In the December, 2010 report, Shut Out the Military: Today’s High School Education Doesn’t Mean You’re Ready for Today’s Army, The Education Trust Organization at edtrust.org finds that, even though we've had the No Child Left Behind act, that one in five high school graduates would not qualify for Army service. They can't pass the test. The statistics are even more pronounced for “young people of color.” Almost 40% of African Americans and 29% of Hispanics can't pass the test.
WASHINGTON (December 21, 2010) – Too few of our nation’s recent high school graduates – particularly young people of color – have the math, reading, science and problem-solving skills necessary for enlistment in the U.S. Army, according to a study released today by The Education Trust. This report is the first-ever public analysis of data from the Army’s Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), the test that determines if applicants qualify to enlist in the military.
(Press release http://www.edtrust.org/dc/press-room/press-release/shut-out-of-the-military-more-than-one-in-five-recent-high-school-gradua)
So, who will get the blame?
WASHINGTON (December 21, 2010) – Too few of our nation’s recent high school graduates – particularly young people of color – have the math, reading, science and problem-solving skills necessary for enlistment in the U.S. Army, according to a study released today by The Education Trust. This report is the first-ever public analysis of data from the Army’s Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), the test that determines if applicants qualify to enlist in the military.
(Press release http://www.edtrust.org/dc/press-room/press-release/shut-out-of-the-military-more-than-one-in-five-recent-high-school-gradua)
So, who will get the blame?
So why do we insist on teaching in an antiquated educational system using antiquated tools. We need a new educational policy rather than another patchwork solution that keeps teachers teaching what they are told to teach rather than a policy that allows them to teach what they should be teaching in this quickly changing world.
Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Solutions to implement change are bought as bold new visions but usually end up as tired, “same old stuff “ with a new spin? Yet, there are web pages for best practices, lesson plans, successful educational strategies, how to assess, how to engage the student, how to teach critical thinking, problem/project based education, education family support services, The International Association for K-12 Online Learning, Edutopia.com, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, professional learning communities, response to intervention; all are sound educational philosophies but they exist as separate entities, have never really been tied into a coherent whole, and are quite costly to school districts.
Could it be that education is expensive because so many people are trying to make a buck off of it? It’s like the “Pet Rock” fad of 1975. Pick up a rock , wrap it up in glowing language, market it with a pretty, expensive bow, and sell it to the first grant-given administrator who buys it based on a one- eyed testimonial published in a journal. Don’t blame the administrator. He’s forced to find the magical stone quickly. Without proper evaluation of worth, he must follow the “use it or lose it” philosophy of government financing. Every year a new fad emerges and every year millions of dollars are wasted. Couldn’t we use the money saved from the competitive fads that are re-packaged every year and put that money into supporting a “stone soup” approach, just like the Stone Soup folk story? Can’t the educational community stand tall in the education-starved United States, above the selfish hoarders of the food of knowledge, and freely mix ingredients together?
Can’t the goal be to create a new learning environment that helps student learn what they will need to know to survive this quickly changing technological world? If there is anything for certain, if we look at the “Shut Out the Military” report, our students are not now getting the skills they need.
In the mid-nineties, when our school district was awarded a “Raising the bar Grant” based on technology and technology training, a valuable lesson I learned was the need to develop critical- thinking lessons designed to engage students. The support to implement these changes into the classroom was met by the grantee with a statement that legislators only wanted to see the “boxes” in schools. This was tangible evidence to show political constituents of a job well done. Put the magical “pet rock” in place and, without support, the district ends up with cold rocks in bacterially infested water.
Our superintendent helped fund training by the Schlechty Center to assist us in our approach to changing the way we teach. Three major things were discovered; first, we needed more time to write engaging lessons for students, second we needed more time to implement these lessons into the classroom and still cover all the material we were supposed to cover, and third, we needed more evaluation time after the lesson to determine The Education Resource Organizations Directory (EROD) found at http://ed.gov “contains information on more than 3,000 national, regional, and state education organizations including many associations that provide information and assistance on a broad range of education-related topics.” A Google search for “consultant professional learning community” brings back over 6 million hits. Sure, we could narrow or change that search, but results are similar. Funny thing is, with all that assistance available, why hasn’t education really changed?
