Tomorrow is the first Tuesday after Labor Day and for many that means the first day of the new school year. In celebration of that fact I thought I would write about the realities of Education Reform and why it doesn't seem to be working.
About 40 years ago a politician got on his soap box and insisted that American children were far behind the rest of the world when it came to the study of Math and Sciences. But yet foreign exchange students were coming in droves to get an education in America because it was the best.
Over the last 40 years wide-sweeping changes have been made to the American Education system. Longer school hours.(when I went to high school in the 80's we went 6.5 hours my high schoolers go 7 hours) Longer years( when I was in school we got pretty close to 3 month summers and now my kids are lucky if they get 10 week summers. More classes( I had the same 6 classes everyday all semester long( my kids get 4 classes every day for the semester and then start 4 more the following semester other districts do 4 classes A days and 4 classes B days all year long) They are required to take more Math, more English, more Science, and more history. In fact the high schools main goal is to shuttle every kid to college after graduation. Now we have the train wreck that is Common Core.
Here are the results of all this Education Reform. SAT scores have dropped steadily since I was in High School. The US went from the leader in technological and scientific advances for over 20 years to falling far behind India and Asia for the last 10 years. College entrance requirements have fallen for state schools and most college graduates can't get jobs within their field of study within the first 6 months of graduation.
The question keeps being asked "Why has all this hard work failed to get the desired results"? First of all you have to look at the data. I read a news article in US News and World Report about 6 years ago titled The Case against Summer Vacation. It once again had all this data about how US students were falling behind in Math and Science. It showed that the US Education System required far fewer attendance days than any other country. Here's what it didn't show the start and end to the school year. (many countries send their children to school on Saturdays) It talked about the fact that many students had to do massive review at the beginning of the year because they forgot what they learned over summer vacation. There was one data set gathered that it did not talk about. The data collected showed that US kids went to school almost twice the number of hours of school than most of the other countries. Yet claimed we were falling behind.
Why do we keep falling behind with all these hours our kids are in school? First of all, when I was in school if you had a student who constantly broke rules or were disruptive, they were removed from the environment either through expulsion, drop-outs or alternative schools. If kids didn't want to be at school then they weren't wanted. Now expulsion only happens when a student is violent. we had after school detention, now they have in-school suspension. Second, special needs students had classrooms of their own so that their unique needs could be met. Now we have inclusion and special needs are placed in regular classroom taking needed resources from the average student and giving them to the special students such as time and attention. Third, disruptions are common-place and elementary students are denied much needed recess time to decompress and process what they have learned. Fourth, when creating curriculum emphasis is placed on advanced learning and processing, forgoing basic foundation skills. Skills such as handwriting, grammar, how to do projects and papers, how to do basic math without a calculator, how to research using library resources and not a computer, creative writing, and the list goes on. Fifth, parental involvement in the education process has either taken over such as with elementary and middle school science projects or completely erased itself such as in High School. Sixth, students are told that they need to go to a 4 year university and discouraged from going to trade schools or enlisting in the military. My children are highly intelligent but conventional college situations did not meet their needs due to career interests and personalities. Seventh, students are no longer taught self government. I am required to sign class syllabuses and code of conduct books for my high schoolers when they should be taking over that responsibility themselves.
All of this has happened in the last 26 years. These changes have actually hurt our students based on SAT scores, employment rates of college graduates, and our standing in the global economy.
Why might you ask? The answer is quite simple. The politicians twisted the statistics to suit their purposes. Here is how they did it. America's Education system is like no other in the world. We give everyone a chance to reach their highest potential regardless of aptitude, ability or financial status. The rest of the world only tests their college bound school programs while we test everyone( including our developmentally disabled or delayed). We don't weed out those student who would do better in a trade or with life skill learning by high school like the rest of the world.
As a result of trying to get our slower students to measure up to artificial standards, we have left our most gifted of students without the resources to receive the education they need in order to reach their full potential. By trying to make all our students the same, we have stopped all students from reaching their full potential unless they have the money for private schools or extra curricular tutoring. By trying to make our children the same we have stifled their ability to do extraordinary things.
This is the reason that the homeschool population has increased to over 3% of the population. That is over 1.7 million homeschoolers in the US.
Homeschool is not just for the ultra-religious. Its for all those who feel completely disenfranchised by the public school system.
Education reform has not worked. Its time to get back to basics.
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