I have been running into more and more opinion pieces about the education system in the USA lately…These sorts of articles have been changing lately, instead of boilerplate and education buzzwords, I see more evaluation of the whole industry…warts and all. I personally think that this is a very good sign.
About the only trope I see in current use to decry any of these sorts of discussion topics relates to the ‘string up the teachers’ rebuttals… You might consider who may have been proselytizing these sorts of ideas (if they actually were put forth…), as well as who is presenting these ‘rebuttals’…
In any case, I have a several very interesting links for you to consider…the first is an article considering the impact and behavior of teachers unions over the last several decades (it is currently the 800 lb. Gorilla in the room). The second article brings up the idea (which I have seen several times in the last week) that learning and education are not synonymous, and that learning is the real objective…
Finally, I have a rather simple idea…how to YOU define what the purpose of education is? Nothing more than that… I think that every teacher out there, every education student, and every administrator in the education industry should be able to deliver a cogent answer to this question…if not right now…soon!
Teachers Unions: agents of change, or an oppositional force?
http://www.studentsfirst.org/blog/entry/teachers-unions-agents-of-change-or-an-oppositional-force
Your research has shaped education policy for decades. Why did you choose to study the teachers unions?
Two reasons, really. The first is that the teachers unions are by far the most powerful groups in American public education. They shape the schools from the bottom up, through collective bargaining contracts that — through countless restrictive work rules — put the union stamp on virtually every aspect of school organization. And they shape the schools from the top down, by using their formidable political power—arising from millions of members, tons of money for campaign contributions, and armies of activists in virtually every political district in the country—to influence the policies and reforms of state and national governments. No other groups can exercise this kind of far-reaching power. They are in a league of their own.
The second reason is that, precisely because the teachers unions are so extraordinarily powerful, any effort to understand the public school system — to understand why the schools are organized as they are, why their performance has been so disappointing, and why reforms have failed to bring much improvement — needs to pay serious attention to the unions and their hugely consequential roles in collective bargaining and politics. Yet they have barely been studied. For decades, in fact, education researchers have done almost nothing to make them a focus of systematic inquiry. My book is an attempt to change that.
What are the key findings of your research?
This is a very long book — ten chapters, 500 pages — that is heavy on detail and documentation and covers a great deal of ground, from the unions’ early emergence to their nature as organizations to their exercise of power in collective bargaining and politics to their profound impacts on education reform. But throughout, the voluminous facts bear out one very general theme: the teachers unions use their power to promote the job interests of their members, and these interests often lead them to take actions — and to shape the schools in countless ways — that are not good for children.
Many overseas school systems that out-perform us have high rates of unionization. Many US "right to work" states have low-performing school systems. Why is there no apparent correlation between unionization and school performance?
Student achievement is subject to many influences and has many causes. As anyone who has ever taken a statistics class can testify, the only way to determine the impact of collective bargaining on achievement is to control for all the other factors that also appear to be relevant, so that the partial effects of collective bargaining alone can be isolated. For reasons I won’t go into, this is very difficult to do, especially when making comparisons across countries or states. Absent such a controlled analysis, however, it can be very misleading to simply look at levels of collective bargaining and levels of student achievement — and nothing else — and draw conclusions. The presence of a simple correlation between the two may mean absolutely nothing.
Finland, for example, has collective bargaining and also has high levels of achievement — but this tells us nothing about the causal impact of collective bargaining on achievement. Countless other factors — for example, Finland’s small size, homogeneous culture, investment in education, virtual absence of poverty, and so on — are doubtless contributing to this country’s high level of achievement, and they are simply being ignored. It is entirely possible that, if Finland had no collective bargaining at all, its student achievement would be even higher.
The #1 …. (Myth in education)
http://ddeubel.edublogs.org/2011/05/01/the-1-myth-in-education** Not your ordinary, endless list – just what’s number 1.
Learning = School = Education
Learning is not 9 to 3, Mon. to Friday. Learning is not with a teacher and sitting at a desk. Learning is not a diploma or certificate. Learning is 24/7, learning is in our own hands, and learning is possible without school.
Slowly the myth that learning only takes place in school is being eroded through the pervasiveness of new technologies allowing people to connect and access knowledge. The library is much more powerful than it once was. People are waking up to the concept of self-directed learning, independent study……. Soon we won’t be asking, “So, what college did you go to?” but rather, “So, where did you learn about “x”?”
What is the purpose of education?
http://www.ictsteps.com/2011/05/what-is-the-purpose-of-education
I attended the first summit for instigators in Sheffield, UK and it certainly was an occasion that had all attendees discussing, questioning, answering and most importantly thinking. I have spent to day thinking about what that purpose is and to be honest, even though I offered my own response on a blog post the event yesterday gave me more to contemplate. And so it should. We must all question what education means to each and every one of us, in so doing we can begin to grasp how we can improve education today.
I am not trying to improve education for tomorrow because we have no idea of what tomorrow requires from education but I can surely try to improve what we offer today. Will you?
