US To Get Its Learnin’ On
On Monday, the Obama Administration will be sending Congress its blueprint for education reform said President Obama in his weekly video address. A couple of points from Obama’s video address Saturday are:
- Much of America’s success in the 20th Century was due to a great educational system that focused on science
- Other nations around the world are investing in education because they know how important it is
- States will compete for funding in as way to improve standards and the quality of teaching
- Schools that achieve excellence will be rewarded
- Teachers will be better trained, better supported and be treated as professionals
- All students should graduate from high school and be prepared for college and a career
Obviously the Republicans aren’t on board and are awaiting to play politics as usual, while the American Federation of Teachers is “surprised” by the proposal. It’s time to move on from the failed No Child Left Behind where children are taught to pass a achievement test instead of being given an education.
With a goal of having every child read at grade level by 2014, No Child Left Behind has been criticized by current Education Secretary Arne Duncan as “utopian” and as failing to properly reward schools for progress.
Here is the text from Obama’s address this weekend or you can watch the video below.
Tags: Education, President Obama
Being against this Re-authorization isn’t just a Republican thing. The Blueprint is almost exactly NCLB. Key difference is the pledge of $$ to make it go somewhere. It is still chock full of testing and accountability, damn the science of the whether the testing is efficacious and loves to blame teachers first, everyone else queue up. The funniest thing is the switch form NCLB labeled proficiency by 2014 to college readiness by 2020: this is a simple, age old tactic: move the goal posts.
Do not be fooled by this rhetoric. The $$ should be thrown at class size and teacher quality in such a way that aligns with how human beings are motivated. This is move students or get out of the classroom. Also, move your cells or we will close your school, or fire the staff, or 1/2 the staff, or just the principal and then place non-profit in charge….I am not making this up…this is the plan….and none of it is peer reviewed and none of it has shown promise other than a few high profile anecdotal successes. The new research shows this strategy, done for years in Chicago as Renaissance 2010, has failed. It’s 2010 and Chicago is far from fixed…..
Sadly, this strategy is doomed to fail a nation now, too. It is NCLB 2.0 I fear.
The first tests that should be eliminated are the teacher training ones. We have a world full of gifted and committed teachers, none of whom can attribute their gifts to our miserable teacher-training programs. If you want to make teachers accountable for the success of their classrooms we have to free them to teach.