Public Education is Spiraling Out of Control...
The 40 years before I retired and then promptly started my second career as a writer, I was involved in education. I was a teacher and a principal starting back in the year 1970. I was a principal at the elementary, intermediate, middle school and high school level. I also was an adjunct professor at a teacher's college during several summers. I had several student teachers and assistant principals that I mentored. So you could say I've put in my share of time with public schools, teaching staffs, students of all ages and their parents.
When I started, testing was a very small part of teaching. We knew where kids were in each subject of course because we worked with them every day. That was a time when kids learned, teachers taught and parents believed in their schools and supported their child's teachers. There was time for teachers and their students to discover, explore and have discussions that enhanced a child's education. There was time to look at the world and all it's wonders. Time to research, question and observe. It worked and worked well.
As time progressed, more and more countries pushed the educational envelope and the powers that be (our legislators) began to push our public education to do better and better each year on standardized testing. They were blind. They thought that how a child did on one test was the end-all and be-all of what they knew. They didn't take into account special needs, learning styles, and a student's other natural abilities and skills. These self professed experts pushed harder and harder so they could say that the US had the best students in the world.
As they pushed, things changed. Testing became an end in itself, not just one way of evaluating what a child had learned. They negatively changed the relationship between student and teacher, and teacher, parent and school. In essence they royally screwed up what was a good system. Before teachers helped students find the way to a world of knowledge. It was a wonderful, mutual relationship, with kids respecting their teachers. After the government began meddling, the relationship became one of teachers having no choice but to try and feed their students bits of information for the test. The test became the goal, not the learning. It was no longer a special, learning relationship between student and teacher. It became time oriented and test based. Oddly enough, once the systems were screwed up and testing became king, they found the the test scores went down. If they had known anything, they could have figured that was to be expected, but no one could tell the legislators, the state school boards and the radical educational revolutionaries that. Instead, they pressed for more state standards and even more testing.
Now, public education is a quagmire of "failing" schools, frustrated teachers and disinterested students. Unrealistic goals are set where schools must increase their scores every year. Anyone with a even a smattering of mathematics knows that can't last long. Regression to the mean, guys. Ever heard of it? Parents now blame their child's teachers and schools for their poor test scores. There is no longer the respect for educators that there once was. This is a perfect example of government, of legislators, and of state and national pundits totally destroying a system that worked.
The pendulum will swing back again, it always does. And these petty government officials will be forced to exit with their tails between their legs because it will be obvious what they have done. But by then, a lot of excellent teachers and administrators, tired of the red tape, bureaucracy and unreachable standards, will be gone and working in other professions. Shame on you, legislators, government agencies and blue ribbon testing committees. Shame on you. Give education back to the people who understand it and know how to make it work: the teachers and principals. Knowledge isn't just what a child shows that they know on a standardized test. It is learning how to find the right answers, coming to love the discovery and magic of learning and using all their abilities and skills to solve problems and make good decisions in life. Learning is a lot of things that truly can't be measured, with one exception: what kind of adult and community member that child becomes in the end.
May the dragons watch over you all...
