Below is an excerpt from President Obama’s State of the Union Address 2010. I’m not on board with his primary and secondary education reform plans, which may be smarter than Bush’s NCLB Act, but are also more evil.
However, so far his plans for higher education look to be an improvement. I’m especially liking the Pell Grant increases, the lessening of student loan malevolence, and the attempt to have colleges and universities knock it the hell off already with the insane tuition increases.
Still, in this economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job. That’s why I urge the Senate to follow the House and pass a bill that will revitalize our community colleges, which are a career pathway to the children of so many working families. (Applause.)
To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans. (Applause.) Instead, let’s take that money and give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants. (Applause.) And let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years — and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college. (Applause.)
And by the way, it’s time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs — (applause) — because they, too, have a responsibility to help solve this problem.
I think we all know how I feel about standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind profanation. If there remains any confusion as to my opinion regarding those particular atrocities (and if my hints haven’t been overt enough), there will be an opportunity to catch up on your reading below.
Standardized testing, while possibly necessary in that there currently exists no practical way to collect student-achievement data from every public school in America, is still evil and has crushed an already handicapped education system into a non-functioning machine that has time and money only for teaching to the test. It has failed utterly and I work at maintaining some level of optimism that my kiddos will somehow manage to escape its evil clutches.
Bad news for me and my innocent progeny: New and exciting standards in science and math for public school kids are being implemented now, with the new assessments to begin in 2011 for math, and 2012 for science. The fabulous-er dog and pony show requires that students pass the exams in order to graduate. Were educators not teaching to the test enough already?
On the bright side, State Superintendent Randy Dorn is trying to convince the powers that be that the time between implementation and assessment is too speedy for the first wave of kids to be tested. People should pay attention when a politician uses the word “fair.”
Dorn said students and schools will need more time with new math and science learning standards that are now being implemented around the state. The new standards won’t be assessed until 2011 for math and 2012 for science. That doesn’t provide ample opportunity for the class of 2013, current ninth graders and the first class required to pass four state exams, to learn the standards, or teachers and schools to align curriculum and materials to them, he added.
“It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that we have a big problem in our state. Less than 50 percent of our 10th graders are passing the math and science exams,” said Dorn, who noted 10th graders’ passing rate on the reading and writing exams is more than 80 percent. “We need to be fair to our students and give them time to learn the new standards. It’s simply a matter of doing what’s right.”
This fiasco is happening in several other states as well. The only choices eye-rolling, head-shaking, utterances-of-disgust-making parents have are (a) suck it up and hope for the best, (b) private school, (c) home school, or (d) give the offspring a handbasket each and wish them well on their subterranean journey.
While writing the previous post, I went searching in the archives for relevant previous posts. I found entirely too many to tack onto the end of an already-lengthy post. Here they are, including some Education Reform posts proving I’m not always in disagreement with President Obama.
I’m running out of productive things to say about the education system in the U.S. Mostly I just want to slap everyone involved and ask them what the f**k is going on. Is the answer to why our public schools are struggling so hard to put out decently educated students so obvious that no one can see it? It’s funding, people.
The other countries we’re “competing” against manage to educate their kids just fine. The documentary Two Million Minutes did a stunning job of freaking competitive Americans out. Really? That’s our main concern? That China and India make us look like a country of opportunity-having losers who cannot figure out how to teach our kids and so we will be losing our current status of World-Leading Awesomeness soon?
I agree with us, we are losers. In addition, I think any country with its priorities so far out of whack (us again) that its schools have been shafted for decades while it remains at the top of the war game, deserves to fall off the We’re #1! pedestal for a while. My phones will be tapped 70 seconds after this post is published, but whatever. I love America, I do—it’s my home. But pathologically honest me has to admit that we suck at teaching K-12.
There have been several American moments that have made me wince, shake my head, and avoid traveling outside the American gates. The longest-running example has been our blatantly obvious choice to always put war before education. We spend a lot of damn money on being the country with the biggest guns (if you know what I mean…). We are a country of dumb kids with shiny weaponry. I’m real proud.
Americans are like the family whose children have inadequate clothing, insufficient food, and don’t get what they need from the adults in their lives, but their living room wall is host to the biggest flat-screen t.v. within a fifty-mile radius. (We win!)
