So public school bashing, once confined to the ivory-tower halls of
universities and other bastions of the intellectual elite, has gone
corporate, and it's this change that has American politicians and
educators alike scrambling for solutions. It's more difficult to
ignore an economic threat than a perceived intellectual one.
Indeed, school reform advocate Phillip Schlechty predicts that, if
educators can't respond effectively to the challenge from business
leaders, the public school system as we know it will be no more; it
will be "privatized out of existence."
Solutions, Please
The proposed remedies for this problem are many and varied, as many
and as varied as dozens of education reform groups, each with its
own agenda, can make them.
President Bush has pledged to institute
standardized testing similar to his home state's
must-pass-to-graduate Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. Larry
Rosenstock, CEO of the much-lauded and tech-savvy High Tech High in
San Diego, says he would like to eliminate most, if not all,
standardized tests. Some reform groups would have computers in
every classroom; others say too many computers have bred a
mentality of PowerPoint for PowerPoint's sake, where kids are so
caught up in designing classroom presentations that they gloss over
the actual content.
Only a modicum of logic and a few visits to different schools will
show the average observer that no single approach will change
American education the way today's businesses demand. Putting
computers in the classroom can't help if teachers aren't trained -
and willing - to use them, as CUIP has painfully discovered; a 1999
study showed that 1.3 million of the nation's 3 million elementary
and secondary teachers feel only somewhat or inadequately prepared
to integrate educational technology into their teaching. Discipline
and standardized tests aren't enough if all teachers do is "teach
to the test," especially if the test is little more than basic, as
experts and
Congress currently debate. It takes a baker's dozen of
attributes for schools to teach children what they need to know for
today's world, and technology is only one of them.
But when one examines a sampling of schools that do work, a few
commonalities emerge. Successful schools are often small - say 400
to 600 students, compared with the 2,000-student behemoth high
schools in many cities and suburbs, allowing for closer
relationships and better understanding among faculty and students.
They're using technology, yes, not for its own sake but as a
learning and research tool. Many have all but abandoned traditional
textbooks for a more smorgasbord-like approach to classroom
readings. And many set students to work in small groups, rather
than individually, and keep classroom lectures to a minimum in
favor of hands-on work. The only thing pundits would call
old-fashioned about these schools is their high expectations for
student performance. Whether that's actually old-fashioned at all
is open for debate.