The announcement that Arne Duncan will be the next Secretary of Education had me thinking about my own education and what the government should do. I am a 9th grade student in the Gifted High School Program in Bellevue, WA. This means that I will be going into the IB program next year and that I have four more years to be in public schools under the helm of the government. I was able to go to a Joe Biden event on October, 19 and I said to him "Senator Biden, I have been living under the Bush Administration since I was six years old, please invest in my education because I sure have not been invested in by them." He replied "We will invest in your education, unfortunately it will be about ten years too late." This made me more hopeful for my future and that of posterity. Now, however, I am not so certain about the future of education.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was meant to encourage better education and further our educational ideals for a 21st century world, however instead of furthering education throughout the nation, it lowered the bar for passing. NCLB provisioned that all students be tested for improvement yearly from grades 3-10. A school would have to increase the percentage of students passing the provisioned standardized test every year. In addition, a school could be put under governmental control if it did not meet quotas. This is a horrible system put in place under Bush as it promotes a system which lowers the level of achievement to a minimum so that schools may pass the quota. NCLB also means that less time is spent teaching and more time is spent on testing.
I have been in few "regular" classes since 2000, so luckily I have rarely had to suffer from a dearth of teaching due to standardized tests--My teachers always assumed that if I could pass a test to get into the gifted program I could pass a test for the general student body. But there is one educational downfall I did receive, my 5th grade teacher told my class that we would not be able to study as much philosophy because that was the first year 5th graders to take that nefarious test. I was furious. Which is more important, governmental bureaucracy or the allegory of the cave? As a matter of fact, on a few of the WASL's (Washington Assessment of Student Learning, my state's yearly test) I failed to meet expectations! Was that a failure of my teachers or a failure of the test?
The Obama administration will not completely replace NCLB with something better, they will merely reform it. Arne Duncan was announced as our next Secretary of Education and the consensus on this site have been far from positive. He is in favor of charter schools, he is in favor of more testing--not just AP and IB testing, but mindless testing like the WASL--and he supports pay for performance for our teachers. Charter schools take money away from regular schools, can be used to actively endorse religion, and are a distraction from the task of creating a better education for all. Privatization of public schools into charter schools will lead to the same result as privatizing our military. Who among us supports Blackwater or Haliburton? I sure don't.
Why should teachers continue teaching students to a test instead of teaching for the sake of learning? Testing to the test is a horrible system, I was once taught off of a curriculum that was created state-wide and it was horrendous. It was repetitive, repulsive, and it did not inspire me to learn. Pay for performance teaching is a novel idea just as Churchill thought Communism would be a novel idea "in a perfect world." There is no way to judge if a teacher is teaching effectively or not. There are thousands of variables such as social economic status, home environment, and peer pressure. In fact, what is an effective teacher? One who teaches his/her students to a test or a teacher who teaches his/her students how to learn? How do we gauge teacher effectiveness? Through a test or through teacher evaluations? It is a can of worms that does not need to be--and should not be--opened.
We need reform in our educational system, but what kind of reform? Reform that hurts our teacher unions? Reform that forces gifted students into a testing situation which forces them to be educated as quickly as the slowest person in the class? NO! In <underline>The World Is Flat</underline>, Thomas Friedman notes that we need to teach our students to learn how to learn. I should be taught how to learn, not how to test. I envision a system which will tailor learning to each student. Every student should have an IEP (Individualized Education Plan), every student should be in classes that befit his/her ability, and every student should be taught how to adapt to a global world.
My school district is the only district to my knowledge that has a 1-12th grade full day gifted program. Every district in the Untied States should have a gifted program like mine which allows for better education of all. By taking gifted children out of regular classes, teachers can better focus their teaching to the remaining students and gifted students can better learn. Imagine a bunch of helium atoms bouncing around in a balloon, the helium atoms are the students and the balloon is the classroom. The greater the participation of students and the greater conversations that are created in gifted classrooms provide a feedback loop of understanding and knowledge that permeates the classroom. The atoms bounce off of each other and the exchange of information makes students learn more than in a normal class and the balloon gets further inflated with understanding.
We need real, pertinent, and substantive reform. I am afraid that Arne Duncan may not be able to bring it, but I remain hopeful.
UPDATE: I can't change a poll :(. I wanted to change it to include "Critical Thinking Skills" as a choice. I should have put that in, but forgot. Sorry everyone. That would have been my first choice too, but I subconsciously put it under philosophy.