Yes, Pogo, we have met the enemy and it is us. We can't expect school districts to financially carry this heavy pot of leadership alone, nor can we expect the government with its vacillating political viewpoints to offer the continuity needed to produce effective change. We can't wait for the masses to vote for improvements in education. Educational change is imperative to the future health of our society, that’s what the Education Trust report is saying. Here’s the trillion dollar question; where does the best educational leadership come from? Who do we turn to?
We can’t keep waiting for someone else to effect change unless we are willing to change ourselves. It has to start with those closest to where education happens; the teachers. It’s not just another burden to place on teachers, it’s a burden we have to willingly initiate and accept because no one else will do it correctly except for us. It has to come from each teacher willing to toss knowledge-based ingredients, freely, into the soup and to do what is necessary to get others to believe that change must come, it must come now, and that the change will work.
Many teachers have already taken a good, hard objective look at what achievement our students need in order to make it in this world. They’ve looked at the answers but found the task to move in that direction so massive and draining, that they choose to ignore it and do what they can in their classrooms. What we haven’t had yet in the teaching profession is a ground swell of leaders to demand that our nation support real educational change, rather than the band-aid solution we’ve grown accustomed to. Those who lead do not have to be elected or hired, just willing to do the job.
Sacrifice is something teachers do all the time and change must start somewhere, so wouldn’t now be a good time to organize that sacrifice to make education better. Noted in Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat,” a good example of how a ground swell can produce change occurred in 2002 when Ebay decided to purchase PayPal, the on-line money transfer service used by a majority of Ebay users. Previously, in 1999, Ebay purchased Billpoint, to compete against PayPal, but, when Ebay patrons stayed with PayPal, Ebay made the billion dollar purchase to appease its clientele.
Here’s a potential educational change, an inclusive framework around which a ground swell could be formed. In 2002, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills was formed, backed by the U.S. Department of Education, major businesses, and the National Education Association. As of December, 2010, only fifteen states have adopted this framework on which to build educational change.
This change is based on an objective global outlook toward skills and knowledge students will need to become productive citizens in a global society. Recognized necessities for this success include core subjects, the arts, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, efficient use of technology, and involving community resources available to schools.
One would think that the NEA homepage would, at the very least, carry a link to a framework it helped design, but it does not. One would also think that at the Department of Education site, under ED Initiatives, would sponsor a link to the 21st centuryskills.org site would be found. It does not. A pot of soup takes time to cook for the flavor and nutrition to mature, but, if one can’t find a pot to put ingredients in, all those good ingredients will waste away unused.
This framework, under the right conditions, could benefit everyone; students, teachers, administrators, parents, community, businesses, and government officials. It does not have to be another fad but conditions, such as a support system that outlasts term limits or a popular vote in politics, must be in place.
Teachers should expect its own union to support a ground swell change rather than maintain a status quo of resentment and mistrust? As a former teacher, now retired after 35 years, I grew tired of always being told what’s best for education when I knew it wasn’t. I wanted us to initiate the change. I believed in the idiom that, if I wanted a thing done well, that I should do it myself. From experience, the good ideas needed not only financing, but time to plan, implement, and, with the addition of in patience, allow the change to effectively and efficiently take place.
Ingredients for Stone Soup:
1. Accept that a solid, 21st century framework is needed. Standards, assessments, professional development, how to engage students, intervention, technology integration, grading for achievement; it all must be built around the world that will be rather than the world that was.
2. Many teachers must be willing to initiate change. Get the pot boiling and supply ingredients to the mix. Collaboration and willingness to participate in something for the greater good is important. Our country’s constitution was established on that belief. King George wouldn’t make change to benefit the colonies; it took a collaborative effort to start the new nation. Like the old Kingston Trio song, “Desert Pete,” prime the pump, have faith and believe, and you’ll get all the water you can use.
