Former elementary teacher and current freelance write Paul Veracka writes in a recent EducationWeek article “It was these three major education forces – too much standardized testing, too much punitive discipline, and too little funding – that pushed me to leaving the profession, a profession I excelled in and even loved.”
Veracka shares a story about one of his students, he named her T, and the struggles T encountered when it came to learning the curriculum the school expected her to learn:
“From the curriculum my schools selected to how faithfully I taught it to the rigid scheduling, my school’s emphasis on standardized-testing preparation was everywhere in T’s education. And she could not stand it.”
“I don’t blame her. The curriculum was not relevant to my students, though administrators assured me that it was both common-core aligned and designed to teach to the ‘whole child.’ My classes of mostly Black students read mostly white stories that decentered the narratives of people of color. None of the schools where I taught gave teachers the freedom to adopt project-based learning or self-directed learning models that might have allowed students to find more relevance in what they learned.”
When kids like T weren’t attracted to the curriculum the school was offering, they started to misbehave. According to Veracka:
“No-nonsense approaches to discipline are archaic and proved to be ineffective. They decenter kids, not allowing them to have a voice in establishing community norms, while putting teachers in a space of moral superiority, assuming they know better than students. If kids stray from these norms, teachers are expected to respond punitively.
“Meanwhile, many of my students responded to punitive consequences like T did, with anger and confusion. Eventually, it began to weigh on me. ‘If this isn’t working,’ I wondered, ‘are there better discipline models that would?’ But that was not a conversation anyone was having at my schools.”
Regarding lack of funding, Veracka writes “Every year, I requested resources from my building leaders in schools that suffered supply shortages, including pencils, dry-erase markers, and even classrooms. The pandemic only exacerbated these shortages. When my school turned off the water fountains this past school year as a COVID-mitigation strategy and shipped in water bottles, we had to limit the number that were handed out daily. There simply were not enough for everyone to drink as much as they wanted.”
Veracka concludes by writing “Even as I leave teaching, I’m confident in the public’s support for healthy public schools. Though many educators are leaving teaching and leadership positions, I am hopeful that with less emphasis on testing and more emphasis on helping students foster curiosity through robust resources and conflict-management programs, schools and teachers can thrive. These movements are growing, and they really make a difference. I’d still be in the profession if these supports had been stronger.”
Veracka believes an end to standardized testing, punitive discipline, and additional funding will cure public education ills.
I think not.
Most state legislatures are controlled by Republicans. Republicans are in love with standardized testing. They have been convinced of their potential since the early 1990’s. One must assume standardized testing will remain in the public education landscape for the near-term future.
When I was a new region superintendent, I was honored to lead a dozen predominantly African American dominant schools, most elementary. When I started to visit these campuses, I immediately noticed a difference between how these African American schools dealt with their student populations compared to predominantly white or mixed campuses. In the African American schools, kids were lined up to go anywhere and everywhere on campus. The kids were expected to be quiet while in line for the bathroom. If they were found to be talking, students would be taken out of line and admonished, and maybe punished. The very strange part of this disciplinary process was that most of the time, the adult who was meting out discipline to young African Americans were African Americans themselves. What I saw on those campuses turned my stomach. My inability to change the culture of those schools still stands out as one of my greatest leadership failures.
Punitive discipline, especially when it impacts under-represented learners, is not going to disappear anytime soon.
I’m sorry to disagree with Veracka on his plea for additional funding, but additional funding isn’t going to improve schools. When I worked in a large, urban school district in Texas, the types of schools Veracka wants additional funding for actually received additional funding. The results, after this additional funding was applied to the individual campus, were not impressive. Additional funding does not mean improved learning results for kids. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s the truth.
A new system of learning gives us a chance to eliminate standardized testing or add additional assessment data to standardized testing evaluation.
A new system of learning gives us the opportunity to introduce a new set of behavior expectations. The pilot personalized lab school we started in Houston back in 2014 didn’t have many disciplinary infractions. The reason for that was because most of the young learners enrolled in the pilot were surrounded by professional adults during their learning day. We need to stop separating our young learners from the real world.
A new system of learning will cost less than today’s traditional per pupil spending. During our personalized learning pilot, we spent around $7,500 per learner (close to what a Houston-based public school district spent on their students at the time,) and we had plenty of money left over to pay for learning supplies and equipment after the adult learning leaders were paid. Today’s traditional system doesn’t need more money to be successful. What needs to happen is to take some of this public money and apply it to some action research involving pilot learning cohorts, led by adult learning coaches, and the learning plans created for each of the cohort’s young learners.
Teachers like Paul Veracka are leaving today’s traditional public education system. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s change the system and promising young learning leaders like Veracka might come back.
Friday News Roundup tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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