Two mathematicians, Sol Garfunkle and David Mumford, respond to the concern that America is faring poorly in our math education:
All this worry, however, is based on the assumption that there is a single established body of mathematical skills that everyone needs to know to be prepared for 21st-century careers. This assumption is wrong. The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.
Today, American high schools offer a sequence of algebra, geometry, more algebra, pre-calculus and calculus (or a “reform” version in which these topics are interwoven). This has been codified by the Common Core State Standards, recently adopted by more than 40 states. This highly abstract curriculum is simply not the best way to prepare a vast majority of high school students for life. […]
In math, what we need is “quantitative literacy,” the ability to make quantitative connections whenever life requires (as when we are confronted with conflicting medical test results but need to decide whether to undergo a further procedure) and “mathematical modeling,” the ability to move practically between everyday problems and mathematical formulations (as when we decide whether it is better to buy or lease a new car).
Garfunkle and Mumford (and really, they couldn’t be better named for two mathematicians) make an excellent argument against traditionalism in education, and the picture they later paint – of a holistically minded, culturally relevant math curriculum – just warms my heart. This is what school should be like.
A great piece by Prakash Nair, responding in Education Week to the never-ending call for “education reform”:
Lost in all this hand-wringing is the most visible symbol of a failed system: the classroom. Almost without exception, the reform efforts under way will preserve the classroom as our children’s primary place of learning deep into the 21st century. This is profoundly disturbing because staying with classroom-based schools could permanently sink our chances of rebuilding our economy and restoring our shrinking middle class to its glory days.
The classroom is a relic, left over from the Industrial Revolution.
Indeed, this is perhaps the most fundamental flaw of all education reform efforts in the past several decades, while at the same measure the most stubbornly – even vehemently – ignored. Go back and watch Waiting for Superman, for instance – the documentary widely heralded “to save public education.” You won’t find even a passing consideration in it of the most fundamental elemental of education: individual students and learners. Nor will you find any challenge to the past industrial-era mindset of education as a passive “conveyor belt”-like consumption of knowledge – in fact the documentary almost criminally perpetuates this destructive model, while ignoring a vast decades-old body of scientific research that proves that learning doesn’t happen this way.
Instead of considering this most basic element of education, Waiting for Superman – like so many education reform debates and efforts before it, and I’m sure many more to come – settles for skirting the issue and blowing around more hot air. It seems almost dogmatically fixated on the relatively superficial things in public education, like teachers’ unions and rubber rooms, student tracking and charter schools – incorrectly labeling these things as the root problems of (or, in some cases, solutions to) our system, without even stopping to consider whether it could be something more fundamental.
That’s the problem in the “education reform” world: We’re not lacking for magic answers, for solutions that we’re sure will “fix the system”. The thing is they’re useless, though, and will continue to be, so long as we avoid asking the right questions.
Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important; force them to plead for their natural right to the toilet and they will become liars and toadies; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even.
Carol C. Burris, a high school principal in New York, and Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center:
Evaluating teachers based on their students’ test scores is the newest education-policy fad. It has a gut-level appeal that’s usually articulated as “rewarding success.” The argument is that teachers (and principals) should be judged on their students’ test results, with good educators promoted and bad ones fired. In truth, lots of misguided educational policies have a gut-level appeal. Although the ‘gut’ may feel good when such policies are enacted, the unintended consequences do not feel quite as good, especially when they are felt by our students.
Burris and Weiner share five excellent reasons why student test scores are not only a poor indicator of teaching ability, but actually harmful to the education process. They also get bonus points for using the story of high school teacher Jamie Escalante (who served as the inspiration for the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver”) as an example.
The Montreal Gazette takes a look at the intriguing science behind boredom, while considering the damage many are now saying it has wrought on our education system. (Also, since you’re wondering: yes, you can literally die from too much boredom, according to the research.)
The science is interesting, but it seems to take a backseat in the article to the discussion about education. As the piece elaborates, many education reformers are now, in fact, citing boredom as one of the primary reasons the American public education system is in crisis. As they argue, our public schools have become boring places: places where curiosity and interest are stamped out in favor of studying a required curriculum and whatever may appear on a standardized test.
McGill University professor of education Jon Bradley puts the blame squarely on political oversight of the education system.
“Teachers haven’t made it boring,” he said. “Politicians have made it boring. Every time there’s a crisis in education, we engage in a kind of fundamentalism. We say: ‘We’ve got to get back to basics.’ In every other profession we rely heavily on new research. Education is the only profession where we go: ‘What happened 50 years go is better.’ “
Schools will continue to be places of boredom, these education reformers warn, until we begin to embrace an inquiry model of learning; allow for play and exploration in schools; and enact other meaningful educational reforms.