3. Fight for a national education policy that demands a sharing of philosophy and practice that doesn’t cost school districts fortunes. For example, what if our federal government, instead of pouring billions into a hap-hazard use of consultants through grants, purchase the services of the private consultants to work together with all districts rather than independently selling their wares to the few districts who can afford it. If the consultants really care about education as they say they do, each of them should be willing to collaborate and get out at the grass-roots level and support teachers where they need support; at the time of implementation as well as the planning stages.
a. Encourage the confluence of ideas, design a comprehensive whole around a rather than disconnected ideas that cannot stand on their own. Bring together the consultants. Put together the best ideas into that congruent whole.
b. Get educational policies out of the hands of the politicians. For example, in Ohio, former Gov. Strickland wanted to begin a move to 21st century skill training and wanted to find ways to assess those skills.
c. Initiate educational change that, by its rightness, cannot be ignored. People will invest if the investment looks sound.
4. Buy time. Build in the time it will take to effect change. Don’t squeeze the rock to make time. It is a misconception that teachers only work an 8 hour day, work half a year, and get paid for a whole year. Yes, time is money, but time is an essential measure to cook up anything that will satisfy and nourish anyone’s educational appetite.
a. Plan for Professional learning community time. Time should be used for planning engaging lessons, differentiated lessons, critical thinking 21st century lessons, evaluation of lessons after they are taught, evaluation of student achievement, planning effective assessments, planning intervention time and activities. Also, plan how to work with on-line education.
b. Plan for intervention time with students, normally it can’t be squeezed into a normal school day.
5. Demand more from our unions to add a primary objective supporting educational initiatives that they, themselves, have already developed. I’m reluctant to use this concept but, if unions are willing to strike for better working conditions, are teachers also willing to strike for better education?
6. Do not exclude administrators, board members, and parents. For them to embrace change that is long overdue, they must believe in the magic of the soup. The magic is the willingness to break into our storehouses of knowledge and share freely ideas, plans, and materials needed for our educational soup. This includes what others outside of education have to offer.
7. Robert Fulghum wrote his observations about important lessons in life being learned in a sandbox. "Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day.” Call it research and development if you’d like, but provide for that last pinch of resolve to ensure that this pot of soup will never be empty again. Support teachers in their effort to learn new technologies and to learn how they can implement these technologies into their school environment.
Trust and communication is our stone for the soup. We have to trust that we are in this all together for the common good and communicate what’s going on each step of the way. One can read this article and dismiss it as one former teacher’s simplistic view of educational change or state that he or she has a different, a more nutritious recipe. What matters, though, is that we recognize the similarities of our mixture for change and that we start somewhere.
Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Solutions to implement change are bought as bold new visions but usually end up as tired, “same old stuff “ with a new spin? Yet, there are web pages for best practices, lesson plans, successful educational strategies, how to assess, how to engage the student, how to teach critical thinking, problem/project based education, education family support services, The International Association for K-12 Online Learning, Edutopia.com, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, professional learning communities, response to intervention; all are sound educational philosophies but they exist as separate entities, have never really been tied into a coherent whole, and are quite costly to school districts.
Could it be that education is expensive because so many people are trying to make a buck off of it? It’s like the “Pet Rock” fad of 1975. Pick up a rock , wrap it up in glowing language, market it with a pretty, expensive bow, and sell it to the first grant-given administrator who buys it based on a one- eyed testimonial published in a journal. Don’t blame the administrator. He’s forced to find the magical stone quickly. Without proper evaluation of worth, he must follow the “use it or lose it” philosophy of government financing. Every year a new fad emerges and every year millions of dollars are wasted. Couldn’t we use the money saved from the competitive fads that are re-packaged every year and put that money into supporting a “stone soup” approach, just like the Stone Soup folk story? Can’t the educational community stand tall in the education-starved United States, above the selfish hoarders of the food of knowledge, and freely mix ingredients together?
