Darling Hammond concludes her commentary in the Flat world and Education with 5 key elements crucial to the success of a hypothetical (and hopefully eventual) reform of education in the United States. Below, I will dive briefly into each of them, but first I want to take a moment to reflect on the process of reading The Flat World as a whole.
Firstly, it has been a thoroughly validating process. I definitely consider myself to be a social justice minded individual. Personality tests or self assessment books on rivers of motivation always point me in that direction. When in the classroom, many people want to complain about how difficult teaching is or talk about what heroes teachers are. While I agree that in general teachers are overworked and can have a large impact on children, I have always felt that there was more to be done. That despite bringing work home or lying awake at night thinking about lesson plans or giving up lunches to work as a mentor at our wellness center that it just wasn’t enough. That there were bigger issues. It is validating to hear those issues laid out. It is also a little frightening. That book is already seven years old and was building off decades long trends. And the data has not changed much in the last 7 years. I see change all around and I believe it is a step in the right direction but sometimes I wonder if it is enough. How much more can we squeeze out of the current education system without deeper and wider reform? These are questions I suppose only time can answer for now. The first element Hammond discusses is Meaningful Learning Goals. Something that really sticks out about this is another striking comparison to other education systems in th world. Successful educational systems tend to focus on fewer learning goals per year, but make each one deeper and more meaningful. They focus on a broader spectrum of habits of mind and leveraging those to push deeper into content. In America, we have cut back the number of standards since the No Child Left Behind days, but have not made sweeping pedagogical changes towards reasoning and inquiry. Some sites are doing it well, some organizations are championing the 4 C’s and student driven classrooms, but on the whole it is a bay step in the right direction My site is currently pushing into Inquiry learning in Math, but even with the standard number reduction from Common Core pacing is crowded. We seem to be in a catch-22. State testing measures problem solving and reasoning, but students can’t demonstrate those if they have not learned what a scale drawing is or how to build a probability model. There is a fine line between covering all the material and focusing too much on inquiry. Students cannot be expected to “discover” certain aspects of math. Another element Hammond brought up is accountability. This one leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. No Child Left Behind was an example of accountability gone horribly wrong. It lacked the supportive element Hammond describes in other systems, such as Finland, Singapore, and Korea. Accountability cannot just be punitive, it needs to go both ways. Schools need to be accountable for growth in performance but the system needs to be accountable for providing the resources and environment to support that growth. If schools are underperforming, train educators to be better and reform curriculum. Examine financial policies or clean house if need be. Don’t strip funding away from the students who need it most. That is “hands-off” accountability and there is a reason why it is not present in high achieving systems. I believe the element of accountability goes hand in hand with strong professional support. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin. The best systems in the world invest in the professionals who run that system. Teachers endure massive pdagogical swings every decade. From inquiry based to rigor based and back again. Most teachers who don’t like Common Core make comments like “We’ve tried this before and it was no good” or “It’ll be around for a few years and we will move away from it again.” That is indicative of a larger problem. We abandon curriculum and pedagogy without training teachers to succeed with it. They are hanging onto the swinging pendulum of curriculum. It is common for districts to update curriculum every 7 years, not a bad thing, but certainly something that requires a continuous cycle of training to keep professionals on their toes. The logistics of improving professional support is complicated and not an issue I’m qualified to tackle, but it is abundantly clear it is one of the most essential for truly changing the core of American education.
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