legislators: “Do not order us to repair the developmental damage that is done to children before they reach school age. We cannot do so and pretending otherwise wastes resources, damages K-12 education and does nothing to help those utterly innocent children who need it (and deserve it) most.”
3. To Reformers: “Academic achievement gaps, robust and intractable, are well-established long before the first day of kindergarten. Those gaps are not caused by teachers and cannot be fixed by teachers. What you like to call ‘reforming’ schools does nothing to help children who spend their first five years living in inadequate, often chaotic, households. If you want to help those children, you must do something to change those households. Any other approach is foolish, wasteful and destined to fail.”
Educators could say those things, but, with rare exceptions, they do not. Consider the following speculation as a possible way to explain why educators are mostly silent when their profession is slandered by politicians and pundits and crippled by irrational public policies.
more ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/10/08/things-educators-could-say-but-dont/?wprss=rss_answer-sheet
Federal statutes governing public education have been based more on hope than data since at least 1965. That was the year the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was adopted as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” ESEA’s fundamental approach was to order teachers and schools to solve a host of non-education social problems that all other social institutions – especially families and churches – had failed to solve. ESEA — better known in its current form as No Child Left Behind — and its legislative progeny have all failed. All of the problems have gotten worse rather than better.
I have long been surprised that these irrational policies have been adopted and readopted without serious objection by most education practitioners. Educators could say all of the following:
1. To Parents: “If you effectively raise your children before you send them to school, we can teach most of them. If you do not, we cannot.”
2. To Legislators: “Do not order us to repair the developmental damage that is done to children before they reach school age. We cannot do so and pretending otherwise wastes resources, damages K-12 education and does nothing to help those utterly innocent children who need it (and deserve it) most.”
3. To Reformers: “Academic achievement gaps, robust and intractable, are well-established long before the first day of kindergarten. Those gaps are not caused by teachers and cannot be fixed by teachers. What you like to call ‘reforming’ schools does nothing to help children who spend their first five years living in inadequate, often chaotic, households. If you want to help those children, you must do something to change those households. Any other approach is foolish, wasteful and destined to fail.”
Educators could say those things, but, with rare exceptions, they do not. Consider the following speculation as a possible way to explain why educators are mostly silent when their profession is slandered by politicians and pundits and crippled by irrational public policies.
more ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/10/08/things-educators-could-say-but-dont/?wprss=rss_answer-sheet
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