I have a rather strange place in discussions about educational practices…I have a teacher’s license, but I don’t have a job as a teacher (well…substitute teacher, right now…). As a consequence of this and my decades working on other areas, I certainly can see that I am operation out of a very different place than many (or most) of my fellow teachers. This different point of view comes to the fore whenever I look into issues relates to ‘standards’.

Almost everything I see, read, and hear from teachers, teacher’s blogs, edu-blogs etc. relates to teachers feeling threatened about their jobs. It seems that the word ‘standards’ is most often conflated with standardized tests (often called ‘bubble tests, because you need a #2 lead pencil to fill in the bubbles…). It seems that NCLB (No Child Left Behind) is lurking whenever these topics come up. It seems that some states really implement using standardized (bubble) tests as a means to evaluate teacher performance. That, in itself, doesn’t sound that strange, coming from other areas of the private sector where I have always worked under a lot of scrutiny. But it certainly seems strange to use this parameter (solely this parameter) to be able to tell if a teacher is effective. Are these statistics held over some sort of time period? Since having only one or two data points in a year to evaluate someone’s performance seems to be a little draconian. If these statistics were used as rolling averages (aggregating several years to see trends), and only used in conjunction with other measurements of teacher performance, this wouldn’t really be much of a problem.

If a teacher is working at an underperforming school, one that has been underperforming for many years, it seems to me that there is something at stake here outside of the impact of any one teacher (or even many for that matter…). I understand the impetus to close non-functional schools.

So with these predicates to this little discussion taken, I was going to mention that whenever I ever hear or read about the topic of (Educational) standards on the internet, I almost always find teachers barking about: losing their jobs, how unfair it is to them, and various kinds of political rhetoric. I never hear anything about their students… (Sigh).

If you look at all the problems confronting education (and the ‘education industry”), all of the angst put forth over some of these topics seem more like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There are far bigger problems facing the future of our schools…

http://www.edutopia.org/future-school

There may be bigger storms on the horizon.

Technology will have a far bigger impact upon the whole idea of schools (as centers of education). Nowadays, schools are seen as ‘special buildings in which age cohort groups of children (i.e. students, in classes) are led by teachers to create some sort of work product, which is accumulated over time to allow the students to progress on to the next level, and so on…

In the 1980’s and 90’s computer/internet technology transformed many parts of modern culture (primarily: business, military, trade, communications, entertainment, etc.). There were some evolutionary changes in the education field too. Almost all teachers shave a computer at their desks, many classes have a chance to be presented with PowerPoint presentations, and school libraries have shrunk (i.e. books versus computers). But in reality, computers and the rest of this new technology have mostly been held back by a lot of reasonable school administrators, teachers, and school board members. Maintenance of the status quo is one of the central tenets of any bureaucracy…

http://weblogg-ed.com/2009/2020-vision-2/

It would seem that we are facing some big changes…

Be Sociable, Share!

•