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I claim no credit for the title, which comes from this Education Week piece by Ronald Wolk, who was a co-founder of The Chronicle of Higher Education and founder of Education Week, and is chairman of Editorial Projects in Education, which puts out both Education Week and Teacher Magazine. T
After nearly 25 years of intensive effort, we have failed to fix our ailing public schools and stem the "rising tide of mediocrity" chronicled in 1983 in A Nation at Risk. This is mainly because the report misdiagnosed the problem, and because the major assumptions on which current education policy-and most reform efforts-have been based are either wrong or unrealistic.
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- the people running public eduation and leading the "reform" movement
- are so committed to a strategy of standards-based accountability that different ideas are marginalized or stifled completely.
- Assumption One: The best way to improve student performance and close achievement gaps is to establish rigorous content standards and a core curriculum for all schools-preferably on a national basis.
- expectations should reflect the values of the family and society-doing one's best, obeying the rules, and mutual respect-and not simply the archaic academic demands of college-admissions offices.
- Standards don't prepare students for anything; they are a framework of expectations and educational objectives.
- States have devoted nearly 20 years to formulating standards to be accomplished by a conventional school model that is incapable of meeting them. We will make real progress only when we realize that our problem in education is not one of performance but one of design.
- Assumption Two: Standardized-test scores are an accurate measure of student learning and should be used to determine promotion and graduation.
- It is probably a safe bet that the majority of them, even after 16 years of formal education, could not pass the tests they require students to pass.
- The performance-based assessment used in many charter schools (and now statewide in Rhode Island and New Hampshire) is better.
- Assumption Three: We need to put highly qualified teachers in every classroom to assure educational excellence.
- Assumption Four: The United States should require all students to take algebra in the 8th grade and higher-order math in high school in order to increase the number of scientists and engineers in this country and thus make us more competitive in the global economy.
- Assumption Five: The student-dropout rate can be reduced by ending social promotion, funding dropout-prevention programs, and raising the mandatory attendance age.
- The key to graduating is learning; the key to learning is motivation.
- personalize education, encourage students to pursue their interests and build on that enthusiasm, and offer multiple opportunities to learn instead of a one-size-fits-all education.
- It is neither wise nor necessary to bet the future on a single reform strategy,
- I am also a bit critical in his framing that while he rightly talks about engendering enthusiasm for math in science by appropriate approaches in the lower grades (about which more anon) he ignores the damage that can be done to students and to our nation if we place too much focus on those subjects at the expense of other domains, including literature and the arts, historical and cultural knowledge, and preparation to be a citizen.
- We run a serious danger with our current obsession with math and science of producing a generation of technocrats without the ability to reflect morally, and we cheat many children of a chance to discover their true passions in fields that may not return the direct economic benefits we presume to see in science, math and technology, but without which our lives and our nation would be immeasurably less rich.
- Our overemphasis on standardized testing is limiting and destructive and really does not inform either us or those tested completely. There are other ways of assessing. Invoking interest in the early grades can be key to developing the kind of student passions we need. And we misunderstand and misapply the idea of standards.
- We should be preparing young people for life, not just for college. Not only not just for college, also not just for employment in fields as we currently imagine them. Unless we inspire students to be willing to explore beyond the boxes we can currently imagine, we will stultify the creative impulse that has been at the heart of America's genius, in science and industry to be sure, but also in the arts and politics.
- Ultimately one key part of the job of teacher is to empower those who pass through our care to learn how to learn on their own. That is far more important than any single fact or formula we manage to have them absorb. Yes, we need to teach them the different ways through which we currently organize knowledge, but should also recognize that they may come up with better ways to do so, for themselves and for society as a whole, but only if we are willing to let them take risks, to try new things and new ways of perceiving.

Top Ten Necessities for Education Reform | Psychology Today Blogs

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