Are we comparing what we should be comparing?

Many of the other nations that beat us use cram schools. Many of the other countries put education as the absolute highest priority, even above family, community, and spirituality. What is our goal as a country? Do we want our students to be the top performers on an 8^th grade science or math class, or do we want our students to grow to be happy, well-rounded adults? If my students spent as much time cramming for  tests as many of the Asian students do, I have no doubt that they would perform just was well. I don’t, however, want a life of testing and cramming and testing to be all that my students know and strive for.

I appreciated the unique perspective from the presentation on Taiwan this week.  I found it fascinating that a teacher from Taiwan believes our students have it better here. She is happy to have her children go to school here. She kept saying that American schools were better, but she doesn't want to teach here because she doesn't want our students.

The tests do give us some information that while shouldn't be ignored; we need to recognize that it doesn't tell the whole story. As Chris mentions in his blog, the only thing that the more successful schools seem to share is a culture in which education is held at the highest esteem. In a country where education is deemed as the only way to success, students and parents are going to value it more. The truth is, it’s not the only way to success in the US. Students see examples constantly “successful” people who did not need education to acquire their status. A big portion of my students see education of any kind as the back up plan to becoming famous. I don’t see that being a concern of many students in Singapore or Finland.  

A friend of mine recently moved to Singapore. She and her family are living there for two years while her husband is working on a two year contract with Microsoft. When they moved there they had to find a school for their girls. Although they do not attend a public school in Singapore, I think their story of what they have found about education is still telling. Their daughter wanted to attend an international baccalaureate school. The admission process was intense and selective. The admission adviser was very wary of her educational background being from a rural town in Idaho. When she applied to the school she had a to take an entrance exam. Not only was she accepted, but she scored in the 90^th percentile on the exam. Now obviously, this girl is highly intelligent and did well in our school system, but she wasn't the highest performing student my any means. What she did do was take advantage of the educational opportunities available and participated in class, read and did homework at home, participated in MANY extracurricular activities and obviously has a supportive family. With all the negative discourse about education in the US, and Idaho in particular, I could have imagined her admission process going the other way. Knowing this girl, however, I knew she would succeed wherever life took her.

                The point of me telling this story is that the conversation about education in this country seems to be focused on everything we are doing wrong. Honestly, I can see why that is. There is a lot we could be doing better. For one, many of our students are not being served as well as the student in my story.  When we look, we will always find room for improvement, and looking for those opportunities is part of what will make us great. We definitely need to work on equality in education possibly with central funding and I for one would certainly appreciate if teachers were given more  support for professional development and treated and paid as professionals. The other part of revision, however, is to look at what is working. Many of our students have a lot more going on than school, and for many of them, those are very good things that will help them find happiness as an adult.  If we don’t look at what is working and our students that are doing well, we might fix the wrong things.  We might start blaming teachers and trying to cram in more standardized testing….oh wait, see what I mean!?