Chalking the suck-fest that is the American Education System up to a wicked cash-flow problem is realistic. I’m sure there are a few crappy educators out there, and by all means do away with those ones. But knock it off with the competition thing; making kids take tests in order to prove their teachers’ worth, or making teachers (who already do more than should be reasonably expected with scant fundage) compete with one another for federal grant money is unforgivable and also kind of evil.
How horrible a mother would I be if I sat my kids down, looked them in their sweet, trusting eyes, and told them that only the most ass-kicking one of them was going to get funding for food, shelter and clothing, and the loser was going to be on their own? I would be deemed an unfit parent because there is just no way to make it acceptable to have people compete for what are supposed to be basic rights.
I’m a big dumb sucker, and have apparently been suffering under the delusion that, much like food, shelter and clothing for offspring, education was one of the most basic rights an American citizen could expect. Aaah, now I hear it, the big giant buzzer going off in my ear, rudely letting me know that I was mistaken. Crap.
Only the winners get the funding. And how will the “winners” be decided? By data. And since there seems to be only one way to collect and analyze that much data (there are a lot of schools in this country), I’m assuming we’re back to the a**loads-of-standardized-testing portion of education reform. Woohoo! I was just missing that GW guy so much, and now it feels like we’ve got him back. I’m so relieved.
The less-cranky optimist (and usually fervent supporter of Obama) in me is hoping for some really excellent fine print that will prove my fears about this education reform plan wrong. Seriously, someone tell me I’m wrong and this plan isn’t evil. Maybe competition will bring out the best in everyone, and every school will get the money it needs.
President Obama is saying that the testing will be different this time, that it will be better. Let’s hope so. I get it that fixing the education system is probably very close to being insurmountable, and I get it that there isn’t enough cash available to hand out to every school that needs funding. But really with the competition and the data? The American Way bites.
Sometimes I wonder why the decision-makers are so backward in their thinking, and then I wonder which one of us non-decision-makers was responsible for putting them in charge in the first place. Outdoor recess and unstructured, in-classroom play time have been decreasing so as to make time for the fully structured knowledge-absorption parts of the school day. The yahoos in charge of how much time is spent learning vs. playing in elementary schools need to spend an afternoon finger-painting and remember what it was like to be a kid.
Alternatively, they could read all the research backing up the idea that kids who are given time during the school day for physical activity (the crux of the recess invention) and to play in the classroom during free choice time (they learn while they play indoors, too) are better able to sit down at their desks and absorb more info when it comes time for the focusing.
I’m a big recess fan, so I’ve always been cranky about the slow but sure disappearance of primary school recess times. But there’s also an entire portion of in-classroom free time, also known as child-directed educational play, which is being squeezed out in favor of fully structured, sit-still-and-absorb-the-information learning.
The traditional kindergarten classroom that most adults remember from childhood—with plenty of space and time for unstructured play and discovery, art and music, practicing social skills, and learning to enjoy learning—has largely disappeared. The results of three new studies, supported by the Alliance for Childhood and described in this report, suggest that time for play in most public kindergartens has dwindled to the vanishing point, replaced by lengthy lessons and standardized testing.
The studies were conducted by researchers from U.C.L.A., Long Island University and Sarah Lawrence College in New York. The researchers found that
• On a typical day, kindergartners in Los Angeles and New York City spend four to six times as long being
instructed and tested in literacy and math (two to three hours per day) as in free play or “choice time” (30 minutes or less).
• Standardized testing and preparation for tests are now a daily activity in most of the kindergartens studied, despite the fact that most uses of such tests with children under age eight are of questionable validity and can lead to harmful labeling.
• Classic play materials like blocks, sand and water tables, and props for dramatic play have largely disappeared from the 268 full-day kindergarten classrooms studied.
• In many kindergarten classrooms there is no play- time at all. Teachers say the curriculum does not
incorporate play, there isn’t time for it, and many school administrators do not value it.
Kindergartners are now under great pressure to meet inappropriate expectations, including academic standards
that until recently were reserved for first grade. At the same time, they are being denied the benefits of play—a major stress reliever.
If teachers were in charge, I can guarantee there would be more free time in the classroom for the kids to engage in child-directed, imagination-saturated, problem-solving, cognition-developing play. Anyone who has learned anything about the psychology of kiddos and their brain wiring knows that they are learning even when they are playing, and that they learn better during the in-desk formal learning part of their school day if they’ve have a chance to blow off some steam and decompress a little.
