The Future of High School Reform

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It never ceases to amaze me that we allow people to design educational programs who either have never taught in a classroom or haven't been there for a really long time. As I read the article in which "experts" gave their opinions on what is wrong with public education, I just kept waiting to for someone to say something about the challenge of directing classrooms of 25-35 children with varying backgrounds and abilities. Of course, it never happened.
I have been teaching high school for ten years and the issues that I have witnessed are:
1.Poor support and training for educators
2.Unrealistic child to teacher ratios
3.Attempts to lump children with overwhelming challenges and need for remediation with average to above average students. This creates one of two situations - a class that must move so slowly that the more advanced students get bored, or a significant percentage of the class that just can't keep up. Either way, those not receiving appropriate attention become tuned out and often become behavioral problems.
4.The unrealistic expectation that every child will go to college. Not all students aspire to become an academic. What ever happened to trade school training? Students want and need this in their middle and high schools. I know this because they tell me so.
5. The overreliance on standardized testing. Teach a child to bubble, and that is all they will know how to do. What ever happened to teaching them to think and to be independent?
In short, we have to stop trying to streamline education. It is not a business, it is a social institution.
Finally, and this is the saddest fact of them all, our country does not value education and it does not value children. What we seem to focus on as a culture is production and fast results. This attitude that we can churn out little academics if we just find the right system is archaic. We are no longer dealing with the Industrial Revolution, it is the age of Technology and Innovation. We need a variety of thinking styles and aptitudes.
When America finally decides to start investing in the big picture and the long-term future of its citizens, we may see change. Until then,the jargon will change but the dance will remain the same and we will continue ignore the obvious - that people are not all the same and the work force needs that diversity. There is a place for everyone and a way to fill every job with well-trained, competent people, but it is going to take more than throwing money and tests at the problem. It will take a change in the attitudes of the entire population.

Amy Utley of AK 1:15AM May 05, 2009

brown vs. board of education still exist today in a world of plenty and the race card is a precursor to acceptance. I left the teaching arena because i got tired of the expectations being lowered based on race and geography, I got tired of my graduate education being undermined because I was not white or hispanic so I left and now my I am on a crusade for the betterment of my grandchildren. I am traveling across the states teaching humanness so that we can find equity education for the masses still in the margins.

jacqueline anderson of CA 11:00PM April 22, 2009

RUlr6n Goodsite

Jonn of AL 9:58PM March 14, 2009

It is such an absurd notion that we should or could prep all our students for college. It defies the essential reality of the normal curve as well as demonstrates a complete lack of an understanding of social influences on the ability to learn.
If I asked you, Mr. Cohen, to spend 7 hours a day at a job you were incapable of doing and had no interest in, how successful would you be? If you were a slow learner, a student with learning disabilities, or a student whose life was so stressful that survival was your greatest priority, how tuned in do you think you would be to history or alegebra lessons?
There will always be a substantial percentage of students who can't do the academic work for a college prep curriculum. These are the students who, at best, tune out and drop out, or at worst, violate their own and other students' safety. These are the students who we are abusing by this misguided philosophy of "every child goes to college".
I am a secondary-level school psychologist who has worked k-12th grades. I've seen the kids we are neglecting from pre-school through high school. I've seen their misery and I've felt their anger. I've witnessed their failure and had little to offer them.
What these students need the most from their schools is educational relevancy. They need opportunities to acquire the skills valued by society and of interest to them. They need the opportunity starting in middle school to direct their curricula into vocational or academic directions.
If you, Mr. Cohen, were not academically gifted, but could take a motor apart or program a computer or style someone's hair, wouldn't you invest more in a program that follows your talents and interests than tries to prepare you for college?
Let's get real with our students. If we do, our outcomes just might improve!

Rebecca Wilson of 8:31PM December 22, 2008

What is even more amazing in schools is the political correctness that has taken hold. No one finishes first anymore because that might hurt someone elses fragil ego. No one finishes last because they might be hurt.
Give me a break. In the real world you have to learn how to get knocked down and get back up. Our schools need to teach our kids how to compete in the market place. Currently, they do not, because of these wind blown people you quote.
Ask them if they ever worked for a living? Ask them, if they ever had to get up early and work late? Ask them, if they grew up poor and learned from their parents mistakes?
Come on, get on with it. Good students start with good parenting and study skills. Most of our parents are to busy blaming everyone else, but themselves. There are some good educators out there.. lets promote them, give them more money and get on with it.

