I have come across several articles lately about teaching and the education profession that have just thrown me for a loop. One I will not even justify with a post here because it is so absurd I would not be able to be concise and to the point without flying totally off the handle. My response was visceral to say the least.
This article caused a much more tempered, even response and raised more questions than responses. For an all too brief second I will climb on my soap box and respond. Education is not going to the toilet in this country. There are dedicated, hard working, fun, bright people in the teaching profession. In response we get (for the most part) good, dedicated, hard working, fun, bright young people in our schools. People who say the education system is going down hill do not spend time in schools. Ignore them.
Soap box disengaged. Several questions arose in reading this article that I need to ask. The first being: Did we have problems with schools before someone created a means to measure problems? My gut instinct says "No." My guess is, someone in the periphery of education (a professor, principle, consultant (who are the swine of education), or superintendent) needed to study something in order to obtain some lackluster degree and created the fascination with measurable outcomes in education. The American education system was moving on a respectable clip, until suddenly forms (that appear magically from the friendly neighborhood central office) start telling us otherwise. Again this is only my speculations
My second question is: Is all this paper work effective? Gut instinct again “No!” It is been my experience to watch moral at schools amongst teachers tank with an inordinate amount of paper work has been put into place. It interferes with planning, preparing, expanding of knowledge and growth. A teacher is hampered by paper work in the same way as a law enforcement officer. Teaching is an action. By nature we do not take time to fill out after action reports, we are moving on
Finally: Who wins in this paper dragon chase? Politicians do because they can say “Oh look at the schools of my state, they did great with all the money (because it boils down to money) I brought them.” Beaurcrates, like Secretaries of Education, look great because they can say “Gee Mr. Representative, look at what I did with all that money you brought me.” This goes down the line until it stops at the teacher. The teacher does look good in this situation, but it takes a lot of shine to polish a terd. Teachers are not the terds here either. The terd here is not even the students, it the finish product that is the terd. The final report that we send up the latter is the terd. We teachers have to bend, stretch, work and fudge to make these reports look good. We have to give students multiple choice test (that don’t really test knowledge..no matter how well worded) in the stead of honest to goodness learning. Tests are what shows if a teacher is teaching. Test, not well rounded students, are determining (incorrectly I might add) who is deemed a good teacher or a bad one. Teachers used to be judged on the student for which they taught. Was the student well rounded, could they think for themselves, could they stand alone, and stand out in a crowd? Now, I am judged on what kind of test scores I am able to produce. Snarky as it my be, Emory never made me take a standardized test, and I turned out ok
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