Below are three articles summarizing many viewpoints I believe about education in the USA.
Each is very well written and together they share the central themes that teaching is a profession and a fundamental sea change is needed in policy and in public perception for anything to get better in the USA. Business models of "carrot and stick" dangerously oversimplify a very complex and human problem by pretending human beings are simply commodities produced by factories (schools). These oversimplifications have no backing when experience and "data" is analysed and they come with disastrous results for our students and ultimately our nation.
http://smokingtowardnewjersey.blogspot.com/2013/05/education-is-none-of-our-business.html
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The fundamental problem is the business paradigm itself. It is a model that will not do for education, because it assumes a whole range of things about education that are simply untrue or unacceptable: that kids’ circumstances outside of school do not influence them in school; that test scores are accurate reflections of achievement; that competition always produces the desired outcome; that opening and closing schools is as easy or advisable as opening and closing stores; that uniformity is not only possible, but good; that money is the best motivation for workers; and on and on.
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The plain fact is, no business model, no matter how distorted, works for education because education is a complex human system involving a web of interrelationships, not a thing that’s created and traded on a supply chain. Some aspects of education may indeed be measurable in limited ways, but to assume that you have a clear picture of the whole endeavor based on those measures is foolhardy in the extreme. Beyond that, education is something we as a society have deemed a right, not a commodity. Rights are non-negotiable, never to be bought and sold on the open market.
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and
http://goodmenproject.com/education-2/hesaid-i-have-only-one-thing-to-say-to-jeff-bliss-the-kids-who-criticized-his-teacher-on-youtube/
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I have recently been criticized for my blogs and people have argued that I am not a social worker, but a history teacher, and that, by being a nurturer first, I am doing my students a disservice in school and life. I, and my former students and my colleagues throughout the world, would overwhelmingly disagree with their argument. All teachers are social workers first because we are dealing with social beings. In a perfect world, where every student comes from a loving and supportive home and feels confident and secure, teachers wouldn’t have to be as concerned with focusing on a student’s social needs, but that’s not realistic. Even I, who had a very loving and supportive family, still needed the love and support of my kindergarten teacher to help build my confidence and security when I was at a very insecure and awkward age.
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If anything, this incredible speech by this amazing young man is exactly why, as a nation, we have to allow teachers to focus more on developing and nurturing young minds instead of taking the human relationship out of the equation by forcing teachers to not care about a child as a person, but solely as a test score. In my eight years as a teacher, I have had dozens of former students contact me after graduation and not a single one of them contacted me to thank me for helping them prepare for standardized tests, but to thank me for preparing them for life and for caring about them when they were at their weakest and most insecure.
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and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/
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Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.
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All teachers [in Finland] must earn a master’s degree at one of the country’s research universities. Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough; only “the best and the brightest” are accepted. As a consequence, teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering. There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals necessary to be a successful teacher.
But education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working individually.
Lessons from high-performing school systems, including Finland, suggest that we must reconsider how we think about teaching as a profession and what is the role of the school in our society.
First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools.
Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned.
Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools.
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