M. Speck of NJ 9:14PM December 13, 2008

As stated by one of the "experts," if high schools must prepare students for post-secondary studies in the workplace, at technical colleges, in 4-year college programs, etcetera, then why have a division between K-12 and Higher Education? There needs to be a Pre-school to Graduate/Professional School seamless connection. Higher Education is generally doing a better job than K-12; so I think Higher Education should take the lead in reforming K-12 systems -- especially high school education. If higher education was controlling high schools, students would be better prepared to do college work (some students starting college classes while still in high school). Also, higher education officials would not dictate that students should be segregated into age cohorts and not be allowed to accelerate through the curriculum. Let the talented and hard working students accelerate according to their ability rather than have to wait for the calendar to allow them to move to the next level (which is the current standard in K-12).
Virtual schooling is going to exponentially facilitate P-20 collaboration. More states need to use technology more effectively to facilitate and accelerate this trend/opportunity. Virtual schooling is certainly not for all students, but it is a critical component analogous to online financial services and online shopping.

Samuel Lewis of LA 4:13PM December 10, 2008

If you want heat your home, find some education experts. The hot air will keep you toasty.
If you want good ideas regarding education, don't even bother asking education experts. They often have done little else apart from spouting unsupported opinions.
I remember having an education school professor telling us that, unlike 40 or 50 years ago, the high tech jobs of the future for which we are supposedly preparing our young today will not require skills like reading and math. The most important thing, he asserted, was that they all learn cooperation skills. This is a guy who never held a job outside of teaching English to HS students, and then to teaching teaching to adults.
The number one step in improving American Education is in dethroning the various experts out there. The average village idiot has a better grip on education than the average education expert.

A Physics Teacher of VA 12:26PM December 10, 2008

In order to produce best quality we have to start from the beginning.This is what is happening in the education.
If a child gets a 65 or 75 grade and pass the class how this
child is going to survives the next levels.The next class is going to affect him so badly that he will need to work so hard, spend more time studying before and after school. if reach 90 would be a miracle. Unless get supports from the parents and
a effective pedagogy from the teachers. To emphasize in teaching and learning create a feedback communication
more math, more science,and create an interactive class.
Not a lecture where teachers just want to show up.
Each student has a great potential to success.
You sink or swim.Keep in mind dear parents education start at homeat early stage and keep on.

Rico of NY 10:10PM December 05, 2008

i would agree that that is the case. and yes the schools don't know how to deal with it, as well as the parents. but it needs to be addressed, schools need to be more rigorous so that the kids have less time to goof off. some kids take ap courses in high school, and they are challenged, but for those students who don't take those courses they have way too much time on their hands, beginning in grade school. kids don't help out with their parents occupations like they did a generation or two ago, and after school time is spent too often in front of a screen where society encourages them to stay right there, sit, eat, buy, talk trash, become more selfish. any other influences parents try to engage their kids in becomes a battle as the kids have a herd mentality and want only to be doing whatever it is that the majority of the other kids are doing. we all have to change our way of thinking regarding what is right and to whom we are doing favors, i see children's futures being sacrificed to the benefit of commercial corporations. but it will only lead our country down, to nobody's benefit.

debra Kirk of AK 5:30PM December 05, 2008

In my experience, many students who are low performers have an attitude that is focused on personal gratifciation. They are the most affluent group of young people we have ever had and have used their affluence to engage in the cypber world, entertainment, socializing and the like. As a result they are gratification junkies. Getting an education interferes with their personal gratification and they spend much of their time in school planning what to do once the school day is over and they can get back to what they see as important. The school system is not well prepared to deal with that issue nor are parents.
For the most part, efforts in the schools to modify behavior have not worked very well. Some educators are the exception because they can relate to the mind set of their students and find ways to capture them into thinking that an education is of great value. For many of the students who are not proforming well, that is one of the biggest challenges.
In my experience, when I have taught teachers how to change the attitudes of even some of their most challenging students, academic performance has improved markedly.

Loyd Inglis EdD of CA 4:39PM December 05, 2008