Great video: Student First

There's a great two-minute video that really gets to the heart of how our current hiring/firing policies for teachers disadvantage our students:

The video explains three main issues:

1. How budget cuts means firing more teachers

2. How we fire teachers by an "outdated last in, first out" policy that always fires the newest teachers, no matter how good they are. Through "seniority based layoffs," we fire some of the best teachers, we have to fire more teachers to meet the budget requirements since the newest teachers are paid the least, and low performing schools "get hit the hardest" since they have the highest number of new teachers.

3. Teachers matter. Having a bad teacher for one or two years is enough to put a student at a substantial disadvantage for the rest of his/her education.

The video is short and interesting. I recommend taking the two minutes to really understand the research behind our current policies and their effects on students.

Students Struggle in Civics

In 2010, fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade students across the country took a civics exam administered by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The results of the exam demonstrate just how immediate the need for education reform is in this country. According to the exam, only twenty-five percent of American high school seniors are “proficient” in civics, and only seven percent of eighth graders could identify the three branches of the federal government. That’s twenty-five percent proficiency in civics for a group of people who will be eligible to vote within the year. If students cannot even reach proficiently, it makes sense that even fewer are sophisticated in the subject; only four percent of twelfth graders, and even fewer fourth and eighth graders were “advanced” civics students. These statistics make one point demonstrably clear: the American education system is not working, and government officials owe it to the children of this country (and this country’s future) to fix it. *

The article lists several other takeaways from the disturbing results of the exam, including the following:

· Only 50% of students could identify the purpose of the Bill of Rights

· 12^th grade scores on the exam actually decreased since the last test administration, while 8^th grade results stayed the same.

The results seem dire, but there may be an unfortunately simple explanation. According to Ted McConnell, Executive Director of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of School, the No Child Left Behind Act disproportionately emphasizes the teaching of certain subjects. While the act inundates students with reading, math, and science, it focuses little on art, music, social studies, and the humanities. In order for schools to attain NCLB funding and improve their students' chances of scoring well on exams that “matter,” little time is devoted to other extremely important subjects.

But are math, science, and reading pursuits more important than other academic areas like social studies? I think that answer is a resounding no, and so does Peter Levine, director of Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts. According to Mr. Levine, “America has always relied on active citizens to solve our most serious problems. If the next generation of kids can’t rise to that challenge, we’ll be in trouble.” It is impossible to expect out governmental structure to work effectively if only half of America’s children understand the function of the Bill of Rights. We’ve been endowed with the longest lasting and most successful democracy in the history of the world, but if we fail to produce an educated mass of citizens, that system will fail to work properly and we may lose the freedoms that have defined us for so long.

This gaping hole in NCLB’s evaluation and incentive method can, however, be used as a teaching tool. In any future reform legislation, it is critical that certain subjects are not promoted over others. It may in fact be beneficial to pay teachers in math and science more, if it is harder to recruit people to fill those positions. What is not effective, however, is incorporating only certain subjects into potential teacher performance metrics, or driving many more resources into one academic area over another. We must learn from the pitfalls of past education reform bills, because giving academic preference to certain subjects is a problem that all future legislation must avoid.

The full article may be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/04/federal-civics-test-shows_n_857776.html

*Note, portions of this post are drawn from a strategy paper written for COCO 3 at Dartmouth College.

The Onion gets it right

Straying a bit from the usually serious tone of this blog, I wanted to share a fantastic article from the satirical news source The Onion entitled "Budget Mix-Up Provides Nation's Schools With Enough Money to Properly Educate Students."

The article is great because it points out the absurdity of our education problem and our reluctance to properly fund a solution. 

The link to the article is provided above, but I copied the text of the article here for easier reading: 

WASHINGTON—According to bewildered and contrite legislators, a major budgetary mix-up this week inadvertently provided the nation's public schools with enough funding and resources to properly educate students.

Sources in the Congressional Budget Office reported that as a result of a clerical error, $80 billion earmarked for national defense was accidentally sent to the Department of Education, furnishing schools with the necessary funds to buy new textbooks, offer more academic resources, hire better teachers, promote student achievement, and foster educational excellence—an oversight that apologetic officials called a "huge mistake."

"Obviously, we did not intend for this to happen, and we are doing everything in our power to right the situation and discipline whoever is responsible," said House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), expressing remorse for the error. "I want to apologize to the American people. The last thing we wanted was for schools to upgrade their technology and lower student-to-teacher ratios in hopes of raising a generation of well-educated, ambitious, and skilled young Americans."

"That's the type of irresponsible misspending that I've been focused on eliminating for my entire political career," Ryan added.

Ryan went on to tell reporters that the $80 billion budget slip-up will "unfortunately" help schools nationwide to supply students with modernized classrooms and instructional materials. Struggling to control his frustration, Ryan said he prayed the costly mistake would not allow millions of American students to graduate with strong language skills.

Jeff Sessions (R-AL), ranking minority member of the Senate Budget Committee, called for a full investigation into how the nation's schools were able to secure the necessary funds to monitor teachers and pay salaries based on performance.

"The fact that this careless mistake also ended up financing new teacher training programs, allowing educators to become more than just glorified babysitters, is disgraceful," Sessions said. "Now we are left with a situation where schools can attract talented professionals who really want to teach our children, which will in turn create smarter and more motivated students who wish to one day make a contribution to society."

"In all my years in government I have never seen such a shameful error," Sessions added. "Our appropriations process has gone horribly awry, and I for one demand to know how it happened."

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) echoed congressional leaders and vowed to do "everything in [his] power" to resolve the costly error that led to schools updating their curriculums to emphasize math, science, and language arts, and provided students with instruction on how to use newly purchased computers to aid their research.

"Once these kids learn to read and think critically, you can never undo that," Boehner said. "In 20 years, we could be looking at a nightmare scenario in which vast segments of our populace are fully prepared to compete in the new global marketplace."

"It could take a whole generation to cancel out the effects of this," Boehner added.

Congressional leaders also stressed that providing the nation's students with an adequate education that prepared them for college or supplied them with a solid grasp of basic knowledge could also have a devastating impact on the economy by creating a new class of citizens uninterested in settling for fast food meals and useless plastic knickknacks.

"And politicians will be adversely affected as well," Boehner said. "What will our nation do if the next generation knows that all we care about is our own selfish interests and pandering to the wealthy elite? Is that the future you want? Not me."

Source: http://www.theonion.com/articles/budget-mixup-provides-nations-schools-with-enough,20350/