Can’t the goal be to create a new learning environment that helps student learn what they will need to know to survive this quickly changing technological world? If there is anything for certain, if we look at the “Shut Out the Military” report, our students are not now getting the skills they need.
In the mid-nineties, when our school district was awarded a “Raising the bar Grant” based on technology and technology training, a valuable lesson I learned was the need to develop critical- thinking lessons designed to engage students. The support to implement these changes into the classroom was met by the grantee with a statement that legislators only wanted to see the “boxes” in schools. This was tangible evidence to show political constituents of a job well done. Put the magical “pet rock” in place and, without support, the district ends up with cold rocks in bacterially infested water.
Our superintendent helped fund training by the Schlechty Center to assist us in our approach to changing the way we teach. Three major things were discovered; first, we needed more time to write engaging lessons for students, second we needed more time to implement these lessons into the classroom and still cover all the material we were supposed to cover, and third, we needed more evaluation time after the lesson to determine The Education Resource Organizations Directory (EROD) found at http://ed.gov “contains information on more than 3,000 national, regional, and state education organizations including many associations that provide information and assistance on a broad range of education-related topics.” A Google search for “consultant professional learning community” brings back over 6 million hits. Sure, we could narrow or change that search, but results are similar. Funny thing is, with all that assistance available, why hasn’t education really changed?
Yes, Pogo, we have met the enemy and it is us. We can't expect school districts to financially carry this heavy pot of leadership alone, nor can we expect the government with its vacillating political viewpoints to offer the continuity needed to produce effective change. We can't wait for the masses to vote for improvements in education. Educational change is imperative to the future health of our society, that’s what the Education Trust report is saying. Here’s the trillion dollar question; where does the best educational leadership come from? Who do we turn to?
We can’t keep waiting for someone else to effect change unless we are willing to change ourselves. It has to start with those closest to where education happens; the teachers. It’s not just another burden to place on teachers, it’s a burden we have to willingly initiate and accept because no one else will do it correctly except for us. It has to come from each teacher willing to toss knowledge-based ingredients, freely, into the soup and to do what is necessary to get others to believe that change must come, it must come now, and that the change will work.
Many teachers have already taken a good, hard objective look at what achievement our students need in order to make it in this world. They’ve looked at the answers but found the task to move in that direction so massive and draining, that they choose to ignore it and do what they can in their classrooms. What we haven’t had yet in the teaching profession is a ground swell of leaders to demand that our nation support real educational change, rather than the band-aid solution we’ve grown accustomed to. Those who lead do not have to be elected or hired, just willing to do the job.
Sacrifice is something teachers do all the time and change must start somewhere, so wouldn’t now be a good time to organize that sacrifice to make education better. Noted in Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat,” a good example of how a ground swell can produce change occurred in 2002 when Ebay decided to purchase PayPal, the on-line money transfer service used by a majority of Ebay users. Previously, in 1999, Ebay purchased Billpoint, to compete against PayPal, but, when Ebay patrons stayed with PayPal, Ebay made the billion dollar purchase to appease its clientele.
Here’s a potential educational change, an inclusive framework around which a ground swell could be formed. In 2002, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills was formed, backed by the U.S. Department of Education, major businesses, and the National Education Association. As of December, 2010, only fifteen states have adopted this framework on which to build educational change.
This change is based on an objective global outlook toward skills and knowledge students will need to become productive citizens in a global society. Recognized necessities for this success include core subjects, the arts, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, efficient use of technology, and involving community resources available to schools.
One would think that the NEA homepage would, at the very least, carry a link to a framework it helped design, but it does not. One would also think that at the Department of Education site, under ED Initiatives, would sponsor a link to the 21st centuryskills.org site would be found. It does not. A pot of soup takes time to cook for the flavor and nutrition to mature, but, if one can’t find a pot to put ingredients in, all those good ingredients will waste away unused.
