Longer school days! Longer school year! Better teacher training! More testing! More social programs! More charter schools! Vouchers! School choice!
Sound familiar? If not, you have not been paying attention to the ed reform debate going on in our country. If it does, don't all of these demands sound awesome? Keep kids in the school building longer and they will have less time to get into trouble; have a longer school year and kids will retain more information; fix teacher education programs so teachers will have more knowledge; more testing.....I won't even touch that one; give kids services they need so they can focus on learning; create schools that aren't unionized so teachers have more freedoms and administrators can hire, fire, and pay what they want/can; give kids options for private schools even when their parents cannot afford it; open the opportunity for people to pick whatever "best" school they can get their kiddos into.
I could have listed a multitude of other demands that are coming from ed reform organizations and some politicians and government officials, especially the one on teacher evaluation systems (but that's another blog for another day). Most of these ideals for reform sound great on paper, but when these ideals are made into reality, what does that mean for schools? When the school day goes until 5:00pm instead of 3:00pm, what are schools doing with that extra time? If school last an extra few weeks into the summer, how is learning being enhanced? When students receive health care and other services via the school with the intention of that child having all his/her needs met, is that child really succeeding at a higher rate than before? Are institutions and alternative teacher training organizations really changing and enhancing previous models, and if so, how are they doing that?
I agree that many of the typical reform demands are wonderful. But what do they look like when actually implemented? I argue that public education institutions in the U.S. can either be game changers for the better or for the worse depending on how we go about instituting reform demands. We need to be more specific when making demands for change. How we reform our schools will ultimately determine the direction our economy will go, how the welfare system and cycle of poverty will be affected, and overall, how powerful the United States will remain (or not). Without education, we are nothing, right? RIGHT!!
Let's take teacher training for instance. I hold a M.A. in Teaching. You know what I learned that I actually utilized in the classroom from my $60,000 degree? Pretty much zilch. Because I love learning I enjoyed my classes and discovering new information or writing about what I had learned, but very little actually prepared me for the classroom. So when reformers and government officials demand better teacher training programs, what is it that they want? I personally believe teachers in training should only be in a seminar an hour a week and the rest of the time needs to be spent in several different classrooms in urban, suburban and rural environments (so as to truly know where he/she would serve best) and also with administrators. Shadowing needs to be a major part of the process, data interpretation skill development, and also practice teaching. When a new teacher walks into a classroom on the first day of school, he/she needs to be armed with an understanding of how to actually do the job, not just philosophical B.S.
When it comes to the longer school day, let's have students become a part of the school process by learning how to be responsible and caring for the school. In those last two hours of the day, instead of furthering test prep, why can't kids help the cafeteria staff prep food (ideally from the garden or freshly delivered from the farm-to-school program) for the next day's meals? Why can't a kid clean desks or sweep the floor, not as punishment, but as an opportunity to understand that he/she is a part of the school and as a result needs to help maintain it? Crew and other programs for kids to be able to sit and talk about their problems, successes, failures, and concerns could be implemented during this time as well. What about exercise. After serving a long day in the classroom, implement a time for yoga and meditation (trust me, it works and kids love it! I used to do it in my classroom. Ask a classroom of 7th graders to "Om" and they will laugh at first. Give it about 2 minutes and the whole class is silent and thoughtful!).
The point is, with reform demands, we must be specific! The way we go about implementing reform will not only make or break public education as we know it, it will determine the future of our country as a whole. I personally do not have the funds to move to another country and I am actually quite happy here in the U.S. I don't want to be forced out because we are an impoverished nation with no jobs and poor education. I just hope that our decision-makers will listen and reformists will be more specific with demands lest we further the crisis!
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