The "Real" Secretary of Education--Plans that will hurt more than help

Yesterday, Jim Horn posted an excellent entry onto "Schools Matter", a blog that, on the most part, discusses many of the prominent political issues surrounding the current educational reform strategies. In the post, properly titled, "Gates, Duncan, Friedman: Connecting the Dopes", Horn discusses many of Bill Gates' (who Horn titles the "real" Secretary of Education) proposed revisions.  Horn quotes Gates as saying, "Schools [will] save money by increasing class size. U.S. student-teacher ratios dropped to 15-to-1 today from 26-to-1 in 1960, without improving student results. Schools would save more than $10,000 per classroom by increasing class size by four pupils". This is an exemplary example of why individuals who have had no true, authentic experiences within schools in the United States should have absolutely no say in regards to the actions that should be carried out to reform the system--in my opinion, as a future special educator, increased class sizes are exactly what we don't need. Gates, as an internationally respected public figure, wishes to play a role in the changing of the current education system in his country, and that is fine. But, consider this--we have discussed all semester that, once we step into each of our respective classrooms, we will not be teaching a "class". Rather, we will all have a group of individual students, each of whom will have a different, unique set of learning needs that will need to be attended to. Saving money is all fine and well, but when it comes at the expense of the well-being of our students, in my mind, that is not a risk that we should be willing to take.

In addition, as a means of placing more pressure on classroom teachers, Gates has proposed that instructors' annual pay and job security be dependent upon the cumulative scores of their students on their state's standardized exams. Essentially, he believes that, if the salaries of teachers around the country seemingly rely upon the test scores of students, teachers will be forced to "perform to their highest ability" to ensure that students will be successful. If students achieve success, the teacher's job is safe, the school receives funding and resources, benefiting all involved. That is, except for the students themselves--if instructors are (implicitly) forced to teach only certain units and disciplines in order to prepare students for tests that determine their job statuses, valuable, authentic, and meaningful learning experiences are thrown to the wayside, thus negatively impacting students in their intellectual progression.

I would be lying if I were to say that I fully understand all of the parameters surrounding the education system reform, but I certainly agree with an excerpt posted in August on "Seattle Education 2010" . In the excerpt titled, "The Fallacy of 'Merit' and 'Performance Pay'--they don't serve ANYONE well", the author states, " High-stakes testing for our kids and teachers, and a superintendent who is accountable to no one, is a poisonous and unacceptable proposal". 

Punishing teachers and forcing them to base their instructional decisions on an annual, intimidating, standardized exam cannot be part of the proposed reform--by doing this, the students will be the ones who ultimately suffer the consequences.

 

"Transactional Disability"; The Effect of "Situation" on Disability

I was extremely intrigued by Ira's post regarding this notion of "transactional" or "situational" disability. Considering the literal confines of a student's environment, and the ways in which this contained situation ultimately "defines" or "mandates" a given student's disabled/non-disabled status, is an important concept for each one of us to consider as future special educators. Ira contends that, if the physical characteristics or requirements of a classroom's context were to change, there is a high probability that a student's "disability status" could become altered as well. Take, for example, my older brother and his reading abilities--my brother was diagnosed with both Autism and mild cognitive impairments at a young age, and the physical act of "reading" is something that he still significantly struggles with. Now, it is not that his struggles lie in the comprehension of a given text, but rather, it is the actual, literal act of reading, deciphering, and decoding written output that he struggles with (more specifically, literacy aspects such as phonological and phonemic awareness, one-to-one word correspondence, rhyming, etc.). When text is provided to him orally (say, if I were to read to him, or if he were to listen to an audio-recorded text on our home computer), he would be able to comprehend much of the story's content. I would never contend or suggest that my brother is not Autistic, but, considering his ability to comprehend text when simple modifications were made, should his ability to decode and decipher individual words and phrases written or typed on a piece of paper been a component of his educational plan for all these years? If the "transactional" element of my brother's reading process was changed, I believe that the "characteristics" of his disability (in lack of a better term) would change as well. We then, as educators, must carefully consider the needs of each of our students, and be willing and able to modify the literal context of our classrooms to meet each student's specific academic and social needs.

