Education reform (Education Deform) is doing kids, the profession, and the country short term and long-term harm.  Ed Reform INC. “believes” in short fixes, silver bullets, the power of personal cult persuasion, mantras, and now the twin goddesses of all – technology and data.

 

More than half of all children in USA now live in poverty (Washington Post/UNICEF) as someone who has taught in a financially-socially challenged district for many years I can attest to the overwhelming negative influences of poverty.   They are both direct and indirect.  What is now normal in many communities was not the norm too long ago.  The influences are: single parent families, multiple families living under one roof, incarcerated family members, under employment, no employment, no history of employment, poor language skills, the culture of poverty, early birthing, poor neonatal care, high percentages of children with unbelievable disabilities, addictions, and GANGS, globalization, and the death of low-level jobs due to technology.

    These variables cannot be pooh-poohed. Absurd belief in words like GRIT and EVIDENCE and testing – currently trending by Ed Reform simply cannot overcome the long list of negatives. But Ed reform claims they do.

   Actually, private for profit charter schools are the proof that poverty matters. Private for profit-charter schools eliminate poverty as a variable.  Charter schools pick the kids. The kids do not pick the charter schools. It is segregation once again. Any charter school which has the same number of: second language learners, Special ed kids, drug addled parents, non-reader parents, and incarcerated parents will have the same outcome as a public school forced to take in all. But charters don’t. Even in those areas of high poverty where parents opt INTO a charter school – they are a self-selected group. They are the tiny minority of guardians who strive no matter what conditions they exist in. Their kids do homework, usually have a working parent or grandma, and someone is a major positive role model. These kids are skimmed from the public sector and basically housed in a special setting.  For them this is good – no argument. But don’t compare that school to what is left in the public sector.

     I believe a needs formula is required in schools of poverty. We need to save those desperate kids. If a classroom has: x amount of special ed kids,  X amount of incarcerated relatives, scores X on reading or math, has more than X amount of people residing in one house (or room). More than X amount of kids on Section 8 housing. More than X amount of kids in Title 1 programs. Basically any of the previously mentioned factors, it should trigger an automatic cut in classroom size. There should be no more than fifteen kids in such a class.  Free pre-school needs to be mandatory. Wrap-around social services (Nurses, Shrinks, dentists, COUNSELORS, librarians, parent training, parental language classes) have to kick in. And kids need the classic realistic school philosophy of teach THE WHOLE STUDENT.

    Too many children living in poverty suffer from the word gap. (They are exposed to 3,000,000-30,000,000 fewer words because their parents aren’t trained to educate their children) No Child Left Behind gutted the arts, music, social studies, the humanities. It is harmful and farcical that all students only need math and reading.  Kids need exposure to the arts, music, the humanities – the world. They are not all worker bees to be slotted in techie jobs. That many techie jobs just don’t exist. And education is like a soup. You put things in the soup (a little art here, a dose of music there, a smidgeon of social studies there) and voila years later it can and does have an impact.

    Then there is testing. Testing for who? Pearsons’ financial bottom line. Weeks are lost in testing, test preparation and the testing is not diagnostic for the kids. We test kids before the school year is out and we get the tests back when the kids are gone. That same classroom of children will never exist again. And the financial outlay for all this is criminal and subtractive from those classrooms which really just need to be smaller.

     Ed reforms solution is curriculum.  Common Core will change it all they declare.  The curriculum is not the problem. But that is where the financial feed trough is these days. And even the biggest promoter of Common Core Bill Gates himself said, “It will take 10 – 15 years to see if this is successful.”

   “How nice.” I say.

    And in the mean time Ed Reform gets to close public schools (Chicago, Louisiana) defraud the public with for-profit institutions (Corinthian/Heald), pay their owners huge obscene salaries, and they destroy public education with a thousand strokes.

   Funny thing about the Ed Reform – they espouse so much in favor of big business, profits, monetizing, reducing costs.  Except for their very own rock core belief in supply and demand.  Supply and demand doesn’t pertain to teachers? Teachers apparently are supposed to work for a pittance.  But if they are to be the solution they need to be paid much better as to attract more candidates to the field. But Ed Reform chokes there.

    Smaller class size is the beginning of a real solution. Put the money where it will do KIDS the most good.

     Oh yes and have your kids opt out of testing - especially next year when it counts.