Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Can U.S. Students Compete Globally?
We are opening this discussion up to U.S. students because what we are experiencing in Norwalk is not just about the Norwalk curriculum. We need to look at the national picture to understand the problem. The researchers ranked the U.S. 32nd out of 65 nations participating in the PISA exam for math proficiency and 17th out of 65 for reading proficiency. (Harvard's Program on Education Policy & Governance, 8/11.) The United States spends approximately 50% more per pupil than the average per pupil expenditure in Western Europe and 40% more than Japan. What is the problem? Is it the curriculum? Are we wasting our time discussing curriculum when there are much more serious problems that are not being discussed? I ask you all to think about this. Is it really about the curriculum? Why are our children not testing well?
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Unlike many other nations, the U.S. has a firmly entrenched industrial-educational complex that profits by the rapid introduction of new and different curricula. As a result, we create a culture in which children will doubtful have a consistent curriculum in any subject area from grade K to grade 12. These inconsistencies are largely to blame for poor test performance.
ReplyDeleteIt's a complicated problem which has been widely discussed elsewhere. Helping our students compete globally requires fixing the broken parts of our education system, and includes getting more parental involvement, relying less on standardized testing, getting more teachers' aides, and empowering teachers in general.
ReplyDeleteQuick example: you've got 3 kids in your class who have an exceptional aptitude for math. Allow the teacher to pull them together once a day to work on extra challenging math problems while the rest of the class is working on the basics.
Another example: you've got a few kids in class who repeatedly cause discipline problems and disruptions in class. Allow the teacher to pull them out once a day to talk to a counselor about what's causing them to act out, and about repercussions from their actions, to contact parents, and/or to give them extra help in whatever subject they might need.
The factory model of education doesn't work. Kids have different aptitudes, backgrounds, levels of parental involvement, etc. You can't just box them up together and give them all the same work and expect them to be happy and successful.
Central problem in comparing the US to other nations- our country is diverse. In Norwalk alone, our students speak and must have help in English, Spanish, Arabic, French, and Creole (among other languages)-- not to mention the many students who speak dozens of other languages at home.
ReplyDeleteEducating a diverse community is not cheap- but the strength it creates by building upon the best of all the peoples who unite to form the community is well worth the cost.