As a point of interest: John Taylor Gatto appears later in the article as well, building upon the historic fact – popularized by Sir Ken Robinson – that schools were and still are modelled as factories, outdated relics of the industrial age. Both Gatto and Robinson offer up great perspectives on education, and have tremendous books – that is, if you’re ever bored and need something to read.
The Story of Finland’s Education Success (and How to Reboot the System)
The BBC just broadcasted this new video report documenting the success of Finland’s education system and the story behind it. Finland, as a country, consistently scores at the top of international education ratings – this despite the fact that its pupils spend the fewest number of hours in class relative to the rest of the developed world.
The video is short and succinct, but captures well what makes Finland’s education system work. I’d encourage everyone to watch it. In short, though, Finland’s success really all comes down to a few things: a strong sense of trust – both in students and in teachers and schools; a pedagogy based on deep, meaningful, long-term relationships between students and teachers; and a relaxed, non-competitive culture of education, where learning is seen as natural and is valued and encouraged by everyone in society.
Those may sound like simple solutions, but, as anyone within the education field can tell you, that kind of culture takes a lot of hard work to establish – especially when you’re working against the status quo. That may be one reason why private or chartered alternative education settings – like Montessori, Reggio-inspired and Waldorf schools, and democratic schools like Summerhill and Sudbury, as well as Unschooling – often do so well; they start out with a blank slate when creating that culture, and the people whom these settings draw are either already devoted to a culture of living, breathing democratic education or are open to questioning the status quo and searching out new ways of education. That’s not the case with regular public schools, where the ideologies and frameworks of education are firmly entrenched and to question them is to go up against a vast, monolithic 100-year-old system.
That’s why, in a culture of competition and faux-accountability, with an ‘education’ system that has strayed so far from the real nature of education, alternative settings offer a chance to reboot the system entirely.
A pilot program that awarded poor NYC high school students cash based on school performance won’t be continued, city officials announced.
In an announcement at BronxWorks, a nonprofit social services agency, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pointed to a few examples of success: High school students who met basic proficiency standards before high school tended to increase their attendance, receive more class credits and perform better on standardized tests; more families went to the dentist for regular checkups.
But the elementary and middle school students who participated made no educational or attendance gains. Neither did high school students who performed below basic proficiency standards before high school.
So it turns out you can’t bribe students to learn if there is nothing in school that is intrinsically motivating for them anyway. Imagine that.
A fascinating look at one progressive private school’s attempt to do things differently amid a deluge of private school madness. It is both sad and frustrating to see the pressure schools have to deal with on a constant basis, and the compromises they’ve had to make as a result.
Former assistant education secretary Chester E. Finn Jr., commenting in the Wall Street Journal on how to improve our education system:
In the face of budget shortfalls, school districts in many parts of the United States today are moving toward four-day weeks. This is despite evidence that longer school weeks and years can improve academic performance. Schoolchildren in China attend school 41 days a year more than most young Americans —and receive 30% more hours of instruction. Schools in Singapore operate 40 weeks a year. Saturday classes are the norm in Korea and other Asian countries—and Japanese authorities are having second thoughts about their 1998 decision to cease Saturday-morning instruction. This additional time spent learning is one big reason that youngsters from many Asian nations routinely out-score their American counterparts on international tests of science and math. […]
[N]early every young American needs to learn more than most are learning today, both for the sake of their own prospects and on behalf of the nation’s competitiveness in a shrinking, dog- eat-dog world. Yes, it will disrupt everything from school-bus schedules to family vacations. Yes, it will carry some costs, at least until we eke offsetting savings from the technology-in- education revolution. But even Aristotle might conclude that this is a price worth paying.
Sadly, Finn Jr. has fallen prey to so many misplaced and inherently flawed assumptions in his eloquently-assembled article, and I only wish I had the time to go through them all. A few key points: More of the same kind of education doesn’t get you better results. Our education system is flawed, but not for lack of time our kids spend in school – rather, that our schools are wasting our kids’ natural talent. Another thing: Schooling has never necessarily equaled learning, and a child’s future success isn’t necessarily dependent on their learning classical literature or many of the other things that we still use to compile our definition of “academic performance.” In truth, that phrase – that concept of academic performance – has arguably never been a good indicator of a child’s future success, either personally or economically (which is more often the concern in these Compare-U.S.- Education-to-Other-Countries games).
