“But
the person who scored well on an SAT will not necessarily be the best doctor or
the best lawyer or the best businessman. These tests do not measure
character, leadership, creativity, perseverance.”
--
William Julius Wilson
By
Tommie Saylor
Kennedy
High School Principal
Our
federal lawmakers, who for the most part have no more educational experience
than at one point in time being a student themselves, have decided once again
to tell us how to teach students.
They
like to call this educational reform, which I’m sure will prove to be yet
another in a long list of failed educational initiatives enacted by the federal
government, plaguing both educational practitioners and students. The
roll call of such initiatives include The Elementary and Secondary Education
Act (ESEA); A Nation At Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform, No Child
Left Behind (NCLB); Race To The Top; Common Core; and now The Every Student
Succeeds Act (ESSA), recently signed into law by President Obama.
If
the government truly desires to increase the level of education in our nation,
the answers are simple, but require an investment. We must put a stop to
the incessant testing. We spend so much effort, time and money in the
preparation and execution of standardized tests that we barely seem to have the
time to get through the most basic curriculum. We “teach to test” as
opposed to teach for understanding and learning.
If
students do not do well on these tests, we blame the teachers, the school and/or
even penalize the district, as opposed to lending assistance. This never
made sense to me. Blaming the teacher for a student not doing well on a
standardized test, especially after knowing fully well that the student
received proper instruction and preparation for the test, is kind of like
blaming a mechanic for the poor driving habits of a motorist.
Should
the mechanic pay the speeding ticket or the parking ticket for a careless
motorist? Then why are teachers, administrators, schools and districts
paying the price for students who don’t care and don’t try even after receiving
proper instruction?
As
the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him
drink.”
Learning
is a personal choice: Either the student makes the decision to learn or they choose
to be passive and put little effort into the process. At what point in time
does the onus fall upon the student or upon the family? Research does not show
a correlation between standardized test taking and an improvement in student
learning, understanding and performance. The top educational countries in
the world very infrequently test their students, preferring to spend time and
efforts on teaching and learning as opposed to test taking.
If
we want to improve the educational standing of our nation, we need to follow
their example.
If
we truly want to raise the level of education, then we need to place two
teachers in every classroom. When I go into a classroom that has a
teacher and a co-teacher, the educational experience for the students is far
superior to those without a co-teacher. With two teachers in a classroom,
as one presents the lesson, the other is able to move among the students,
checking for understanding, answering questions, and helping keep students on
task.
Having
two teachers in a classroom also gives teachers the opportunity for advancement
without having to leave the classroom. Right now, once you secure your first
job as a classroom teacher, you have automatically advanced as far as you
possibly can while still remaining a teacher. There are no levels of
advancement for teachers.
If
we use the co-teacher model, young teacher right out of college can enter the
profession as a co-teacher. In doing so, they can spend years learning and
perfecting the trade under the careful tutelage of a veteran instructor before
advancing to the position of classroom instructor. Then, they would have their
own apprentice and/or co-teacher.
Taking
this one step further, why not take the best of the best instructors and make
them Master Teachers? A Master Teacher would not have a classroom of
their own, but would be the department head responsible for all the classes
taught in a given department.
The Master Teacher would assist the
classroom teachers when needed or when a particular tricky lesson needs to be
taught. They would make sure the classroom teachers have all the necessary
materials they need to perform their job, be the curriculum expert and make
sure all the teachers in the department are correctly teaching the curriculum,
and would conduct teacher observations and evaluations.
In
short, the Master Teacher would be much like a pseudo administrator with an
expertise in their specific field, charged with ensuring that all students
receive the absolute best instruction, covering the best curriculum, with the
best educational tools possible.
By
utilizing such a hierarchy, teachers will no longer be in a “dead end job.”
They will be in a profession that allows for advancement without leaving the
classroom, allows for a learning curve for young and/or new instructors, and
places two teachers in every classroom focused on ensuring that every student
learns.
Granted,
this will require quite an investment. But if we can so quickly and
eagerly raise taxes to fix the roads, why can’t we do the same to fix our
children’s future? Once again, the top educational countries in the world have
at least two teachers per classroom, sometimes three. If we want to
improve the educational standing of our nation, we need to follow their example
yet again.
The
moral of this story is that more testing and oversight will not improve this
nation’s education system. Only a greater investment, unhindered and
without strings attached, along more teachers, will a lasting difference be
made.
How
and where will you lead them. Making Kennedy the school of choice. Excellence
by design.
No comments:
Post a Comment