As a teacher of high school seniors I am constantly perplexed by the number of students who make it to their senior year with skills that are well below the level they should be to successfully perform in my class. I am sure this is a problem that many teachers encounter. Usually, in high school, teachers blame the middle school teachers and in middle school the teachers blame the elementary school teachers.
Thomas Sowell (a well respected economist) wrote a column a couple of years back entitled Education: Then and Now. He profiles his experiences as a child moving from North Carolina, where he was a top student, to New York, where he fell in to the bottom of his class. His argument is that standards and expectations make the difference.
Recent developments in education have me quite worried about our childrens' future. In the name of "ALL KIDS MUST PASS" the "Bar" seems to have been lowered. In the name of "Teaching the Standards" many important skills such as hard work, accountability and responsibility seem to be going out the window so long as the student masters the standard.
- Student doesn't do his homework? Let him do it again because to assign a zero doesn't allow the opportunity to master the standard.
- Student fails a test? Let them take it again.
- Student skips a test? Let them make it up.
I could go on and on with examples and in the end my point is this. Johnny might learn the standard. He might bring in the homework on the third chance and he might show up to take that test given the second opportunity. He might perform well on these assignments and might learn all the standards.
Johnny, however, is not learning many of life's important lessons. He is not learning accountability. He is not learning responsibility. He is not learning about hard work. In the name of "Learning the Standards" Johnny is being handicapped and ill prepared to enter the work force. A lack of accountability, hard work and responsibility in the real world equates to a pink slip.
Don't we as educators have more responsibility than just "Teaching the Standards"?
7/3/11 19:52
Yes this is a sad trend. Because of the big push to meet state standardized testing scores in order to receive funding, many educators are finding it difficult to actually teach what a student needs to know - "real world knowledge" vs the information needed to pass "the test." Teachers have the problem of giving a student a zero, as you mentioned, for not turning in their work, but then the teacher will have to explain to parents and faculty as to way there are x number of students with a poor grade. The lesson that the teacher has given to the student - you get what you deserve - is not at all what the student/parent/faulty want the student to learn. Instead people want to live in a dream world, where no one fails, everyone is treated equally and fairly - everyone wins and no one takes score. This becomes a problem when there are high school seniors about to leave school and enter the work force or head off to college; the real world is not as we hoped it would be. What I find so upsetting is why aren’t the people who create “the tests” worried about this? Shouldn’t the test assess what students really need to know in order to get a head in the real world? If the tests were along the same path as real world knowledge teachers would be able to simply teach and the pressure of the big “test” each year would not be so great.