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Created: February 23, 2003
Latest Update: February 23, 2003
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Backup of Radical Change in Education for a Nation Still At RiskCURRENT AFFAIRS COMMENTARY
by William M. Brinton
Radical Change in Education for a Nation Still At RiskStandardized tests are heartily disliked by teachers, students, administrators, and school principals; in fact they are not trusted to do anything more than make money for the companies that design these tests. Parents are beginning to protest, since too many decisions involving students' lives are now arbitrarily determined by test performance. Collectively, some $200 million per year is spent according to Leon Botstein, president of Bard College near New York City. "As it stands today," he wrote for the New York Times on May 28, 2000, "testing is little more than an adult political obsession that just results in more tests and profits for test makers." Then Mr. Botstein added that the "most egregious aspect of our mania for testing is that pupils never find out what they got wrong and why they got it wrong. Most students never get their tests back; neither does the vast majority of millions of children taking Iowa and Stanford tests or statewide reading exams. Even the teachers don't get the results back in time to help them in their classrooms." The whole system has spun out of control with testing mandated by politicians to get reelected and parents who don't even understand what has been going on since 1983 and "A Nation at Risk."
Seventeen years ago, the Reagan Administration published A Nation at Risk--a blistering critique of the nation's public schools. The report warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity." Schools across the nation felt a tidal wave of outrage at the public schools of the United States. Advocates of voucher and charter schools spoke up and were shouted down. They wouldn't work, and the Constitution's Establishment Clause was a limitation of religion in the public schools. Now, in a presidential election year, Vice-President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush of Texas are locked in mortal combat over ideas that resonate with voters. They want ideas with a proven track record. New buzz words clutter the floor of ideas. Teacher accountability, smaller class rooms, and this means many more teachers, are the new buzz words. By the year 2010, public schools will have to hire some 2,000,000 new teachers to replace those retiring. Furthermore, schools of education are simply not graduating enough to meet this demand. And not enough young people want to be teachers; the pay does not produce a living salary. The solution to these daunting problems will be very costly. However, teachers, administrators, unions, and parents will simply have to step back and review the subject objectively.
To begin with, standardized tests should be abandoned for all students within the range of kindergarten to 8th grade (K-8). In other words, no child will take standardized tests until they graduate to high school. They need to learn reading, writing, math, and history plus music, drama, and art. Science and a foreign language should be taken at as soon as teachers see evidence of a child's normal curiosity. English as a second language should begin with kindergarten for those who need to write and understand English. The use of computers should begin with kindergarten. So, when a student reaches high school he or she will be computer-literate after eight years of training. Teachers should all have a computer-proficiency certificate before being allowed in a classroom. These are the absolute minimum of a liberal arts degree at college level. Presumably, those students completing high school intend to apply for college admissions, and newly-designed tests will be designed to qualify college-bound students in the subjects they have taken in high school, such as history, English literature, mathematics, a science, one foreign language, and geography. All public schools will have an advanced placement course to help college-bound students qualify. By the end of high school, this advanced placement course has relieved teachers from administering any of the usual plethora of standardized tests. The money saved could justify a salary increase as teachers move into classrooms.
Those teachers who normally administer these tests would be relieved of teaching to the test and could spend more time teaching content instead of standardized foolishness. The usual standardized test measures only how one student performs in comparison to another, not how much he or she knows of a particular subject. The good teachers know how each student performs and can assign accurate grades to students with only his or her knowledge of a particular subject. Parents should be recruited to help special ed students learn to read. With no effects on the educational environment, the absence of grades relieves the competitive presure on students. They are less likely to cheat, a practice followed by a significant but unknown number of students throughout the country. California illustrates the very real dilemma faced by politicians and the Board of Education. On May 20,2000 PACE: A Policy Analysis for California Education submitted a scathing critique of the state's strategy for improving its public schools. "School reforms," the researchers wrote, "resemble pieces of a jigsaw puzzle just dumped from the box." And Elizabeth Burr, a co-author of the PACE report, from University of California in Berkeley, added that "You don't hear much talk about building in an evaluation program for these new ideas. " For the text, see http://pace.berkeley.edu edu. Aside from a prediction that the program pushed by Governor Gray Davis was unlikeley to work, it failed to provide a long term solution for the growing shortage of qualified teachers.
