American Schools in Crisis

Ravitch's article paints a bleak image of our attempts to reform the education system, and her opinion is justified as we still struggle to find the best method to stretch our students to be the best they can be. There are many contributors to our current education struggles and she does well to displace the blame. Typically, all I hear today, is slandering of teachers and how they are not doing enough to educate their students. Stuff like, "Bad teachers need to lose their tenure and get fired," or "Teaching is easy. All you do is give instructions." Ravitch acknowledges this view and agrees there are "bad teachers" in charge of some classrooms, but that is not the sole problem, or even the biggest problem.

The biggest problem lies within our society. We live in a competitive country where our success is only considered success if we can measure it to someone else who is inferior. In order to measure how successful our students are, we certainly need an objective way to measure student's progress. Thus, we have the standardized test. What better way to show a student's knowledge than to have them pack as much information into their brain, and watch whatever is in there spill over onto an exam for two hours? As most any students can tell you, they don't remember much of anything from those tests. By doing this we are stifling students creative thinking skills and teaching them how to "work the system."

Her quote on testing adequately sums up my views on how we currently evaluate students; "Twelve years of rewarding children for picking the right answer on multiple-choice tests is bad education." Other, non-tested, subjects get thrown to the wayside as students and teachers prepare to "beat the test." But can teachers and students really be blamed for doing what they are told? There are some pretty good incentives for teachers who have all of their students pass the standardized tests (like, keeping their jobs or not having their school taken over by the government). Ravitch points out one of the saddest and, for me, one of the most angering points that these evaluation methods were created without the consult of teachers! It reminds me of situations at my work where an upper management team will visit a location for 20 minutes once every year, make multiple changes to a current system, then leave without ever talking to the people who are there everyday.

Sure, many teachers need to step up their game, but lets not cast too many stones without looking at the whole picture.