Endless Solutions for Educational Reform

Endless Solutions for Educational Reform

By Joseph T. Pergola Successful teaching used to be measured by the ability of a teacher to connect subject matter to the lives of children in meaningful ways. Good teaching inspired students to improve academically and socially. Improvement in student achievement was a result of artful teaching. Now successful teaching has become the art of adapting and implementing the newest and latest solutions for educational reform. First we were assured academic success if everyone taught the National Standards. No sooner the National Standards were adopted, they morphed into the more cumbersome State Standards.Then along came No Child Left Behind. A unfair punitive solution to lagging academic achievement. Only politicians or education pundits could come up with such a plan for improving student success on a national level. All children, regardless of their ability or disability, regardless of their native language or reading level are required to take the same tests and expected to perform at the same benchmark level. Who thought of this? Certainly no one with any experience teaching or any knowledge of child development. What happened to differentiated learning and modifying teaching strategies? Remember learning these skills as essential to good teaching? Now we have a new educational reform plan. Welcome to Race to the Top! Another great educational reform plan that requires states to compete for funds to improve education. This plan is a disincentive for true meaningful efforts to improve academic success. Basically, schools with poor student achievement but an excellent improvement plan score highest in the race for money. This implies that their improvement plan is solely contingent on money. I contend that if they can not improve their poor academic standing without more money, they are incompetent educational leaders. How much does it cost to implement a better discipline program, teacher professional development, curriculum revision, parent out-reach, homework assistance, academic intervention etc. etc. etc. Let's not forget the by-product of Race To The Top. The reorganized, revised, regurgitated standards now called Common Core! If we all agree on a common core curriculum, if we pre-assess our students knowledge of curriculum content and if we teach to prepare students for testing of subject matter in the common core curriculum, we can be fully assured of educational success. We have been told what to teach and how to teach. We have been directed to continually assess and test. We have been told what our students should know and how well our students should perform. We have been told a lot of things, but no one has told me how adoption and implementation of National Standards, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top or Common Core will guarantee learning or inspire students to take responsibility for their own success.