by David Andrade
I keep wondering about this. Supposedly, public education in America is "failing". I don't understand how. We have changed how we do things in our classrooms and have all these online resources. Students can access information and help resources from their phones. So why are we "failing?"
When I was in high school, we sat in a chair and took notes. We talked about books in English, studied historical events, did labs in science, and did tons of problems in math. We learned and we went off to college and did well. We had almost no support programs in the building.
Now, as teachers, we differentiate, do projects, have students doing online enrichment work, have social workers, psychologists, tutoring and mentoring programs. Yet, students are apparently failing.
We have "improved" education, yet we are "failing". I don't get it. We do all this "reform" yet nothing is changing.
Of course, it could have something to do with the method of evaluating education being a mostly invalid, standardized test where even students who don't speak English have to take it. It could have something to do with more and more students having less parenting at home due to single parents, absentee parents, or parents working multiple jobs. It could have something to do with students not getting read to and starting to read later in life. It could have to do with the test being completely useless. It could have to do with professional educators being left out of decisions and planning for educational issues.
It just boggles my mind how we have some many support systems, great teachers, incredible lessons and resources, and yet we are "failing."
Can anyone explain it?
-- David Andrade, http://tinyurl.com/edtechguy