Mari_Finding Balance Blog 2

Week 2 Blog

This week has been focused on connecting the history of American schools with reforms going on today in both the United States and other top performing nations.  Our readings in both Schools and Flat world address these ideas of change that is needed, that is sought and that is reacted to.  This change is affecting us as educators in the United States and even in rural Idaho.

In Schools, the last section focused on reforms occurring today. It addressed Nation at Risk, No Child Left Behind and other reforms that were “needed” in education.  The image that comes into my mind is one of the Common Era, a single room school house with a small steeple atop it.  As we have progressed through each school era, another room has been built on to this simple idea.  At first those rooms are resemblances of the original and blend in very well.  The closer we get to modern times the more un-similar these additions look, there are places were we have torn down an addition to rebuild it, and yet the original foot print is still there.  In most cases the addition has added to the usability, the purpose and the intent of the school.  But there are some cases where the addition is for looks and has no function or practicality.  This image of the remodeled and added to school house connects to a quote from Diane Ravitch, “The real object that we should be striving for in this country, is to have not only balance between excellence and equity, but a sense of their being connected.  That you can’t have one without the other” (212). 

The challenge in schools is to find this balance and equity, this matters to teachers and to me because we need connection to schools- all those rooms need to fit and be functional.  We are unbalanced when good things happen in schools that go unrecognized, forgotten or are perceived by the government as not working so we are told to stop and start again.  Each new piece of government policy leads to disjointed additions on to our school house, a disjointedness that affects our balance.  Funding, political philosophy, etc impact our ability to be balanced.  If one school receives more funding that another in the same geographic area, a school could be perceived as elitist.  We don’t want elitist schools, but how to do we avoid it with so much money tied to education policy and practice?  Is there a way to reform American schools without causing more elitism than already exists? Or is elitism something that we have to deal with in order to find school systems that work?

In Flat world, Hammond addresses a difference between the US and other great nations as a balancing of diversity, educational expectations and local versus national control.  The United States contains great diversity that other nations don’t necessarily embrace and educate.  The United States has high stakes testing tied to teacher performances, student success and the fate of the entire educational system in the United States.  This is what we as Wright Fellows are changed with figuring out.  We are charged with finding where we belong in this search for balance.  Are we there to “rock the boat” as tempered radicals or are we there to sit back, make some side comments and maybe a suggestion or two?  We are in schools that need to hear our take on reforms and finding balance in our quest for better schools in Idaho and the United States.  Another balance we need to work to find is the balance within student expectations and their connections to the outside world.

Linda Darling Hammond wrote “Furthermore, students’ willingness to commit to school and their own futures is interwoven with their perceptions about whether the society, their schools, and their teachers believe they are worthwhile investments- perceptions that engage them to invest in themselves” (30)

Students want everyone around them to care for them, their successes, their failures and the future.  You could argue that teachers want the same idea.  Teachers want to feel that their schools, society and students believe in their accomplishments and ability to teach.  Is this the perception of education today? Is this the balance we are experiencing or are expecting?  Teachers and students have so many different expectations of schools but there is one central ideology- an educated population prepared to lead our nation politically, economically, and yes, educationally.  In order for this preparation to occur we need to understand the reforms being passed by our nation and the comparisons we are experiencing with other nations.

I feel as if schools are being subjected to laws that are not “balanced”.  Reforms have taken place constantly in the past century and yet time is not given for those reforms to be enacted.  13 years, kindergarten to 12^th grade: that is the minimum amount of time long reforms need to be given to see if they are working or not. Note it says “working” not successful, because it will take double that time to judge success.   Reforms must be meaningful, reforms must include all parties, reforms must serve a specific purpose and if they don’t- they are not meeting a need.

So what does this mean to us? Well, as stated previously it is up to us to decide our roles in changing education, by either rocking the boat or sitting back and making a wave every now and then.  If we seek to help our students be successful in the world to come, a future we are not completely aware of; and then we must apply information gained from other industrial nation reforms and see where it fits into our educational structure.  We don’t need to adopt another nation’s educational system.  Instead we need to look at what works and see how it might fit.  Those looking at these changes should be teachers, those in the trenches charged with shaping this next generation of Americans.  We are in the trenches and need to pursue our passion of education and if that means adding another room to the school house, so be it.  But maintain functionality, uniqueness, practicality and the appearance of a connected American philosophy of education