Someone with a conscience and the proverbial balls to use their powers for good needs to get some official documentation of their qualification to tell the powers that be what it is, exactly, that kids require to be happy and healthy. (The answer is: More play, on and off the monkey bars.)
I think educational psychology carries some excellent potential for bureaucratic ass-kicking. Educational psychologists understand the whys and hows of who is learning what, how they’re learning in any given situation, and who is teaching and what makes those educators tick, and why the curriculum is or isn’t working for all parties involved. They’re the ones who grok the whole educational picture of a school and can use torrents of gorgeous vocabulary to explain to the policymakers why recess matters. Someone go to it and save our kids.
President Obama made his first speech yesterday about the state of education in America and what his plans are for fixing it. His education reform plan is heavy on the charter schools, which I admit I haven’t yet gotten off the fence about. While I like the idea of a charter school, I’m wary of any new plan that could conceivably take money away from the standard, run-of-the-mill public schools.
The whole point, to me, of a good public school system, is that every kiddo has access to well-taught knowledge and information, not just the kids with parents who have the time and energy at the end of the day to create, and fight for, a new and different kind of school.
Generally speaking, the kids whose parents have the get-up-and-go to battle the powers that be for their kids’ educations are usually the kids who will grow up knowing, and possibly taking for granted, that they’ll be going to college after high school. I want everyone to have a solid education, but I especially want it for the kids who are shuffled off into the under-funded public schools with burnt-out teachers.
Obama’s merit-based teacher pay idea concerns me because as much as I want the awesome teachers to bring home a living wage, I really don’t want the teachers who are trying to perform miracles on little or no classroom funding to get low pay (or the boot) because they haven’t figured out how to grow six more arms and do open-heart surgery using only a rubber band and some paper clips.
I’m stoked about Obama’s support of preschool programs and early education; that’s huge. Also, I’m happy that he’s trying to lengthen the academic calendar. He’s right, most of us aren’t farmers who need the kids home for the summer to help out. The ten-year-old Alexa of Summer Vacations Past is going to show up and slap me for supporting a summer-vacation decrease, but there it is.
Finally, I agree with President Obama that the old education system isn’t working. Everyone can sit around discussing change indefinitely, but at some point jumping on in and implementing the changes has to happen or we’re all just talking heads who get nothing accomplished. If the changes work, we can all smile for a while and breathe big fat sighs of relief. And if they don’t, we can start over and make some more changes.
So I’m taking a deep breath and letting the education reform begin. And by “letting,” I mean that I’m accepting what will occur regardless of how I feel because (a) I’m not the President, and (b) I don’t have a direct line to the Oval Office (if I did, we could have avoided that whole NCLB debacle…all I need is a red phone and a little more power and I think we would all sleep easier at night).
Now I have scientific backing should I need it to argue my case for decent recess-time allotment. Thus far, my kids’ schools allow my progeny to play outside a few times a day. If outside exercise time should be reduced, however, I’ll wave science or a doctor’s note in some administrative faces until my kids can go back outside. If that doesn’t work, I’ll sign them out for their daily dentist appointment and let them run laps around the block.
My kids are fortunate in that they live in Seattle, which isn’t as urban as some cities. Plus, they live in a mostly white, middle-class area of the city, which means their recess times will probably be maintained. According to a study released by The Center for Public Education, not only is NCLB affecting outside time, there’s also a “recess gap” for kids who attend school in the less-white, less-fortunate areas of town:
…the pressure on schools to find more instructional time is real, and it seems to be leading many districts to shave minutes from the recess time they provide. In addition, children who attend high-poverty, high-minority, or urban schools are far more likely than their peers in other locations to get no recess at all—a definite “recess gap” that commands our attention.
Kids are not medical residents, they aren’t grad students, and they aren’t studying for the Bar exam; it is okay for them to leave the classroom a few times a day and get their blood pumping. Even adults are supposed to get up for five or ten minutes every hour and move around.
Exercise, especially the way kids do it—the full-on running and throwing themselves around on the playground equipment—is good for the human body on several levels. It’s good for the heart (cardio and all that), the muscles (stretches and strengthens), the bones (increased bone density), it decreases stress, and it makes for happier and more energetic beings. An article in New Scientist points out that exercise increases memory function and promotes new brain cell growth:
There’s another reason why your brain loves physical exercise: it promotes the growth of new brain cells. Until recently, received wisdom had it that we are born with a full complement of neurons and produce no new ones during our lifetime. Fred Gage from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, busted that myth in 2000 when he showed that even adults can grow new brain cells. He also found that exercise is one of the best ways to achieve this.
