Get Political

One thing that I have decided to do to be more involved in politics is to read educational news. This is news that in the past I have generally not noticed or read about. Now that I have started to read the New York Time's educational section I have found some interesting articles. This article titled The (Yes) Low Cost of Higher Ed discussed how the nations top school like Harvard, University of Virginia, and University of North Carolina were all getting rid of loans for low-income students. While I think this is a great step toward helping low-income students, I don't think it solves the real problem. The problem is that those who would even consider going to these prestigious schools could only do so with excellent grades or high school experiences that help them stand out. These students could probably get scholarships to less prestigious colleges and still obtain degrees. The new financial aid policies of these schools primarily help those low-income students who would be able to go to college anyway. Instead of helping more high school students get degrees, it only helps those who were going to get one anyway.
In class today a student was talking to me about his grades. He didn't even want to try to do the work because he thought he was bad at it and "wasn't even going to pass 8th grade anyway." It was striking that we are working toward helping some students go to more prestigious colleges while many people won't even make it to high school. Even more striking was that I have watched this student work the past couple of days and he is pretty smart. If he applied himself and worked hard he could do really well in class. The problem is that he has given up on himself, and so has his teacher. I think more should be done to help these students and to fix the current middle school and high school situation, rather making the more prestigious schools cheaper.

I decided to track a specific issue in the news pertaining to education. I decided to look at school violence and shootings because they always seem to be in the news. I am amazed at often this occurs. One website I looked at had a time line of school shootings worldwide since 1996. Most of these have occurred in the US. I also read an article on MSNBC entitled "10 Myths About School Shootings". This article was very enlightening because it describes ideas about school shootings that are false. One of these that I found most interesting and also frightening was the idea that "He just snapped" is false. I often assumed that most school shootings were done by people who got fed up with school and being bullied that they just snapped one day and got a gun. Instead this article says that normally these events are planned out over time and thought about a lot. This is striking and frightening, because it shows that teachers are not involved enough in their students lives to realize that this is happening. As a teacher, I must be aware of what is going on in my students lives, so that I might be there to help them, and prevent these kinds of situations. Along with this idea, two other myths that this article debunks shows that shooters are not necessarily loners and that there is no "profile" that they fit under. This makes it even more difficult to tell who is struggling so much in school that they want to be violent about it. Teachers must be incredibly aware of what is going on in everyone's life, even those who seem to be fine.
Another website that I read gave links to newspaper articles about several shootings that happen in the past decade. In each of these articles the main question is "Why?" It seems like no one even understands the reason for these violent outbreaks. Some of the shootings even happen at very successful high schools, like SucessTech Academy in Cleveland, Ohio, where there is a 94% graduation rate. Together these websites paint a depressing picture of school shootings where there is no apparent motives or ways to catch these shooters and help them before it is too late. The only options I see to prevent shootings like these are loving teachers creating lasting relationships with their students, which is something that I am looking forward to doing as a teacher.

Continuing with my goal to read political news and pay attention especially to educational news I found a very interesting article. Entitled "Aiming to Coach Students to Excellence in Exams" this article discusses what the Newton Street School is doing to pass the NCLB standards. Since it has failed to show signs of improvement for the past seven years if students do not do well the whole school "risk being shut down or overhauled if there is no sign of improvement." Lots of people are uniting together to help the school because they do not want it to get shut down. Students, parents, teachers, and unions are all working together to better the school, but despite all of this help it is doubtful whether or not the students will pass the exam. After learning more about NCLB in class and reading this article I realized that there are both good and bad things about this situation, and NCLB in general. The article points out the good things about this situation, and that is that everyone is getting involved to save the school. Students are working harder because they don't want to go to another school. They are attending extra study sessions and working extremely hard to bring up their tests scores. School administrators looked for help and found it from Seton Hall University. This bond has allowed the school to receive new equipment and training, and therefore boosted teacher morale. Parents have also gotten involved expressing how they want their children to achieve. Despite all of this however, the exam grades are not improving, showing how NCLB is not working. The focus of NCLB is on test scores. This school is a prime example of how this system does not work. Even with hours of extra study time, and teacher saying that they believe in their students, the test scores are not improving. The title of this article itself shows the failure of the system. The idea that students need to be coached to do well on a exam shows that the exam is not a good assessment test, and teaching toward the exam does not work.

