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15 Ideas That Really, Really Screwed Public Education Up

Wow. This was a challenging and controversial read. Here are the first three from the list: 

1. Focusing On Curriculum And Assessment Rather Than Learning Models And Support

This is likely the worst idea public schooling has taken on. The idea here is that by using a standards-based, outcomes-driven, direct instruction model, that real-life content can be parsed without neutering it, understanding be anticipated, and that data can be gleaned and resources shared to improve learning for all. But this only served to homogenize learning in a way that made the world of school entirely different than the world they live and use information in every day.

2. Scripted Curriculum

This is perhaps the most symbolic adoption by public schools struggling to keep teachers and students “on the same page.” For now, let’s skip the desire to have all teachers and students “on the same page,” and focus instead on the idea of a set of learning experience planned in another state by a corporation with zero knowledge of the lives and cognitive identities of students. This falls closely behind #1.

3. Growth

Growing from one-room schoolhouses to sprawling campuses with as many as 5,000 students seems like a natural “development,” but was a recipe for disaster. Size obscures nuance, numbers challenge personalization, and transfer is difficult to coach.

"While the number of students with special needs has not increased, the rising proportion has driven up costs for cash-strapped schools. Special education, which requires speech pathologists, psychologists and trained teachers, and sometimes special facilities and equipment, can cost four times more than general education. Federal funds only cover a fraction of the extra expense."

—

Students With Special Needs Staying In Traditional Public Schools

This is a problem.

The Paradox of Public Education →

girlwithalessonplan:

infoneer-pulse:

Public education struggles with two conflicting facts. First, public schools are small craft organizations that require close teamwork and constant adaptation to the unpredictable development of students. Second, they are government agencies always subject to constraints imposed through politics and legal processes.

In the more than half-century since Brown v. Board of Education, the second set of facts has dominated the first. Public schools have been subject to court orders about how particular students must be educated; federal and state regulations that dictate how money is used, students are grouped, and teachers work; and labor contracts that force schools to employ teachers who are poorly matched to the needs of students and the strengths of other teachers.

School leadership, personal responsibility, and accountability have been driven out of schools, especially in big cities where local politics adds to the burden of regulation. This is not, as some have claimed, inevitable when adults educate other people’s children. Private schools govern themselves, attract like-minded faculty members and parents, and can turn on a dime when students’ needs change.

» via GOOD

It’s like infoneer-pulse reads the dash and then finds something RELEVANT.

(All the love for i-p.)

Seconded.

Budget Cuts Are Taking Their Toll on Public Universities

theyuniversity:

"

The current crowd of education reformers like to dismiss any of us who disagree with their agenda as “defenders of the status quo.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I am not a defender of the status quo in public education because the status quo is currently No Child Left Behind and its insidious spin-off Race to the Top.

"

— Sue Peters: Why I Am Not A Defender Of The ‘Status Quo’ In Education (via girlwithalessonplan)