Why are the people in charge so backward in their thinking? Making kids sit still for hours has never made them better learners. It makes them spazzy and cranky and unfocused and unhealthy and does absolutely nothing to up a school’s standardized test scores.
Kevin Carey over at The Quick and the Ed had this nicely put thought regarding the Obamas and their choice to enroll their girls in a private school:
Presuming all goes well and I’m not bumped for someone more photogenic and/or an international crisis of some kind, I’ll be on CNN’s The Situation Room today between 4:15 and 4:45, where they’re using Malia and Sasha Obama’s first day of school as an excuse to talk about the DC public schools they won’t be attending, why said schools are so bad, Michelle Rhee, etc.
CNN didn’t ask but in case anyone’s wondering I think the Obamas are perfectly justified in sending their children to the best schools they’re able to find and afford. I also hope that they and the many other political and business leaders in Washington DC who are similarly fortunate feel a commensurate special responsibility to help give all of DC’s schoolchildren the opportunity to attend a public school of similar high quality.
As stated previously, for the sake security issues I absolutely understand why the Obamas would choose a private school versus a public one. However, I’m holding out hope that if the Obamas chose to avoid the public schools because they aren’t up to snuff, that improving the public school in this country will be a priority when Barack hits the Oval Office. I really like that guy, but I’m still being superstitious and am keeping my fingers crossed.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
photo: Paul J. Richards/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Arne Duncan is the new education guy. In my reading up on him, he sounded neither super great nor overtly evil. He seemed a little in the middle. Every damn news article was sure to mention the basketball thing (he played professional basketball in Australia for a while after college, and these days plays pick-up games with Obama), and the CEO of Chicago Public Schools thing (always adding that his is the third-largest district in the U.S.).
Duncan is big on teacher accountability and on shutting down schools that aren’t getting the job done. He supports the facets of NCLB that aim to improve teacher and school accountability and the gathering of data that show how well the students are learning/being taught. I’m with him—for the most part—on that stuff. I’m also in agreement with Mr. Duncan that the NCLB act is too rigid and that one single set of rules doesn’t work well for every school in the country. Duncan wants to improve schools, but he sees that the NCLB—as it’s written now—isn’t conducive to that end.
It makes me happy that the new Secretary of Education was pissed about the NCLB act way back in 2003. If that weren’t enough to make me a believer, two blog posts I read about him tipped the scales for me. I’m only going to link to one, because I’m not (wo)man enough to deal with finding a burning cross on my front lawn should I anger this particular blogger. You can look for the post yourself; just Google these two magic phrasings: “Education Secretary Arne Duncan” and “Exposing Liberal Lies.” It’ll come right up. Good luck. I saw no light at the end of the tunnel while excavating the blog so I turned back.
The blogger in question, who also wrote an entire post about the erroneousness of global warming, dislikes Duncan because he spoke out in support of creating a gay, lesbian, bi and transgender-friendly high school. Duncan felt that these students needed some extra support, especially in light of the fact that teens dealing with sexuality questions and issues have disproportionately large numbers of drop-outs, homeless and runaways.
Knowing that Arne Duncan put his neck out there to support kids who are unpopular at school, at home, and with most of the religious right in this country made me want to sit in his corner. Only someone who was truly interested in the welfare and education of students in his district would support something that would make him popular only with the kids in question. It was ballsy and kind, which I will always support.
And since it’s not enough to support a gutsy nice guy just because he wants to alter the NCLB act and is not well-loved by people who don’t believe in hard science, I also needed this to tip the scales completely in his favor: Steven D. Levitt from Freakonomics had wonderful things to say about his firsthand experience with Arne Duncan:
Freakonomics readers will remember Arne as the hero of our chapter on teacher cheating. He was head of the Chicago Public Schools when Brian Jacob and I were investigating how teachers and administrators were doctoring standardized test sheets.
With seemingly nothing to gain and much to lose, Arne embraced our results, even allowing us to do audit testing to confirm our hypotheses. Eventually, a handful of teachers were fired.
Since then, I’ve interacted with Arne a few times, and in a variety of settings. I always walk away dazzled. He is smart as hell and his commitment to the kids is remarkable. If you wanted to start from scratch and build a public servant, Arne would be the end product.
