Education Reform?

Today is the first day of school for most districts here in the Seattle area. To celebrate, we had breakfast with a group of retired teachers and staff I used to work with. Of course we talked some about the plight of education today. On Facebook this morning I sent Best Wishes to those friends still on active duty in the classroom. A former colleague will be welcoming more than 30 second graders to her class this morning. The school will be getting their third new principal in five years. They are now in their fifth year of failing to meet Average Yearly Progress according to the No child Left Behind law. They are at that stage where they should have to select between major fixes, including replacing the leadership and half of the staff. But due to turn over, that has sort of happened anyway. And who will they bring in? Only three elementary schools out of twenty in our district are still in compliance with AYP standards. Located south of Seattle, our district sits with SeaTac airport in its center. We have many immigrants, who can find work at low paying jobs in the hospitality/hotel industry. We have more than 40 languages spoken by children in our schools. The poverty level based on free and reduced price lunches ranges from 50 to 95%. But we are not an atypical district. The pressure is now on the classroom teachers to fix things. Through new evaluation standards based on test scores, merit pay, and the threat of union busting charter schools, teachers are supposed to be scared into doing the job right. Many experts tell our school administrators what they should be seeing and hearing. I have worked with some of the so called experts. They aren't. But if they command a high enough price tag as a consultant, they get listened to. Everyone is looking for the fix, the answer, the silver bullet. Yesterday I read an interesting editorial in Newsweek, written by Robert J. Samuelson, called Why School 'Reform' Fails. In it he states that there are two main reasons why "reforms" have disappointed. "First, no one has discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially in inner-city schools that are "scalable" - that is, easily transferable to other schools." That has certainly been my experience. So much for the experts. Even charter schools are not uniformly showing gains. Going on, Samuelson says "The larger cause of failure is always the most unmentionable: shrunken student motivation." If students aren't motivated, it's hard to teach them. Motivation comes from many sources; curiosity and ambition, parental expectations, the desire to get into a good college or land a good job, inspiring or intimidating teachers, peer pressure. I used to think motivation was my job as a teacher. I poured all my energy into holding their attention while I had them, but it didn't last outside of my classroom walls. In today's society, adolescent culture has strengthened, and the authority of the teachers and schools has eroded. At breakfast we started talking about smart phones, about having instant information at your fingertips. Why would or should a kid learn anything any more when he/she can just look it up? That's shallow thinking of course, when we know that application of knowledge and critical thinking are the essential skills they need to learn. But without parental support, and in a society that honors superficiality over substance, the teacher will not find the "fix". It's not education reform we need. It's reform of the family.