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Educational reform has been sweeping the country. The rationale for this drumbeat for reform is that students in China, Japan, and Singapore regularly do better than U.S. students on international tests of math and science. Therefore, a more comprehensive approach (standards) needs to be taken if we are to remain competitive in the world economy. However, this writer has been an educator for about 50 years, and frankly I have never met one student or adult who has taken one of those so-called international tests.
These reforms are often supported by conservatives as well as liberals. “Accountability” is the watchword of these reforms. Conservatives like accountability because it introduces corporate efficiency into the system. The semi-autonomous teacher operating in a semi-autonomous classroom will be relegated to the past as it insulates teachers from accountability, and in turn produces failing students. Everything the teachers say and the results of their students’ tests will be closely monitored. More uniform instruction will be guaranteed with teacher scripts, and uniform tests for all units, midterms, and finals across the curriculum. Authority is shifted away from the individual to the system of accountability itself.
Liberals like the reforms because they are looking towards a model of free, compulsory education for ages 2 to 22, a longer school day, and a six or seven day school week. Also, in order for the system to work, there will be “national standards” (40 states have already signed on). The right thus gets uniformity, and the accountability that makes for “successful” mass production, and the left gets 20+ years of control and indoctrination. The corporate model becomes an instrument of statist control.
The key to their vision, if one can call this Brave New World and 1984 nightmare a “vision,” is to bring in a whole new class of school administrators. The thrust for the past 8+ years in New York City has been to recruit people with little or no experience in education. This supposedly is to refresh the profession that has been too insulated from accountability and new ideas for too long. These are people in their twenties or early thirties who are to come in and uproot the supposed garbage of the past. About four years ago this writer attended a meeting to recruit teachers into the New York City Department of Education Leadership Academy for prospective principals, and the sophisticated and attractive hostess of the program was asked, “When reviewing applications to the program, do you take into account whether the applicant has written and published any articles of books?” Without hesitation, the woman answered firmly that they do not. Connection with the world of books is not part of leadership in education.
What then do we find? From top to bottom the NYC Dept. of Education is replete with administrators with no teaching experience. Often selected because they are inexperienced and willing to be as insensitive as a cactus plant in order to please their superiors, they come to impose themselves as “leaders” on those who are already making great sacrifices as teachers. This writer has met these people, and the likelihood that they even read one book a year is remote. Are non-readers and non-teachers suited to be educational leaders?
Many, whether for money, security, ideals, or some combination of the above seek administrative positions that they are not ready for. Why aren’t they ready? They are not ready because they have not been mentored and inculcated with core educational values that include, but are not limited to, focus on service and on educational values such as curricular innovation, creativity, knowledge, teacher morale, school tone, the family of man, student character building, and caring/love of all for all (said list can be summed up as “the pursuit of happiness”).
My question to the reader: do you want American public education to become even more of an ideological monolith than it is at present?
The Teacher