Fitzhugh's "The Concord Review"-- Connecting Classroom Content

Will Fitzhugh's "Concord Review" is by far one of my favorite blogs to read--he has provided me this semester with many alternative viewpoints and perspectives on aspects of education that I once felt that I possessed a strong understanding of. Last Friday, he published a rather insightful post. Fitzhugh discusses an article written in 1990 by William Shanker for 'The New York Times". In the excerpt, Shanker likens the current educational system in the United States to a partitioned factory. He states, "Factory workers who never [see] the completed product and work only on small part of it soon become bored and demoralized. But when they were allowed to see the whole process—or better yet become involved in it—productivity and morale improved. Students are no different. When we chop up the work they do into little bits—history facts and vocabulary and grammar rules to be learned—it’s no wonder that they are bored and disengaged". This is an aspect of effective classroom instruction that we are currently discussing and debating in several of my education courses--we, as educators, must find a way to not only connect classroom content to the lives of our students outside of the classroom, but also find ways to connect and identify patterns across multiple disciplines and subject areas through which students can become engaged in the school environment. In my senior level education course, we often discuss one, simple question when developing and designing lesson plans--"Why should students care?" We must ask ourselves this question as effective educators for each and every lesson that we plan to teach, and find ways in which we can take a seemingly irrelevant subject or topic and make students truly want to learn. 

As we spoke about in class last night, today is the "National Day on Writing". On the National Writing Project (NWP), I found some really  valuable resources. The article is short, but there is an awesome video--" The Power of Voice: What Kids Learn When They Create With Digital Media".

Brian Selznick Interview

There's a really great video that I watched for one of my classes of author Brian Selznick discussing his book, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret", the graphic novel/picture/chapter book that we discussed in class. In the interview, he touches on the decisions that he made when formatting the book, specifically why he chose to combine short excepts of text with multiple pictures in some chapters, while doing the complete opposite in others. "Hugo Cabret" is one of my favorite books, and I would definitely check it out! :)

We need to change things

Last week, my collaborating teacher and I administered two portions of the MEAP to our third grade students. Long story short, one of our students literally cried their eyes out for the entirety of the test. These days in school are truly traumatic for so many of our kids--if you really analyze the situation (students are handed this test with no real understanding of why they are taking it, they are not allowed to ask any questions, etc., etc.), it's easy to see how these tests are frightening. I understand that we are required to administer these tests, and am not proposing their elimination, because that would be virtually impossible. However, we must be willing and able to provide  accommodations to our students that can help them to feel more comfortable when taking these high-stakes exams.

"Knowledge Forum" Classrooms, Blogging, and the Goal of Education

Even with the rather large reading load for this week, there was one specific article that truly impacted me and my ideas of education—the Hewitt reading titled “The Exploration of Community in a Knowledge Forum Classroom: An Activity System Analysis” opened up my eyes to the pedagogical positives of using blogs in the classroom. When flipping through various educational blogs onTwitter, I came across “The Concord Review”, an awesome blog written by Will Fitzhugh—in his most recent post, Fitzhugh discusses the fact that we, as the educational community, have misconstrued the overall purpose of schooling. He states, “The consensus among Edupundits is that teacher quality is the most important variable in student academic achievement.  I argue that the most important variable in student academic achievement is student academic work”. He later goes on to discuss the fact that, although we are often concerned with meeting specific, state mandated standards, what we should be focusing on  is the “basic purpose of school, to have students actually do academic work”. In Fitzhugh’s opinion, students should play a primary role in their own learning, and instruction should not be limited to only meeting state curriculum standards and expectations.

How do Fitzhugh’s ideas regarding what is really important in the realm of education relate to the constructs of “knowledge forum” classrooms as discussed in Jim Hewitt’s article, “An Exploration of Community in a Knowledge Forum Classroom: An Activity System Analysis”? We must first discuss the aspects of “knowledge forum classrooms”—a “knowledge forum”, as described by Hewitt, is a component of a “knowledge building community”, an instructional construct which focuses on specific “knowledge creation among and between members of the classroom, rather than the completion of specific products or tasks (worksheets, projects, exams) by individual students”(3,4). In order to establish and develop knowledge, the primary medium of communication in a “knowledge forum” classroom is a blog (which is literally called the ‘knowledge forum’)—on this blog-like forum, Hewitt states that students “publish multimedia "notes" in a collaborative, supportive space” which works to push all learners towards a shared, communal goal of increased understanding of complex ideas and concepts (4).  

Can we find a correlation between Fitzhugh’s idea of the true goal of education (that students “do” work, instead of being fed disconnected facts and information) and the construct of a “knowledge forum” classroom? I believe that we can. The use of blogs within the classroom presents an extremely substantial pedagogical positive—through serving as the primary communication tool between members of a classroom community, students are guided towards collaboratively establishing both patterns and explanations regarding research content on their own, causing them to contribute and take hold of their own learning and become connected with it. The use of blogs within a “knowledge forum” classroom causes students to actually “do” work that is meaningful and relative to their own lives, which, in my opinion, is more valuable than the completion of projects and assignments that are not applicable to the outside lives of the students. Although I am still learning how to use and appreciate blogging and similar technologies,  I believe that the use of blogs in the classroom does present opportunities for students to create content-based explanations on their own that are central and comprehensible to them, which is the ultimately the overall goal of education.