State of Education Today

It must be my day for highlighting other peoples blogs, but my friend Dora's writes in her Confessions of a Soccer Mom how she is concerned about the amount of homework her 6 year old son gets in his 1st grade class. She is also concerned that teachers are strictly teaching to standardized tests, and not allowing their students a chance to learn to love to learn. This I agree, is a function of the nightmare that is "No Child Left Behind" another disaster sprung on us by President George W. Bush, which by the way CT State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has already challenged in court, since it is costs CT tax payers additional money, but that is a totally different story.

It struck a cord with me, that has left multiple lingering thoughts for the past few days. Nancy and I are now investigating if we want to send our son to a magnet school next year or should he go to his neighborhood school. A magnet school is either a school that focuses on a specific area (arts, social studies, international or technical) then focuses the students studies on that theme throughout their classes OR it is a place to achieve diversity set up by the school charter, that no school can have more or less than 10% of the city racial balance; so no school can have more than 45-65% white students. I have not yet figured out which it actually is, it depends on who you ask. It could all be a moot point if we don't get a good lottery number to determine who goes to the magnet schools, but I digress.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with his neighborhood school, but since the city of Stamford offers a magnet option for elementary and middle school, we want to see if there is a better option to meet his educational needs, whatever they might be at age 4.

What is wrong with today's education system and how can we change it for the better? I asked Nancy, a certified licensed teacher, to read Dora's blog and she said that is typical for the schools she has been to so far, and not unreasonable in today's age. In order to receive state and federal funding, schools needs to achieve certain levels on this standardized testing. In order to increase their averages, the schools push the kids who excel at test taking harder to achieve greater scores so they can push the schools overall average up beyond the required threshold.

So in the long run, this seems like a big game of how can we show progress without really helping the low achievers, and pushing the upper end of the testing spectrum until they broke, so all they know how to do is take and pass tests. The other point Nancy made is just because some student is or is not a good test taker is not reflection of intelligence or nor their ability to succeed in school or in life. Finally she said this is difficult if not impossible to change, since schools and administrators are stuck on this gravy train with no easy way to get off. I have two thoughts on how we can begin change, grassroots teachers/educators movement and asking those in powers superintendents, State and Federal Secretary of Educations that we demand a change.

First, I would ask teachers and education professionals to forget about funding and tell me how to solve this problem. Essentially, they would need to define the problem. If we can remove the walls and barriers and limitations of the current system and just talk about how to get kids interested in learning would be a start. Once you have the problem defined and some potential solutions, you can begin to factor in the existing limitations and find a way to work around them.

Second, we would need to contact all our local school administers, principals, superintendent, board of educations, secretary's of education, and everyone having anything to do with the education process and let them know there is a problem and we as tax payers and parents are unhappy with the current system. Bill Gates through his philanthropic foundation has made education one of his issues. He gave a speech in February 2005 to the National Education Summit on High Schools and he said:

America's high schools are obsolete.

By obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded Although a case could be made for every one of those points.

By obsolete, I mean that our high schools - even when they're working exactly as designed - cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.

Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It's the wrong tool for the times.

Our high schools were designed fifty years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting - even ruining - the lives of millions of Americans every year.

I think this applies to the entire American school system, not just high school. More parents are going to need to stand up and make our the schools more accountable. I believe we are already living in the waning days of the American empire as the Indian and Chinese century is just beginning. We are going to need to do everything possible to improve our education system or else we will find ourselves in the position the French, a second rate power clinging to the ways of the past, attempting to stay relevant in a new changing world. The only way we will be able to compete in the future is to make sure are schools are doing more than teaching our kids how to take standardized tests.