What's it all about?

What’s it all about?

Our educational system is all about raising standards.   This almost universally means pushing academic goals on younger and younger students.   It also means adding more tests to measure whether or not our kids can be pushed to meet those new higher standards.

Some of the new standards require kids to perform at a level that is greater than typical cognitive development for their age range.  No matter, it is good for business to push higher standards and it is good for politicians as well.

We insist that all kids learn intermediate algebra.  Let’s just forget the fact that few will ever use what they have learned again.  We gorge on math and diet on social studies.  We have all but forgotten character in our students, our studies and in our national conversations.  Joseph Gauld, founder of the Hyde Schools, recently received the Sanford N. McDonnell Award for Lifetime Achievement in Character Education.  The award recognizes an educator’s commitment to teaching character. 

The academic content we teach our kids may be gone by the end of the day or the school year.  It may do them no good throughout their lives.  Yet good character will stand by them throughout their lives.  Citizens of good character will enhance our nation.  Almost all of our people carry around pocket computers known as mobile phones.  But seldom use the fact-checking potential they give us.  We accept what we are told no matter how preposterous.  Parents defend their children who have bullied others instead of seeking guidance as to how they can rectify this terrible behavior.  We do not value character so it is little surprise that there is so little of it.  Character development is the whole of what we should be doing in our schools.  Academic skills are a subset of that.

What’s it all about?  Unfortunately, schools have become places to navigate so we can get a job or into the college we want.   We have all but forgotten Aristotle’s words, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”   Until we believe this all the rising test scores will do nothing to give value to a high school diploma.

As Compared to What?

As Compared to what?

Let’s say you have a 3.9 grade point average and you are about to graduate from high school.  A 3.9 out of a possible 4 point should put you in a pretty good position for a high graduating class ranking and a leg up on your college admissions.  Well that all depends.  Suppose your parents were very concerned that you would get a good education.  So they really mortgaged themselves to buy a house in a great school district- all so you could go to a top notch public school.  It worked!   Your school is great.  The kids are all high achievers and you got a great education.   Now it is time to go to college.  You could certainly use some scholarship help and admission to a top flight college.  But wait, that smart strategy of your parents may well backfire.   Your 3.9 average is amazing; but it just turns out that a lot of other kids have high averages too.  Your graduating average may be carried to the second and third decimal point.  And now by perhaps a hundredth of a point, your class ranking has dropped to number 20 or even 25.  Forget a scholarship, you will be fortunate to be offered admission at some of the premier colleges.

Now let’s suppose another scenario.   Your parents can’t afford the high priced housing in the classy school district.  So you make do in a lesser academic environment.  In this example the you also earns a 3.9 grade point average.  But because this school does not have as many high achievers, your 3.9 will rank you right up there at the very top of your class.  This ranking puts you in a spot to not only gain admission but  perhaps get a scholarship even though your 3.9 was not earned in a more challenging academic environment. 

What is wrong with this picture?  A lot of high schools, particularly those in elite school districts are asking the question of whether or not announcing a student’s class ranking puts that student at a disadvantage against less competitive high schools.

In highly competitive high schools, students are unwilling to take harder courses so they will have a higher GPA.   Other schools have begun weighting grades in honors or advanced placement course so that a B in a physics class could count more than an A in chorus.  Consequently, students are not taking courses with lower point value. 

Colleges are concerned about too many high schools dropping class rankings because college rankings are often based on the number of students who enter as freshman and whoare in the top 10% of their graduating class. 

Somehow or other things have become very confused.  The notion that kids go to school to learn and to explore what interests them has been sacrificed to rankings, percentiles and how US News and World Reports on colleges.  Maybe we could skip not just class rankings but grades as well and concentrate on learning.  After all, in the end, just who are we comparing these kids to?

Blame game and state control

Lot of Blame, Little Control

If you are the governor of a state, education is a big deal.  You get to brag about how well your state is doing on the national exams or you get to offer excuses about why things are not as bad as they look.  But the fact is, the governor has slim to no control over local education.  In most jurisdictions, the selection of the local school board is a local decision either by election or appointment.  It is the local school board that hires the school system superintendent.  Several governors have become tired of the blame with none of the gain.  Not surprisingly, they think they can do it better.

Five states, Louisiana, Tennessee, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina all have some form of a state controlled school district within the state.   Mostly these mini-districts are made up of failing schools.  Louisiana is the exception.  After Katrina New Orleans public school system was destroyed both literally and figuratively.  It was slowly rebuilt from a collection of charter schools that opened after the storm.  By 2019, all of these state controlled schools will return to the management of the local school district. 

The other four states that have state controlled districts have included those schools which were considered failing schools under No Child Left Behind or will be under the new Every Student Succeeds Act.  Most of these take-overs have a clause that will end the operation of the district within a fixed time frame.

Now Georgia wants to amend it state constitution to allow for a more aggressive role by the governor and the state in the state’s educational system.  The amendment has created some strange bedfellows.  The teachers’ union, the state school boards’ association, the Georgia PTA and some conservative Republicans are all against the amendment.  On the other side is the GOP Governor Deal who has both proposed and championed  the state run district that is modeled on those developed in both Louisiana and Tennessee.  His allies include the state chamber of commerce and some Democrats in the legislature.  The pro-amendment side has raised 1.2 million dollars.   The National Education Association that is the umbrella group for the local teachers’ union is coughing up 1.5 million to fight the amendment.  Teachers are concerned that the new district will be made up of charter schools and that will deplete the union membership. 

What is interesting about all this is that the primary issue seems to be one of control.   Nowhere in the other five states with some state controlled districts nor in the Georgia issue is there any evidence that the children in the state controlled districts actually learn more nor are there proposals for how that will happen. 

Maybe there is a good reason governors do not control local education.