A Little About a Lot

Are we ever going to change the school calendar?

People wonder why students are struggling academically these days. Well, I have an idea or two why our nation’s test scores are now at a 50-year low.

The brain is a muscle, and like most muscles in the human body, the brain needs a daily workout. Imagine if you let the rest of your body rest for three months and then went into the gym expecting to get a good workout, and see your body respond to the workout the same way it did before your three-month weight room break.

That’s what happens to a young learner’s brain when we let them have three-months off from learning.

It’s time for state legislators to focus on what their roles are when it comes to public education.

State legislators are responsible for providing a free and appropriate public education in most states. Some states have other language in their constitutions, but almost all talk about “free and appropriate.” I guess you could interpret “appropriate” to mean that the state is responsible for establishing learning goals, but I think all of us can agree that most state legislatures have taken this responsibility way beyond the general and moved toward the specific. What that means Is that most states now have hundreds, if not thousands, of learning goals legislatures have mandated their state boards of education to produce.

State legislatures should provide broad learning expectations and the resources for young learners to meet those expectations. That’s where their involvement in public education should end.

We don’t fire enough teachers in the traditional public school system.

In my 35 years as a public school educator, 30% of the teachers I saw inside classrooms were pathetically bad and should have been fired.

There was a reason why the better schools capped their student achievement at 70%. That’s because 70% of the teaching and learning happening inside schools was led by talented instructional leaders. And the reason why most campuses never went beyond 70% achievement was because the remaining adult learning leaders were teachers in need of serious assistance.

Instead of firing these teachers, the system invests millions of dollars attempting to make them better. I don’t know how many teachers improved after we spent time and money trying to get them better, but it was a small number.

The real reason the traditional system can’t fire weak teachers is because most school districts can’t find replacements better than those already in the classroom. So, the system limps along, always staring at the number 70.

All learning starts with a plan.

The question is who’s plan is it? Is it the young learner’s plan, filled with personal interests and required skills like reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development? Or is it a plan mandated by the state legislature, state board of education, and school board?

Why are so many adults afraid of allowing our young learners the opportunity to build their own learning plans? Why do we continue to convince ourselves that the current system is better than one built around individualized, contextualized learning plans?

It’s absolutely confounding to me, especially when the current system is doing so poorly, and seems unable to take the necessary corrective actions toward improvement.

Friday News Roundup tomorrow. SVB