The comments on the Joplin Globe web site about my letter to the editor are interesting. Check them out at Voices: End social promotion.
Here was my response to some of the comments.
Good dialog. We need more of this discussion about education in the Globe’s letters. Please submit some of your ideas.
Advanced students should be allowed to advance ahead of their age, but there are problems with that.
For the students who are developmentally behind, nurturing at home has a lot to do whether children hit their developmental benchmarks.
Children who walk and talk late, also read late. Those whose developmental age is behind their chronological age, do not catch up without intensive nurturing and instruction. High expectations are a must, but unreachable goals demotivate children. With motivation, success breeds success; failure breeds failure.
I was hoping to get even more opposition about things like having a wide range of student ages in the same classroom. Or maybe, overloading teachers with assessment, planning, me anagement of a classroom with a revolving door of students throughout the year. What about transferring schools: in what grade does the new school put the student? What about grade cards?
Anyone want to take up one of those arguements.
In the Joplin Globe’s view, schools should end social promotion (promoting students to the next grade whether they pass or fail). I agree, but not for reasons you might think. I don’t propose flunking the kid and keeping him in the same grade until he passes. I instead I suggest we eliminate grade levels altogether.
Children develop at different rates. They learn to walk, talk, potty train, read, and count at different ages. So, who said that 1st grade reading must be mastered at age 7, or 4th grade math mastered at age 10, whether they are ready or not. Some children are pushed beyond what they are ready for while others are held back from doing more. The fault doesn’t lie with one person, it is the fault of the system. School is about making children fit into the system, not making the system fit the child.
A school district just north of Denver, Colorado will eliminate grades K-8. Instead, they will group students by what they know. They advance to the next level, after they show proficiency in 10 standards, not just at the end of the year. Eventually, they will have 10 levels instead of 12. The learning is personal, student-centered, and standards-based. A small, failing Alaska district turned their student achievement around by eliminating grades. Many of our failing schools might, too. However, it would take radical rethinking or how we do school.
Every child is unique and individual. Our schools have sunk into one-test-fits-all, cookie-cutter education factories. 21st century schools need to produce students who can think, discover, evaluate, and create. This higher-level thinking must be taught in schools that allow students to individualize their learning. Allow students to learn as fast or as deeply as they want. End social promotion, promote student learning.
I left a comment on Will Richardson’s blog, Weblogg-ed, Meet the New Story, Same as the Old Story, suggesting 4 goals for education reform to help move us forward out of the edublog echo chamber. Will was lamenting Barak Obama’s choice for Secretary of Ed. His readers followed with a great discussion of about what to do now. Many suggested trying to tell the new administration what we think. Someone else suggested we start with the “elevator speech” message. That is why I said about reform that
- The purpose of education is to prepare our children for a 21st century workforce.
- Students need to retain their learning beyond the current school year through deep, thoughtful, relevant, and innovative problem-solving.
- Students need to communicate their learning through creative, project-based storytelling.
- Students need to work together in teams outside the classroom to read, write, create, and communicate causes they are passionate about to real-world audiences.
Will’s reply was:
Thanks for those thoughts, James.
They are a good start. I’m wondering if you want to tackle the question that comes before the how change one…why change? ;0)
I guess I got the cart before the horse. I think the reason that public schools need to change is that society has changed, but school essentially have not. They are an industrial model in an instant-communication era.
We have not lost our top place in the world regarding education because our teachers and students are not trying their best. The U.S. is 14th in education because:
Change machine out of order
The world has changed.
Students have changed.
Society has changed.
Schools have not changed.
“If you do what you have always done, then you get what you’ve always gotten.” Mark Twain
Education in other countries changed to meet the new educational challenges of the 21 century. US education just went “back to basics.” They went forward and we went backward. “The only constant is change.” We haven’t changed our education system, so we go left behind. If the U.S. education system does not change, it risks become irrelevant.
Change = Survival
B2B needs to become Beyond the Basics. Learning needs to become complex (beyond the textbook), multifacted (several points of view), multilevel (Blooms revised taxonomy) , multicultural (global economy), multimodal (varied strategies and learning styles), and messy (not a clear answer).
I divided this topic about tests and teaching into three parts because it was getting so long. This is part 3. It follows part 1 and part 2.
Teach well - After listening to some educators from Hutchenson schools come talk to use about how they had turned around their schools and got 100% of their students to proficiency in Math and Reading, I wondered how they did it. They talked about data-driven decision-making, Kagan Cooperative Learning, and Ruby Paine’s approaches to dealing with students in poverty. It basically came down to using the best teaching practices for each kid. A lot of my students last year qualified for free or reduced lunches because they were poor. The Ruby Paine talk got me thinking, so I told my principal that I was concerned about how to best teach my class so my poverty students would learn well. She essentially said that I should teach well so my students would learn well.
We know a lot about how students learn. We also know a lot about which teaching practices work the best. I have already blogged about this before. Part of my purpose of this blog is to explore best teaching practices. I think Robert Marzano has said it pretty well in this book, What Works in Schools. (I’m currently reading his book.) Marzano based his research upon which teaching practices raised test scores.
It comes down to integrating good teaching philosophy with good teaching practices. Learning needs to be taught at higher levels on Blooms Taxonomy - teach deeply. Learning needs to be child-centered - teach thoughtfully. Learning needs to be based upon effective teaching practices - teach well. Use these and test scores will rise.
- Teach deeply
- Teach thoughtfully
- Teach well
- And the test scores will take care of themselves
This sound like a good topic for a presentation. However, I feel like I need to back up my assertions with some statistics, facts, or something to give my opinions some credibility. Any ideas?
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
I divided this topic about tests and teaching into three parts because it was getting so long. This is part 2. It follows part 1.
Teach thoughtfully - “Boring” is the first word many students,
especially the ones who need it most, will use to describe school.
This is because the teacher-based tradition in school has often become
irrelevant to their lives. The industrial-based school system seeks to spit out cookie-cutter products that have been molded into joyless automatons.
None will be left behind. Schools have not changed to meet the changing needs of their products…uh…students.
Students are not widgets! Student come to school with different backgrounds, motivations, and needs. We cannot stuff them into a mold and hope they conform. We must meet them where they are, and bring them along on their learning journey to a point much farther than they could have dreamed coming to on their own. We must teach them what kind of person, what kind of learner, and what kind thinker
they are. The learning must revolve around the student, not the student around the learning. Students should be the primary focus of our classroom, not the content. The students will not care how much you know until they know how much you care, so teach thoughtfully.
Teach deeply…teach thoughfully, and the tests will take care of themselves.
(Thanks Durff for contributing this idea.)
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