In The Flat World and Education author Darling-Hammond directs our attention to the unsettling statistics that show that the Math, Science, and Literacy scores of U.S. students place us below the top 20 performing industrialized nations. She points out that U.S. education changes and reforms lack a consistent approach in the past decades, compared to countries such as Finland, South Korea, Singapore, China and Japan whose education initiatives rebuilt their systems to address the needs of the 21st century learner. In the United States, our educational policies and reforms have consisted of programs that are not bottom-up reconstruction. “... U-turns in education policy and practice are not unusual in U.S. education. Local, state, and sometimes, federal policies frequently force schools to change course based on political considerations rather than strong research about effective practice.” Further, Darling-Hammond shows how teachers in the United States receive less training and ongoing instructional and job support than their peers in many countries, notably Singapore, where “teachers, meanwhile, engage in action research, sponsored by the government, to continually improve their teaching.” A couple months ago I heard a conversation between a district academic specialist for Science assigned to a school and that school’s middle school Science teacher, whose weekly courses span three grade levels of Science. The academic specialist was checking in to see how using the newest Science standards was progressing. As I was reading Darling-Hammond’s argument that we have a problem in U.S. education, especially in math and science, I was reminded of this conversation. The Science teacher did not have the newest standards (except perhaps online) and it seemed had not been clearly given any instructions about when and how to begin using them. She had been offered no new training. The specialist didn’t have a copy for her and showed her a website to access. It seemed the district couldn’t provide any materials; in fact, no textbooks or support material had been identified to match the new standards. From what I could understand, the content wasn’t actually significantly different, just ordered differently among the grade levels and given a new perspective that would speak to 21st century skills. The Science teacher, wanting to get on board with the new standards, asked how she should begin. She was given a few websites where she could look up curriculum, materials, information, lesson plans, and a school in Oakland that had spent some energy developing lessons to match the content standards for various grades. Now I’ve only ever taught elementary science classes, but I know that even at that level, an effective, engaging Science unit for one grade level takes hours and hours of serious thought to design and develop; not to mention the time and money to collect materials for experimentation. My heart went out to both the specialist and this teacher because it seemed to me that they were essentially being asked to create multiple grade levels of Science curriculum and instruction by cobbling together their resources. How would either of them ever have the time to do this mammoth task justice? Thankfully, this particular Science teacher had years of experience to draw upon. Imagine a first year teacher attempting to identify grade-appropriate material that would be effective and designing learning moments that would engage, inspire, and be accessible to all students. Fast forward to a conversation with a friend a week ago. Her third grader has yet to do Science once this year. It’s no wonder, then, that ”our students rank near the bottom of industrialized countries in math and science achievement” (Darling-Hammond). I’ve had the opportunity to experience the world of education in five different states, either as a student or as a teacher; I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to try my hand at elementary, middle,and high school teaching; and I’ve been a student and a teacher in both the private sector and the public school system. This isn’t the first time I’ve pondered what causes the difficulties of education in the United States. I found Darling-Hammonds comparison between U.S. education policy and that of a few other notable countries in the past 4 or 5 decades to be especially insightful. Just in my own teaching career I’ve seen national or state standards change 3 times, federal education policy make major directional changes to programs and funding, mandated state teacher preparation and professional standards and certificates change every couple years, and of course, our textbooks and materials are on a constant 3 or 4 year rotation. A friend of mine who has worked in Sacramento for 20 years in such positions as legislative aid, chief of staff for an assemblyman and a senator, and now as a lobbyist told me that textbook conglomerates maintain lobbyists active in pushing new education legislation and reform. Publishing is big money! I imagine the boardroom of Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt-Brace-McGraw-Hill-Pearson-Holt in early November. A voice is heard to exclaim, “Okay people! New President means new education policies! That means we’re gonna be busy! Get ready to publish some new textbooks! Let’s go, people!” Certainly every new president I’ve watched has seemed to want to put his own stamp on education. Although our new president hasn’t yet turned his attention to major educational overhauls, it’s most likely coming soon. I certainly wait with curiosity. And, well, this is just me… hope springs eternal...maybe, just maybe, this time we can get it right?
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December 2017
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