This framework, under the right conditions, could benefit everyone; students, teachers, administrators, parents, community, businesses, and government officials. It does not have to be another fad but conditions, such as a support system that outlasts term limits or a popular vote in politics, must be in place.
Teachers should expect its own union to support a ground swell change rather than maintain a status quo of resentment and mistrust? As a former teacher, now retired after 35 years, I grew tired of always being told what’s best for education when I knew it wasn’t. I wanted us to initiate the change. I believed in the idiom that, if I wanted a thing done well, that I should do it myself. From experience, the good ideas needed not only financing, but time to plan, implement, and, with the addition of in patience, allow the change to effectively and efficiently take place.
Ingredients for Stone Soup:
1. Accept that a solid, 21st century framework is needed. Standards, assessments, professional development, how to engage students, intervention, technology integration, grading for achievement; it all must be built around the world that will be rather than the world that was.
2. Many teachers must be willing to initiate change. Get the pot boiling and supply ingredients to the mix. Collaboration and willingness to participate in something for the greater good is important. Our country’s constitution was established on that belief. King George wouldn’t make change to benefit the colonies; it took a collaborative effort to start the new nation. Like the old Kingston Trio song, “Desert Pete,” prime the pump, have faith and believe, and you’ll get all the water you can use.
3. Fight for a national education policy that demands a sharing of philosophy and practice that doesn’t cost school districts fortunes. For example, what if our federal government, instead of pouring billions into a hap-hazard use of consultants through grants, purchase the services of the private consultants to work together with all districts rather than independently selling their wares to the few districts who can afford it. If the consultants really care about education as they say they do, each of them should be willing to collaborate and get out at the grass-roots level and support teachers where they need support; at the time of implementation as well as the planning stages.
a. Encourage the confluence of ideas, design a comprehensive whole around a rather than disconnected ideas that cannot stand on their own. Bring together the consultants. Put together the best ideas into that congruent whole.
b. Get educational policies out of the hands of the politicians. For example, in Ohio, former Gov. Strickland wanted to begin a move to 21st century skill training and wanted to find ways to assess those skills.
c. Initiate educational change that, by its rightness, cannot be ignored. People will invest if the investment looks sound.
4. Buy time. Build in the time it will take to effect change. Don’t squeeze the rock to make time. It is a misconception that teachers only work an 8 hour day, work half a year, and get paid for a whole year. Yes, time is money, but time is an essential measure to cook up anything that will satisfy and nourish anyone’s educational appetite.
a. Plan for Professional learning community time. Time should be used for planning engaging lessons, differentiated lessons, critical thinking 21st century lessons, evaluation of lessons after they are taught, evaluation of student achievement, planning effective assessments, planning intervention time and activities. Also, plan how to work with on-line education.
b. Plan for intervention time with students, normally it can’t be squeezed into a normal school day.
5. Demand more from our unions to add a primary objective supporting educational initiatives that they, themselves, have already developed. I’m reluctant to use this concept but, if unions are willing to strike for better working conditions, are teachers also willing to strike for better education?
6. Do not exclude administrators, board members, and parents. For them to embrace change that is long overdue, they must believe in the magic of the soup. The magic is the willingness to break into our storehouses of knowledge and share freely ideas, plans, and materials needed for our educational soup. This includes what others outside of education have to offer.
7. Robert Fulghum wrote his observations about important lessons in life being learned in a sandbox. "Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day.” Call it research and development if you’d like, but provide for that last pinch of resolve to ensure that this pot of soup will never be empty again. Support teachers in their effort to learn new technologies and to learn how they can implement these technologies into their school environment.
Trust and communication is our stone for the soup. We have to trust that we are in this all together for the common good and communicate what’s going on each step of the way. One can read this article and dismiss it as one former teacher’s simplistic view of educational change or state that he or she has a different, a more nutritious recipe. What matters, though, is that we recognize the similarities of our mixture for change and that we start somewhere.