The NCLB system is broken and needs to be fixed. Even though it is bringing unity and getting more people involved in the school, it is not necessarily helping the students learn more. It is not helping them get a better education and learn to think for themselves. And even if in this specific school, students are learning to think for themselves, it is not being reflected on the test. This means that the test must change, and the curriculum must change from teaching for the test to teaching the students to think for themselves. Excellence in Exams should not be the ultimate goal of a teacher or a school. Instead it should be creating young thinkers who desire to change the world around them and make it a better place, and not diligent test takers.

UPDATE FOR FALL 2009
I’ve stayed very active politically since May 2008 when I decided to read news stories specifically relating to educational news. This past year I followed the election campaign of President Obama and Senator John McCain and voted both in Elkhart Country and in the presidential election. I’ve renewed by subscription to NCTM which is a professional math organization that has extremely helpful articles and lesson plans. I have also continued to read educational and political articles. With a our new President in office for several months now I decided to look up his ideas on education and whether or not I agree with them.

Education.com has a helpful article clearly outlining Obama’s policies on education. This article breaks down Obama’s views on several topics which I will cover here along with my reactions.
Standardized Testing – Obama is not entirely in favor of standardized testing, but is not suggesting that we get rid of it entirely. He critiques it by saying that it devoids the classroom of creativity and does not always provide valuable feedback. I tend to agree with his assessment as I often see teachers being forced to teach to the test and not cover what students actually need. I discussed this with the6th grade math teacher I am currently observe. She agreed and talked about how she struggles with trying to cover all the content while making sure that the students understand everything.
School Choice – Charter schools and investment in public schools are Obama’s plan for providing school choice. He wants to increase the number of charter schools and calls them “healthy innovators.” I do not have a whole lot of experience with charters school and the positives and negatives that go along with them. If Obama does plan making them a larger part of our education system, then it is something that I will need to research.
No Child Left Behind – I blogged previously about the problems that NCLB has caused and why it needs to be changed or removed. Obama takes that stance that NCLB’s goals are good, but its methods are problematic. In Obama’s view, every child needs a successful teacher, and NCLB is not providing this. Obama also criticizes NCLB’s “unfulfilled funding promises.” I agree that NCLB’s goals are good in that it wants students to stay in their appropriate grade level and not fall behind. However, I wish that Obama would take are more critical view of NCLB and do more than just want to encourage the creation of successful teachers. I think that NCLB has more problems than that as described above.
Improvements to Science, Math and Technology Education – As a future math teacher this was an interesting paragraph to read. Obama is focusing heavily on math and science because it is used heavily in the fastest growing jobs. He has several ideas to improve math and science education: recruit good teachers, change the curriculum, and change tests.
While I like the focus on math and science, I am a bit undecided about whether his approach will work or not. Good teachers are essential to math and science education. In my experience, people who hate math or science have had terrible math and science teachers. Changing tests is also a good idea as current tests do not include high-order thinking and does not accurately portray student knowledge. Changing curriculum sounds like a good idea, but on further thought, what will this produce? At Goshen Middle School the math curriculum has changed several times in the past few years. My current teacher describes it has a pendulum where the administration gets excited about one idea, then when it doesn’t seem to work immediately, switches to another idea, and then another. They keep swinging back and forth between popular curriculum. She then went on to tell me the trouble this causes in having students been taught all sorts of different things, and there is no consistency from one year to the next. For this reason I am skeptical about changing the curriculum especially if it is to the newest trend.