Today is Palindrom Day!

01022010
A numeric palindrome. Has nothing to do with this blog entry, but just the same, I would be remiss to not mention it.

I just read an opinion piece in the WaPo- "The keys to a successful education system," by Kevin Huffman, the executive vice president for public affairs at Teach for America. It's got me all fired up. And, like many of the pointed arguments made in this piece, what has me fired up goes way beyond what is evident on the surface.

Mr. Huffman makes some excellent points, and he backs himself up with data from published studies and research. For instance, he points out the need for schools to more aggressively recruit the best people for every position, and to make the job of an educator more attractive with higher pay and incentives for performance. As a career changer who comes from a business background, I am all for the incentive pay, but adamantly against paying for the performance of students on standardized tests. We most certainly need to hold administrators more accountable, as well as teacher prep programs, and furthermore, we need to look at and improve the role of people, policies and parents. May I add, another necessary change would be a requirement that all people working in public policy on education reform have current, relevant experience working in a classroom. They need to be educators first, and politicians, economists, public affairs specialists last.

Allow me to elaborate. I used to believe that standardized tests are a necessary evil of the education world. As I have followed the same class of kids throughout their high school careers to their impending graduation in June, my view on that has changed. They are necessary, and they are reality. It's a reality we all deal with on a daily basis. There absolutely needs to be a point of measurement of student performance and ability. No question there. What I question is what is tested, and how we are testing. As the needs of the workplace change, as technology grows and the need for kids to be collaborative, flexible, critically thinking beings increases, we are testing kids out of context with the realities they face. We know that relevance is an important ingredient in engaging students, so why test them and completely ignore the need for relevant context? Still, this is not something that will change overnight, there is no quick fix, and preparing students for every reality is our job.

What grabbed my attention in this piece was that it opened with an anecdote about the formation of IDEA College Prep High School. IDEA principal, Jeremy Beard points out that their success is not about resources, but about them maximizing on the potential of what they can control. He says they create culture, they let kids feel like they are an integral part of something greater than themselves. Smiles. Warm, happy thoughts. But upon reading further, the points about the need for further data, for replacing the bottom 6-10% of teachers, well, that got me going. The truth is, performance is not always measurable by a multiple choice test, and people, namely kids, should never feel that the measure of their worth is based on a test score.

What I find difficult to grasp here is how this information, all relevant, all valid, is shared. Those of us in classrooms, running school buildings, we see people. Those who sit in offices and make decisions, they see numbers. There needs to be balance. And when the senator, or the parent, or the 19 year old college sophomore reads this, they see an expert laying out a plan that is richly backed by research and statistics. They take that information out of context, and they go out and make decisions that affect our educational system. This type of misinformation, of reading on the surface, is what upsets the balance. But, clearly, the woes of the ed policy world cannot be summed up in an 800 word OpEd piece, and the need for discourse and transparency is abundant, so I don't know what the solution is.

While I find this piece to be somewhat contradictory, even borderline hypocritical at times, I applaud the effort made, the points raised, and Mr. Huffman's undeniable expertise and experience. More importantly, I applaud any effort to raise awareness and start a dialogue. But let me say, in my infinite wisdom and limited experience, that we don't need MORE data, we need to use what we have and change how we look at it. We need to return to the drawing board and re-assess our objectives, rather than trying to put band aids on a broken system. We need to balance how we train kids for tangible, academic performance with the needs of the person who sits in front of us. That is what it's about. It's about rigor, relevance, and relationships. Education is not about the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.