Obama Effect on Education Will Be a Mirage Without Real Change

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I think Berry Stern's insights are valid. I am 27 years-old and finishing my third year of teaching art to 9th graders in a Houston public school. I was an "exceeds" teacher my first year after a very good graduate program and a determination to do well. Each year I am declining in quality as I get more and more tired between students I am informed I must constantly control and poor administrators who run the school like a military jail combination. Trying to standardize education is a huge mistake. Our students are much more talented and creative then we give them credit and I'm all for making education more organic. Please stop blaming teachers and start listening to them. Listen to students too.

Kathryn Leal-Powers of TX 5:04PM May 10, 2009

Richard Whitmire has hit the literacy nail on the head for secondary students. That is only half the picture. The other half of the story is the need for remedial/developmental math in combination with reading instruction for secondary students. Half the students should be secondary. We cannot give up on teaching them what they need.
There is great emphasis nationwide on pre-school education. This is all well and good. The only problem is that nationwide the public schools have essentially given up on helping those secondary students who need to read/cipher better. Secondary students who need special help do not get better with no focus on their problems, and they do not even stay the same. What they do is regress in reading/math.
So with the lack of emphasis on remedial reading/math at the secondary level, the extra help given to students in preschool programs becomes less beneficial. In other words, an emphasis/focus on preschool education is almost useless if there is no emphasis/focus on remedial reading/math for those secondary students who need it. All the work on getting students ready to read when they enter kindergarten is lost if there is not continued help for many of these students who need it in the secondary levels of education.
Adults can be taught to read/cipher better. So can secondary students. It will be costly to educate enough college teachers to do the job in a reduced teacher/pupil setting at the secondary schools. Then it will be costly for the school districts to hire these specialists to teach secondary students and provide them with the materials and low teacher/pupil ratios that are needed for them to be successful. But it is absolutely essential to do so to meet the needs of the secondary students. Many students need an emphasis on reading/math year after year after year with no stop when they reach the secondary grade levels.
Take a good look at the disparity between the test scores of black/white students. The disparity in test scores gets larger as the students get older and into the secondary schools because there is a lack of emphasis on reading remediation at the secondary level. In the early 1970s this disparity was near 30 percentile. But since the lack of focus on remedial reading in secondary schools year after year the disparity is currently between 45 and 50 percentile.
Also take a look at the remediation percentage of freshmen students at the colleges/universities. There is one college in the country where over 94 percent of the freshmen have to take remedial courses before they can take college courses for credit. The average percentage for remedial classes for all the freshmen students who go to public colleges/universities in some states is over 50 percent. These numbers are horrible.
Perhaps going to an extended day calendar or a year-round calendar might be beneficial to the students. Year-round or extended day calendars do cost a district more money, but it might be worth it

Paul J. Smith, Ed.D. of AR 8:04PM February 02, 2009

Whitmire is on the mark, particularly about the high schools. If we could get the high schools and middle schools right, the other issues of college accessibility,literacy rates, and rescuing black boys would likely take care of themselves.
High schools, and to a lesser extent middle schools, are unlikely to improve with the century-old structure of six-period days where students change what they do and with whom every 50 minutes in response to a bell. Too many students get lost in this chaos. Certainly, industry doesn't educate that way, nor does the military, nor do most of our competitors around the globe who bring teachers to where the students are rather than have students dash from class to class. Even in its best days, the "assembly line" comprehensive high school hasn't worked for half the students, including those who graduate yet need remediation when they get to college.
There are other approaches that seem to engage students more and make them want to get what their teachers can offer -- for example, intense, courseware-assisted, cross-disciplinary, team taught courses that use technology to save time and accelerate learning while emphasizing career guidance, workplace discipline and time management and blend the "soft" teamwork, customer service and interpersonal skills with the "hard" reading and math skills. In such programs students and faculty form a high performance work team that stays together for most of the school day and requires members to improve their collective as well as individual performance.
Certainly, teachers would need to be retrained to work in these computer-assisted, team-oriented, multi-disciplinary,continual feedback environments where they would work closely with other teachers to blend their curricula and talents(just as they would at top performing companies in industry). Yet converting schools into high performing work organizations is the key to engaging students and attracting and keeping the best teachers. To achieve high performance, high schools must replace linear assembly-line thinking with whole child thinking that integrates minds and bodies, academic and technical disciplines, multiple types of intelligence – in other words, our beings--with the way the world really is. When we are willing to embrace such changes, we will create a new generation of students who will want to expend their best efforts to get what their teachers can offer.

Barry Stern of VA 11:21AM January 31, 2009

The old song is playing once again. “give us more money and time” as the Republic sinks. We have many of the answers yet the establishment has settle into their old ways once again nothing will change.
Here are a few of today’s headlines from Britain and their education malaise: Chris Woodhead: Lessons turned into 'propaganda', Childhood in Britain 'ruined', and Parents prefer teaching children at home to failing schools.
Western civilization is sinking fast as the continuation of blaming the victims and their parents being common excuse… God Save Us.
Jimmy Kilpatrick
Edditor, EducationNews.org

Jimmy Kilpatrick of TX 7:07AM January 31, 2009

I would also like to suggest a way to improve grades, save lives, improve self respect and promote personal responsibility and it won't cost a cent - turn the T.v. off and don't toss them the car keys

R.L. Schaefer of CA 10:49PM January 30, 2009

You are right on literacy and the specific focus on boys and Black boys.
You say we know how to teach literacy, but I can't tell what you are saying. It seems to me that the models you have been advocating have been shown to increase decoding skills, but we don't have any evidence of increased comprhension skills. In fact, the evidence is that programs who just break reading down into measurable pieces are not increasing comprehension and maybe hurting it.
I've read your criticisms, but I'm still not understanding what you are advocating.
The Obama effect is not enough but the blame game hasn't worked either. You had a long hiustory before I started reading you. And that may explain your antagonism to schools as they are operated today. (and even though I believe NCLB has made things worse, clearly we have a crisis.) But I've been reading you carefully and I'd like an update on those solutions that you see as proven.

john thompson of OK 2:12PM January 30, 2009

The biggest problem with the schools of today is mainly due to the family involvement. The schools have become more daycare than education. Add the fact that most teachers are not teaching Math, English, science, but are trying to be socially correct and responsible. The reality of failure is not longer a option. The schools must support the self esteem of the students so they do feel like a failure.
The over riding belief that every student must be prepared to go to college is a failed strategy. The students that have earned their way into college should be the strategy. The students that aren't on the college path are left without options. The vo-tech programs have been gutted if not completely removed. I don't know about the rest of you but my plumber that I pay a great sum of money to him and he doesn't need a BA.
The school system is broken and needs to be completely overhauled. School choice would be a great first step. A failed school should go the way of the dinosaurs.

Larry of CA 12:53PM January 30, 2009