Playing Catchup

 Playing Catchup!

 

Many years ago, William Proxmire, a U.S. Senator, regularly announced his Golden Fleece Award.  This award was given to research activities that seemed to be a waste of the taxpayers’ money since they sought to research that which was abundantly and obviously known.  I was recently reminded of the Golden Fleece Award when I read the results of a research project that determined during virtual learning school attendance was down dramatically and so was achievement.   Who couldn’t have figured that out in about ten minutes?   I hope there wasn’t much money wasted on that.

Now we do know that federal and state governments are doing what they always do in the face of a problem- throw money at the problem before they have begun to determine either a solution or the cost of that solution.

Anyone who has paid attention has understood that attendance would be down.  Staring at a screen all day for instruction without personal interface becomes flat out boring.  Add to the fact that a parent might be in another room doing his/her own work from home activities means little to no supervision.  Some older kids have even gotten jobs.

If you are a teacher, teaching from a Chromebook is not your best way to display your teaching abilities.  Had less interesting teaching, the boredom of the screen, and lots of more interesting things to do with that screen than follow along with the teacher and you have a recipe for lower achievement.

School systems now have more money than they know what to do with.  In Maryland, besides all of the federal money flowing in, the Kirwan Commission money will soon be showing up in the school system coffers.  Maryland has a new young State Superintendent who has never had supervisory responsibility for  a school system before.  He will need to answer to the Maryland State Board of Ed as well as to the Oversight Board for the Kirwan money.

Spending more money on the same teachers, adding more teachers and writing policy papers isn’t going to do it.

All of this money gives us the opportunity for an entirely new paradyme of what public education needs to look like.  We should begin with the consumers-that would be the kids and recent graduates.  We need to be willing to really flip the system and do something very different.  Of course, the unions will be against any changes but playing catchup will just not be enough in this situation.  Or we could spend lots of money researching what we already know.