National Debt & Deficit Spending Education
Education is a great part of our ability to innovate. In order to remain competitive in the world, our education system must encourage and develop our young people. The challenge is clear.
No Child Left Behind, for all its good intentions is slowing us down. It has done some good things by requiring school administrators to get out of their offices and see what is happening in the classroom.
Yet it has some perverse effects. It demands performance on tests and the penalties for under performance are great. So much time is spent on testing that classroom time is foreshortened.
And teachers begin to teach to the tests.
The administrative actions required simply soak up teaching time. For example one senior school administrator noted that out of 171 teaching days only 134 are left for teaching the required years worth of curriculum after required testing is done.
“Teaching to the test” is pernicious, it says that learning is secondary to administrative requirements. In a recent article by the Associated Press it was noted that California had 97 school districts that were failing.
This article then went on to discuss the “sliding scale of punishment” that these school districts were facing (School Districts Start to Face Sanctions, The Associated Press, 10 May 2008). In my experience the hammer always brings with it unintended consequences.
Our young people know what teaching to the test is. I believe they have little respect for any system that does that. If we are to inspire our youth, and out innovate the rest of the world, teaching to the test is not the way to do it.
This article then went on to discuss California’s projected shortfall in qualified teachers. In this case the need is predicted to be a shortage of 100,000 teachers in the next decade.
So where will they come from? Bright, educated, and motivated persons might think twice before entering a profession so weighted down with negative incentives.
Children do not develop and mature at the same rate. If a child is not ready to learn, no amount of pushing by their teachers can make the learning happen. Good well-motivated and experienced teachers find a way in many cases. The quandary faced by the teaching profession is clear: children must pass the test or else.
So they teach the test.
The greater issue is that one test can make major decisions for children in the current system.
What can Congress do?
First: Congress must review the implementing legislation and provide flexibility for rural school districts. The system in the Public Law requires those schools not making “Adequate Yearly Progress” to fund Supplemental Education Providers.
In Wyoming only three have been approved by the Department of Education. These providers are not held accountable for their results.
Second: Congress must work on the positive side of the issue. The goal of ensuring that teachers are “Highly qualified” is laudable yet the standards by which such qualification is determined have changed several times and leaves little room for experience.
In my career “time on the pond,” or at sea running ships, makes a real difference. There is simply no replacement for it and it provides the glue that enables teachers to motivate students. In the current system there appears to be little room for crediting this.
Bureaucracies nearly always opt for quantifiable and easily determined measures of success. Such things provide insurance against criticism or legal proceedings.
I believe teachers should be encouraged to seek advanced degrees and continuing education. In turn, to seek the positive in this, they should be paid well for advancing their educational horizon.
Third: Congress must ensure that there is room for the Arts. In my experience you never know where the “good ideas” will come from. Leaders must ensure that they are listening to the newest, most junior members of his ship just as much as the “old hands” who may have become captive to only certain ways of problem solving.
The issue here is that a variety of ways of problem solving is healthy for a nation and an economy. Over emphasis on math and science may provide an easily measured curriculum, but it leaves out children who simply don’t take to these subjects.
With the experience gained in the initial implementation of No Child Left Behind Congress must go back and change the emphasis on “Punishment” and ensure room for all disciplines.
The overemphasis on testing and, more importantly the great amount of time expended to just do it must be changed. Testing that makes a choice for a child’s future must be spread across several years.
Children must be allowed to mature and develop at their own rate. Testing must not force them into making choices they are not ready for.
Congress must ensure that the initial legislation passed in 2002, Public Law 107-110, is not allowed to become a monolithic and unchangeable edifice.
In the end, this nation must remain at the forefront of innovation in order to remain a leader in the world’s economy. We can only do this by encouraging and inspiring our youth.