Today’s Idaho Statesman http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/03/25/1579773/3rd-reform-bill-clears-big-hurdle.html quoted some good sense on the part of a couple of Idaho’s state Senators, and good sense has been notably lacking in the debate over education reform. Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert said
This bill is completely unnecessary. … Every single stakeholder is opposed to it. … (It) avoids transparency at the state level, avoids responsibility at the state level and puts the public schools budget on autopilot. … It is the wrong product, the wrong approach, wrong for Idaho and wrong for the taxpayer, it’s wrong for education and, most importantly, it’s wrong for our kids.
But it was Sen. Denton Darrington, R-Declo, who really best summed up the whole issue of school Reform, not just in Idaho, but nationwide. I couldn’t have said it better myself:
Reform has been constant, and it has been incremental, and it has been major. … There’s not much similarity between the schools that my grandkids went to and the school my dad went to because of reforms.”
In the 44 years I taught, I saw it happen and took part in it. The philosophy of constant improvement has been largely responsible for the rise of Japan from manufacturing cheap knock-offs amidst the ruins to one of today’s top industrial nations, with products that are secondary to none. This is true reform, and although seeming modest, will provide the most lasting positive change. The kinds of wrenching changes called for by the Reformists (Politicians, Pundits, Polemicists, and even some Professors Who Should Know Better) will be counter-productive and will be looked back upon a decade or two from now as having done more harm than good.
But don’t we have some really dysfunctional schools, as in Waiting for Superman? Absolutely! These schools have a long way to go to be adequate, let alone excellent, whether for political reasons or political, or even because of laws as they are written. But the same rule applies. Encourage improvement. Make it possible. Empower school boards and administrations, and, yes, even teachers, and watch it happen. It cannot fail to do its office.It may not be all at once, it may not be dramatic, but it will happen.
Bad schools are bad in lots of different ways for lots of different reasons. Good schools are good in lots of different ways for lots of different reasons. (The same can be said of teachers, individually and collectively.) There are lots of different measures by which to tell the difference, of which standardized test scores are but one. Bad ones have farther to go and need more concentrated attention, but the same rule applies.
The nation’s public schools are, on the whole, not broken, any more than the vast majority of teachers are greedy, lazy, incompetent boobs. Improve them by evolution, not revolution. Ill-considered sweeping changes will likely break things, with our students being collateral damage.