Reading School: The American Story of Public Education was a
thought provoking process for me. I
really enjoyed learning about the history of education in our country and was
especially surprised at how our current model of an “equal and excellent”
education for all is in its infancy.
Taking into consideration the relatively short amount of time that our
schools have functioning since the Civil Rights movement and IDEA, I think it
is remarkable at the progress we have achieved.
However, for all of this achievement, our educational system is widely
regarded as a failure. This perceived failure
is something that I take personally and I tend to be very defensive of the hard
work that goes into making our education system the best it can possibly
be. One of my defense mechanisms is to
justify our poor performance on international standardized tests. One of my defense mechanisms is to cite the “fact”
(I use quotations because I am not sure if this is just one of those things
that I have been told ore repeated enough times that I think it is true or if
it really is true) that many of the countries who perform higher than we do aren’t
really comparing apples to apples. Many
of these high performing countries don’t serve their disabled populations an
education and thus do not test them. Additionally,
many countries track their kids down different educational pathways and thus
only their college bound students are tested on the international tests. Assuming this is true; it could explain a
large portion of the discrepancy in outcomes between our two countries. I understand that this argument hinges on my
very limited knowledge of history and world cultures. However, it does lead me to two interesting
questions.
1.
Are excellence and equality in education somewhat
mutually exclusive?
Is it possible to have an educational
system which is the most excellent while simultaneously being the most
equitable, or is there a tradeoff? It
seems logical to me that a country could gain some excellence by sacrificing
some equality. American test scores
would most certainly go up if they decided to exclude certain portions of the population
(literal addition by subtraction) however this wouldn’t be an ethical thing to
do. Likewise, America could gain a lot
on the equality (depending on how you define equitable) front if it were to
divert funding to certain areas. I do
believe that it is possible to offer both an excellent and equal education, but
I understand that just because I believe it is so does not make it true.
2.
I have always thought of the United States as
one of the world leaders from a civil rights standpoint. Will other countries have a civil rights
movement similar to our own and how will such a movement affect their educational
systems?
I wonder if countries (who
currently don’t) will decide that they need to practice the inclusion of their
disabled population in the same way we do in the United States. It will most certainly make their educational
systems at least initially less efficient.
How will this affect their test scores?
If a country has no where to go other than up, they do not report their findings truthfully, while with holding select groups from their findings we will never see our scores be higher. As long as we are choosing to include EVERYONE, hold them accountable for the same information, while being truthful about the scores, and not the backgrounds of the children or their intelligence levels. We won't be able to compete at a National Level with a standardized test. It is really unfortunate, but I think we will see this trend. However, I think as a nation we will benefit because we are wanting to educate all of our children not just the select few.
ReplyDeleteYes, there is exclusivity in equity and equality. I dump as much of my own personal equity as possible into my classroom to make is as equal as possible. My husband says I work just to support my teaching habit. I want my students to experience the most well-rounded education as possible. I provide cultural experiences with cooking, art, music, and other expository writings to compare to the curriculum. I am constantly creating hands-on projects where I purchase all of the supplies to create them. I purchase electronic and technology equipment to enhance small group learning; mp3 players, burning CDs, audio books, novel sets, games, sports equipment, scientific kits and tools.
ReplyDeleteThe largest equity I dump into my classroom is time, the one commodity I can never get back. Exposure to other cultures and ideas is one of the things my students do not have access to. It takes so much time to create units where the kids can guide their own learning. It is easy to get up in front of the class and lecture; to facilitate and let them go on their own path with guidance requires so much more organization and prep time. I am typically the first one to the building, 6:00 a.m., and the last to leave at who knows what time, because it is never the same.
My students are also very extrinsically motivated; however, I am trying to get them to transition over to intrinsic motivation. It is a difficult and physically draining to make this transition when you don’t have the parental support. Our parents tend to bribe their children to do everyday things. The kids have this, “what’s in it for me,” attitude. I don’t know how the parents can afford to pay the bribes, other than we, the taxpayer, is feeding their child. We have created the equity problem within our government and homes, which has spilled over into our classrooms.