Other school districts have created alternative solutions. The National Commission on Teaching & America's Future recommends solutions similar to Connecticut's 1986 Educational Enhancement Act. This act created a minimum beginning teacher salary level and offered state funds to school districts on an equalizing basis, i.e. lower wealth districts received more help than wealthier districts. "Within three years, Connecticut's cities went from having shortages to having surpluses of teachers, and the quality of teacher preparation and practice rose steadily, along with levels of student achievement," the Commission concluded. Research has shown the scholarships programs that function like forgivable loans has been successful in getting fully prepared teacher candidates into high-need fields and locations. To get the loan, candidates must commit to teaching in poor urban school districts. Nationally, the average salary falls between $20,354 in South Dakota and $43,354 in Connecticut. And in 1988, new college graduates received average salary offers in excess of $35,000 compared with to an average beginning teacher salary of $25,735. These figures from the National Education Association (NEA) have a shock value. How can parents entrust their children to teachers paid little more than grocery store managers? And do so for five days a week and about seven hours a day? However, a little light has illuminated the problem of not enough qualified teachers over the next 12 years. Those teachers determined to exploit computer technology will have a leg up on those who lag in learning this technology.
English as a Second Language (ESL), for example, should be required, and the choice of software as a source of help is quite generous. For beginners, KidSpeak Language Learning Software is only one candidate for school use. It is available in nine languages, including Spanish. Another is The English Teacher which offers a large vocabulary in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. Teach for Tomorrow is a program designed for teachers who need the educational technology training for the classroom. It is available through the University of Michigan. See http://www.merit.edu/ This is not the only on-line source students will want to use. Grove Art in New York has three first rate databases, Art, Music, and Opera. . The American Film Institute operates a film school in Los Angeles. This institute trains students in all aspects from a script to final version on film using digital cameras.
The WorldWideWeb (www) offers art, drama, and music with multimedia features likely to improve soon. Right now, the Internet can transport young students to most of the world's great museums. These include the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Prado in Madrid, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Paintings by all of the Old Masters may be seen on a computer monitor and even printed out in color. Students may also see some of these Old Masters plus many more contemporary artists on Artchive a Web site accessible on the Internet. Some of these paintings illustrate aspects of history, such as The Surrender of Breda during the Thirty Year War by Diego Velasquez in 1638, Liberty Leading the People in the July 1830 Revolution in Paris by Eugene Delacroix., and Pablo Picasso's Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Music also has its relevance to history. Beethoven's 1812 Overture was composed to celebrate Napoleon's retreat from Russia in 1812, and his Ode to Joy is now the national anthem for the European Union.
Children may also listen to music and hear the story of, for example, an opera read to fourth and fifth graders. Recently, Leontyne Price read her child's version of Aida after first singing a aria to wild applause from the students. The book had been published by Gulliver Books, a subsidiary of Harcourt Brace. It contained color illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon. Other music could just as easily be used as a prelude to hearing its story read out loud in Show Boat, Porgy and Bess, Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady, all of which are love stories with music. All of these books for children would have CDs with the music for each, so classroom teachers need not sing the melodies. The CD would allow students to hear the voices of the original performer, such as Paul Robeson in Showboat, or artists.
Some of the great books of Charles Dickens have been filmed, such as Oliver Twist which also supported a lively musical of the same title. Even today, entire books of great literature may be read via the computer as can Shakespearean drama with sound and text. The late Sir John Gielgud performed brilliantly in Hamlet as a film. There is no reason whatever for limiting history to books. An oral culture will better support history in color with sound. Film at many levels (childhood to adult) is also available as well as excerpts of plays by writers such as Lewis Carrol who wrote Alice in Wonderland. History may be taught in ways that make learning a pleasure to students. They can, for example, watch filmed history on the monitor of a computer. The sound and color add two new dimensions to textbooks with images.
William M. Brinton
San FranciscoAll contents © 2000 William M. Brinton