Failing Schools - My thoughts

Helping students learn…it is not without its frustrations. Over the past decade, I have witnessed erosion within the education process. As a product of the Catholic school regime, I was not well versed in the public school system...until my daughter entered high school.

Despite the many slams on private, Catholic education, I have realized, since moving beyond high school, that the nuns and brothers truly did prepare me for my post-secondary paths. I successfully passed the Praxis exam because I was able to draw huge amounts of content learned during my k-12 years. My early years in education involved parental expectations, drills, rote memorization, tons of English grammar (realize that half of my early years were dedicated to learning English, French was my first language), spelling, writing, spelling and vocabulary as well as science, math, art, civics. I can't remember exactly when my school day was transformed into all English, perhaps around grade 4, this is when curriculum was reversed to only one class of French, everything else, in English. And so it continued through secondary level of schooling. You may think that this would have been a huge disadvantage for students wanting to get into college, but in truth, I think our college acceptance rate was in the mid to high 90 percentage range.

Why would such a huge percentage of students succeed in their goal? Self-motivation? I am convinced that it is not only due to the amazing foundation built at the elementary level but it also includes the involvement and nurturing relationship between parents and teachers. You may retort...but today all parents are busy trying to earn a living for their families! Well, my sister and I were raised by a single Mom. We did have the help of grandparents, but the bottom line, Mom was sole parent, making sure we did our homework, meeting with teachers, etc. Why am I bringing all this up? Life is very different nowadays and education must adapt to accommodate some of these changes.

Somewhere in the last 15-20 years, educating students seems to have lost its priority. In my opinion, the family nucleus is now focused on survival, sometimes requiring the adults to work several jobs to make ends meet. Checking up on homework is not high on the home TO DO list inadvertently shifting this responsibility to schools. 

School Administrative Offices appear to be more focused on pushing paperwork, rubbing elbows with people in the know, fighting for funds to stay afloat, and less involved with supervising the process of teaching students. Within the schools, we seem to concentrate on teaching to tests and getting administrative "stuff" completed such as updating paperwork to pass accreditation, reformatting the existing syllabus, filling out endless documentations to prove that the institution is meeting with Learning Results and No Child Left Behind criteria, and participating in endless meetings telling teachers what they need to do to be effective, without the proper training, support, and tools in which to accomplish the tasks. At the end of the day, after jumping through all the "must do" items, teachers usually are left to wonder when they will finally be able to get back to the job of teaching students. 

As most of my teaching career has been at the secondary level, my perspective primarily comes from 9-12 end of the education process, yes, that's right, I said education process. Ideally, each year, the student builds on the previous year’s content. Once that content is mastered, the student is promoted to the next level. Not all content at each level is mastered, but if enough is grasped, you can indeed be pushed through. Fair? Not so much. This means, that each year, each gap the student experiences, accumulates and creates a bigger divide for that learner. With each new school year, teachers from all disciplines comment about the consistently decreasing level of motivation, discipline and readiness of the incoming freshman class, worse than last year’s class! In my mind, it's like trying to assemble a vehicle in an assembly line, and every year, they omit yet another integral part needed for an effective end product but the expectation for the end product remains the same: having a fully functional vehicle. Not quite realistic!

How can we fix the education process....grassroots? Back to basics? Modernization? Adaptation? Money alone is not the answer, though it will certainly help to be able to afford professional development, staff, updated textbooks, media, etc. I also feel reform needs to be comprehensive, beginning maybe even around pre-k, and then k-12. We must include current tools while implementing all the best proven practices. We must include family, student, administration and teaching staff in the process. We need to motivate, to reward student successes and to make them accountable with consistent consequences as needed.

• Parental involvement and support is a must.
• Students must become engaged and understand and feel the consequences of disrespect of family, rules, educators, and the education process.  
• Administrators need to support the educators, to stand tall between nonsense being pushed down to the staff and the task of teaching. How many times does a syllabus need to be resubmitted in how many formats?? Really? 
• How many times do teachers have to participate in ineffective workshops...to listen to pep talks about effective education, to "discuss" how to reach all learners? 
• When will professional development include time and tools for learning new effective methods, time and tools for some hands on learning and time and tools to apply the process directly within respective disciplines? 
• Extended days should be available to students needing the extra time for homework help or for not having completed an assignment. A learning center and support staff till 5 p.m. could be the resource needed to fill that homework gap from home.
• Computers as educational tools should be allowed and Internet access should be restricted to educational purposes only. Positioning a teacher in the back of the room able to view all monitors would be a strategic monitoring move.
• In my mind, the single most important change has to happen in uniting the curriculum progression from kindergarten through 12th grade. You cannot continuously have gaps in the education process of each learning unit (student) and expect the student to perform efficiently toward the end of the assembly line.

I lost my teaching job at the high school level last year. Currently, I'm at the post-secondary level at two local universities. Unfortunately I am seeing a huge percentage of post grads with:

• ineffective sometimes non-existent time management skills,
• inabilities to read, to analyze and to apply directions to a task independently,
• low motivation to push themselves to achieve to their maximum potential.

The education system must be fixed or our children/students will continue to suffer real life consequences for the rest of their lives. We are not doing them a favor by passing them on without addressing the gaps within their learning process. Additional steps and tools must be made available to close these gaps.

The "buck stops here" is a must have motto when we are discussing the education of our students. Reform is a must....but it must be approached holistically, a mission involving parents, administrators, k-12 teaching staff as well as our students. The assembly line must include all disciplines focusing on meeting all the needs of all students. Finger pointing will not fix the assembly line, a cooperative process will. To the 2011 list of failing schools in Maine, I say grab the opportunity, turn things around, become the best of the best for our leaders of the future.