Time for PS 20 Principal to Get The Boot?

I've taught high school since 2000, around the beginning of this godawful movement to test, test, test, test young kids to death. Tests DO NOT measure the ability to think critically. They don't measure curiosity or creativity or anything except the ability to regurgitate what the test-taker has already read. Most of the grading standards (at least in the high school Regents exams) are set so ridiculously low that non-special ed students would have to be quite brain-dead not to pass, or have absolutely no support from their teachers and parents. What's the biggest difference between my students in 2000 and 2009? My students now have been "educated" with ten years of test prep. They are by and large terrible critical thinkers, poor writers, and uninterested in anything beyond themselves and their two friends. There are exceptions, of course, but I got far more out of my students seven and eight years ago, and I had much less experience back then and was not as good or well-prepared teacher as I am now. I remember back then students were free-spirited and curious, and this seems to have been killed.

I constantly ask my students their opinions on the historical events we study. Earlier this year a student and I had the following exchange:

Her: Why are you always asking us what we think? Why don't you just tell us what you think?
Me: I want you to develop your opinions on your own, without being influenced by me. I want you to debate each other and not simply repeat everything I say. I don't want you to be robots!
Her: So?

I have no opinion on PS 20 and know nothing about it, but the idea that it's a good school because it has high standardized test scores is simply absurd.

Posted by: sixyearsandcounting at April 9, 2009 2:18 PM

Bxgrl,

There is no systemic solution to the problems of public education. No massively bureaucratic system can possibly take on the task of universal education; education by its very nature is a highly individualized. I would recommend John Taylor Gatto's essay "Against School". As the title suggests, his solution is to do away with the system as we know it, and is politically impossible. We can do a few things that would move in that direction, though:

1. Eliminate the current system of tenure for teachers.
2. Create a free-market system of schools where funding is tied to students - I think former Labor Secretary Robert Reich proposed something like this, where disadvantaged students (however defined) would come to a school with more funding. Bad schools would close or have to lay off staff because of lack of funds, etc. This would create a form of accountability without the nuttiness of standardized tests.
3. Eliminate the federal Dept of Ed, which educates nobody, and outsource its programs to the states.
4. Eliminate the requirement that everyone stay in high school until age 17 or whatever it is these days. Let kids drop out and see how hard it is to survive without a diploma, then bring them back for a GED.
5. Blow up the NYC DOE bureaucracy and start over with only the truly necessary administrators.

Of course, we could do all of this, and it still wouldn't work. There are many out there who cannot or will refuse to be educated, at least before they're 18. The best anyone can do is watch out for their own kids and do their best to supply them with books, use lots of big words when they're growing up to expose them to a wider vocabulary, turn off the TV, ban video games (sorry Rob!), travel some, go to museums, and to paraphrase DIBS' earlier comment, let them be adventurous and eat dirt every now and then.

Posted by: sixyearsandcounting at April 9, 2009 4:46 PM

"but it would also be absurd to assume that PS 20 is excessively drilling on tests simply because its test scores are high"

True, bricka, but I was mostly responding to those who earlier used PS 20's high test scores as evidence of the school's success.

Posted by: sixyearsandcounting at April 9, 2009 4:49 PM

Denton,

Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, but let's take the Global History and US History Regents exams as an example. Students complete a document-based question essay for each exam. All they have to do to meet the state's standards is take a few sentences from each document, paraphrase them, slap on an introduction (they can paraphrase the "historical context" provided on the exam) and a conclusion (repeat the introduction) and they've passed.

The vast majority of kids are curious and desire to learn, at least early in life. Schooling - I won't call it education - beats those qualities out of them in favor of conforming to ridiculous modes of behavior (the bell rang? jump up and run to the next classroom even if you're in midsentence!). Too often they are taught by people protected by absurd union rules, as you point out, who are themselves burnt out after years of dealing with the crap the DOE throws at them*. Budgetary constraints kill all the elective programs that enable kids to pursue interests that deviate from the state mandates. Want to take arts or music? Too bad. That's where "brain dead" comes in - I blame the system more than the kids.

*I haven't reached that point, yet, but I'm getting out before I do. Unfortunately too many teachers stay around too long because of the job security, or worse, go into administration.

Posted by: sixyearsandcounting at April 9, 2009 6:05 PM