Tag Archives: public school teacher

One Child At a Time!

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Imagine that you have just started a new job with a highly reputable employer, along with 30 other new hires. Imagine having begun the month-long new employee training program and discover that all of the other trainees seem to be a step ahead of you in all of the prerequisite skill sets.

As you begin this exercise to not do so casually. Strive to show true empathy so that you actually feel what it would be like to find yourself in such a predicament when all of your peers seem to be doing well. Imagine, also, that the fact that you are struggling is readily apparent to everyone else in the program.

Next, imagine that you have finished the first phase of the program while earning the lowest score in the class. Think about how this would feel. What would be going through your mind?

Would you feel as if you were an integral part of the group or would you feel like an outsider? Dredge your past for a time when you experienced this or something similar. Compare how you felt then with what you are feeling now. Would you feel ready to move on to the next phase of the training or would you feel desperate for a little more time to study or maybe a little more time with the instructor?

Now, as you begin phase 2 of this 5-part program, imagine that any illusions you may have had about this being a fresh start are shattered by the discovery that doing well on this new subject matter requires that you be able to apply the skills, knowledge, and principles that were covered in phase 1. Strive to imagine what it would feel like to discover, as you move through the phases of training, that you are a little further behind at the end of each phase and even less prepared for what is to follow.

Would you feel comfortable in asking the instructor for a little extra time and attention? Would you be willing to share with the instructor just how far behind you are? How about your classmates? Would you feel comfortable asking one of them to help you understand?

Can you feel the sense of panic that would be almost certain to descend upon you? How would you assess your chances of successfully completing the training? After repeated failure, is there a point at which you begin to feel like quitting? Are you excited about the chance to move out onto the shop floor to begin work or is your gut knotting with dread at that prospect?

If you are a public school teacher, how many students in your classroom are living this nightmare, lesson after lesson, subject after subject, grading period after grading period? How many of the students in your school are struggling with this very phenomenon—a phenomenon I like to call the “cycle of failure?” Now, multiply that number by the number of facilities in your school district; in your state; and, finally, multiply that number by the number of stars on our flag.

If we are honest with ourselves we will acknowledge that the number of struggling students—the number of failing students—is staggering. How many kids does it take before it becomes a national tragedy? When we think about this “cycle of failure” in terms of millions of children in tens of thousands of classrooms, it seems overwhelming. Is it any wonder that public school teachers feel hopeless to do anything about it?

The sad reality of this crisis in public education is that to solve the dilemma and end the crisis, all teachers must do is slow down and give each child the time they need to understand before we ask them to move on to the next lesson. It would be simple except for the fact that slowing down is not part of the expectations placed on American public school teachers.

Our expectations in the present reality of public education is that teachers must move their entire class of students down a predetermined path so that they all arrive at the same time and with the same level of preparation for the standardized competency exams that loom in our not-to-distant future; exams by which teachers and their schools will be held accountable.

The educational process does not account for the individual students who fall off the side of the path and become hopefully lost and makes no provision for attending to their needs. Teachers care very much, however, and they do their best to give these children a little extra time and attention but the pressure to move the students along is relentless.

From a practical perspective, the solution is simple. All we need to do is alter our expectations so that each and every child is to be given however much time they need. Impossible, you say! It is not impossible. In fact, just the opposite is the case. Making such a change from a human engineering perspective is as simple it could be. Once expectations have changed, all that is required are some modifications to the classroom management process.

The problem is not the practicability of such changes but rather the political component.

Somehow we must convince policy makers that each child is a precious resource of incalculable value and that an educational process is dysfunctional if it views struggling children as collateral damage. The bottom line is that our society cannot afford to lose a single child let alone a few million children. We must make certain that every child counts and the only way we can make certain they count is to do so one child at a time.

Graduation Rates – Ongoing Review “Reign of Error” by Ravitch – Chapter 7

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Graduation rates may be the most meaningless of all the educational statistics we hear about. The most cogent point from Ravitch’s Chapter Seven may be

“A high school diploma signifies, if nothing else, the ability to persist and complete high school.  Certainly, all people should have the literacy and numeracy to survive in life, as well as the historical and civic knowledge to carry out their political and civic responsibilities. Unfortunately, the pressure to raise graduation rates—like the pressure to raise test scores—often leads to meaningless degrees, not better education.”

It would be a rare public school teacher from an urban high school that would be unable to cite examples of the pressure to help kids qualify for graduation when they have done little or nothing to earn it throughout the semester or school year. My observations as an employer and an administrator of the ASVAB would support the assertion that, for many students, a high school diploma is meaningless as a predictor of an individual’s ability to do a job or qualify for the military, not to mention to fulfill their “political and civic” responsibilities.

My experience with the GED is not much different. The performance on the job or on the ASVAB of young adults who have completed their GED is even more uninspiring than the performance of high school graduates.

While it is clearly not scientific evidence, my experience as a sub in a GED Prep class was surprising. Given that these students were not required to study for their GED and were doing it, ostensibly, to improve their chances to find meaningful employment, I was shocked to see that the level of motivation to study, work diligently on assignments, or even pay attention in class was not perceptibly different from my experience in many high school classrooms.

Our entire educational process is more focused on moving students along, making sure they are prepared for annual standardized exam or qualified for graduation than it is about learning. And no, this is not an indictment against teachers. Teachers have no authority to slow down to give a child more time to master a lesson. That is simply not the way the game is played nor is it consistent with the manner in which the game is scored.

If learning were the first, if not the only objective, there would be no question that the appropriate course of action when a child is struggling would be to slow down and give him or her more time to practice and more time with the teacher to help them understand. The reality is that public education is not structured to support learning as the primary objective and there is precious little that a teacher in the classroom can do to alter that reality.

I would suggest to you, that in even teachers in our most successful public schools do not find it easy to slow down to give a child the time they need any more than they are free to allow children who are performing well to move ahead on their own, without waiting for the class.

The only real difference between high and low performing public schools is the percentage of students who come to class with a high level of motivation to learn and who are supported by parents who consider themselves to be partners in the education of their sons and daughters.

Once again, we feel compelled to criticize Diane Ravitch, arguably the most well-known advocate for public education and one of the most ardent, for squandering the power of her platform in defense of the image of public education rather than shifting our focus to the substance of it.

The point I want to make to all educators and their advocates is that we should not waste a precious moment defending the American educational process or the results produced by that process. The system is in crisis and the evidence, which I shall discuss in my next post, is as compelling as it is overwhelming.

What we need to defend with all of the passion we can muster are the children who depend on our systems of public education and the teachers who labor tirelessly to do the best they can for their students. The absolute best way we can defend our children and their teachers is to examine the educational process as an integral whole and with a critical eye and then do everything we can to restructure that process in order to support those teachers and their students.