The simple paradox here, as Sir Ken Robinson has written about before (and as even the business community and the likes of Seth Godin and Dan Pink understand all too well), is that in order to improve our education system and help America “compete”1 in a global market, we have to stop worrying about the big and instead concentrate on the small – individual children and how they best learn. We have to help our schools be the best they can be for each individual student, enabling them to find out what they’re good at – what their “element” is, as Robinson writes – and then helping them develop that talent. Cookie cutter education doesn’t work anymore. We have to make small change first, with an individual child-centered education, and only then the changes ripple outward and we’ll begin to see a meaningful and real difference at the macro level.
Oddly, the only good point that I see Finn making is one that he interprets completely wrong:
With continuing advances in hardware and software, the boundaries among “learning in school,” “learning in other settings” and “learning on your own” will gradually disappear, with potent implications for time spent learning, which need no longer be confined to the classroom hours stipulated in the teachers’ union (or custodians’ union) contract or the 180-day year prescribed in state law (and, in some jurisdictions, not allowed to start before Labor Day).
It’s absolutely true: there is no meaningful boundary between where learning occurs. If anything, though, that’s a reason to advocate for shortening the school days and years, not to increase them. Hopefully there will be a day when schools, as we know them, are gone forever – replaced with active learning that occurs out in the world, mediated and encouraged by mentors and a child’s community, and facilitated by local learning centers, libraries, personal technology and more.
I’ll leave you to read Cruz’s piece, but here are a few quick thoughts:
There is no “quick fix” for education. If there was, we would’ve found it long ago. Education is a continual process, not somebody’s toy model that just needs a bit of glue.
While I’ve generally been supportive of the charter school movement and structure as a mechanism that would eventually allow for and cultivate a broader spectrum of educational philosophies (as well as more focused school leadership), I don’t at all see how turning the charter school movement into what is in essence a corporate takeover of schools is a good idea. For Duncan’s education department to be serious about making charter schools work, they’ll have to lay out some pretty clear guidelines for interested parties about what is required to start up charter schools – including, I adamantly believe, a stipulation that they be nonprofit and have a clear, articulated educational vision and philosophy.
To put it another way: the charter school movement works when it’s about engendering a free gathering of pedagogical ideas and philosophies. It doesn’t work when it’s simply about free market capitalism and which corporation can make a more efficient assembly line.
We are relying on the same criteria for measuring charter school performance as what we’ve previously used with older, pre-charter schools – but not stopping to consider whether the measurement tool itself is faulty? Surely we should stop to question this. While there are many philosophies about what purpose education serves (which in turn play into the ways we choose to evaluation education), and it is valid to differ in this regard, there is still a valid and strongly research-based argument to be made that you can’t shoehorn the benefits of education into a simple congregate of school testing scores. Something more’s gotta change.
I think this starts to get at the most fundamental question that has to dominate our efforts, if we’re to be serious about education reform. That question is, simply: What is education really about?
The actual mechanism or mechanisms for how we enact education reform matter far less than the philosophy that drives our efforts. Education in Sweden and the Netherlands, for instance, operate on a partially voucher-based system but seems to consistently fulfill their cultural expectations for education – as well as rank consistently high in global education ratings. Sure, I think there’s a bare minimal chance that a voucher system would be an (immediately) good thing in the United States – but the point is, these (and other) types of mechanisms can have a wide range of effectiveness simply given a country’s cultural and philosophical expectations of education. This is why vouchers can work in Scandinavian countries, but not here in the United States.
A real answer to this “question” of the effectiveness of charter schools, and of the topic of education reform in general, would surely take more words and space than a website can offer – but I will say this: My intuition is that the real key to “fixing” education doesn’t rest at all in the mechanical elements of reform… but rather in the cultural arena, in our collective values and how we approach education altogether.
Of course nothing has stopped policymakers and education hawks from constantly asking whether lengthening the school year and making school days longer will somehow miraculously “fix” the education system, but now there’s a spectacular $100 million dollar failed attempt in Florida – where a county school district tried to do precisely this, without success – which will hopefully finally lay the matter to rest for the so-called ‘education reformists’.
According to the Florida project’s final report:
The School Improvement Zone was a three-year push at 39 elementary, middle and senior high schools throughout the county. Students participated in a specialized reading program and had a longer school day than students at other schools. They also had a longer school year.
The zone was former Superintendent Rudy Crew’s pet project. It was praised in education circles across the country.
But the investment yielded few results when it came to student performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests, according to the district analysis. And both students and teachers said they were exhausted by the extra hour a day in the classroom and the heavy workload.
Stated another way, the “longer school days, better results?” question is like asking whether buying more lemons will net you better orange juice: no, of course it won’t.
It’ll be a great day when we finally realize that “successful” education isn’t so much a matter of quantity, but quality. Just as “real” education can’t be reflected on a test, “real” school reform can’t simply be a matter of money or time.
“Education is not preparation for life, but is life itself.” – John Dewey
