I’m starting to believe that there is no such thing as “large-scale” education reform unless the government steps in and mandates it. Quite frankly, I don’t think large scale reform should exist anyway (especially by bureaucrats). Right now, the educational world has thousands of people who all have the answers to the question of what should go on in schools. Did anyone ever stop and think of the possibility that three quarters of them are right?
Education seems to lack the cohesiveness and gumption to take on large-scale reform that goes against the traditional beliefs of the way societies operate. In other words, even if we know it would be better for kids and be better for their learning, we refuse to implement it because it isn’t the norm of what people expect out of our schools.
Instead, we have small pockets that are attempting to reform what goes on in their schools on a daily basis. I applaud these institutions. They’ve figured out what most people fail to comprehend.
What has happened recently is that the government has stepped in, passed legislation as they did under NCLB or the Race to the Top, and has left the educational world shaking our heads. How can it happen? Such large-scale reform is unheard of in schools EXCEPT for these more recent standards and standardized testing craze.
So why is this? Why does education have such a difficult time implementing large-scale reform? Maybe because it shouldn’t.
Education is one of the few organizations (businesses) that still pays to be local. No outsourcing of talent. You can’t automate teachers (though some try). Education is the same entity that all of these people pushing “21st Century Skills” talk about on a daily basis. The problem is that they simply suck at acting on what they preach. They will argue with you and say how “we need kids to be able to interact with people of varying cultures and perform service jobs,” but they want to micro manage what goes on in every school as though they are in the United States and every school is India. They want to act as the puppet master pulling strings with every kid taking the same test, finishing school at the same age, and taking the same classes.
The world is talking about all of these different globalization factors that have come into play in the 21st century yet they fail to realize that each district should be taking on the role of the United States. It’s a service job. You can’t make assumptions about the individual cultures of each district using a cookie-cutter system written by a bunch of special interests groups in Washington. “Best practices” are only best practices if they work in a particular setting and are customized for individual kids. Most reformists fail to realize that. You can’t take the research of Dr. “X” from one urban school district in California and apply it to an urban district in New Jersey, but we still try. Then when it doesn’t give us the same results we deem it a failure. If I thought that all districts were taking these programs and allowing teachers to mold them to their particular kids then I would feel differently about it. Problem is that I am not that optimistic that teachers are provided with that much autonomy.
We can not advocate for differentiation of students and not advocate for differentiation of districts, buildings, classrooms, and teachers.
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Agree completely!