Teaching is Not a Bussines
TODAY’S
education reformers believe that schools are broken and that business can
supply the remedy. Some place their faith in the idea of competition. Others
embrace disruptive innovation, mainly through online learning. Both camps share
the belief that the solution resides in the impersonal, whether it’s the
invisible hand of the market or the transformative power of technology.
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Opini
Neither
strategy has lived up to its hype, and with good reason. It’s impossible to
improve education by doing an end run around inherently complicated and messy
human relationships. All youngsters need to believe that they have a stake in
the future, a goal worth striving for, if they’re going to make it in school.
They need a champion, someone who believes in them, and that’s where teachers
enter the picture. The most effective approaches foster bonds of caring between
teachers and their students.
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Fact
Marketplace
mantras dominate policy discussions. High-stakes reading and math tests are
treated as the single metric of success, the counterpart to the business bottom
line. Teachers whose students do poorly on those tests get pink slips, while
those whose students excel receive merit pay, much as businesses pay bonuses to
their star performers and fire the laggards. Just as companies shut stores that
aren’t meeting their sales quotas, opening new ones in more promising
territory, failing schools are closed and so-called turnaround model schools,
with new teachers and administrators, take their place.
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Fact
This
approach might sound plausible in a think tank, but in practice it has been a
flop. Firing teachers, rather than giving them the coaching they need,
undermines morale. In some cases it may well discourage undergraduates from
pursuing careers in teaching, and with a looming teacher shortage as baby
boomers retire, that’s a recipe for disaster. Merit pay invites rivalries among
teachers, when what’s needed is collaboration. Closing schools treats everyone
there as guilty of causing low test scores, ignoring the difficult lives of the
children in these schools — “no excuses,” say the reformers, as if poverty were
an excuse.
-
Opini
Charter
schools have been promoted as improving education by creating competition. But
charter students do about the same, over all, as their public school
counterparts, and the worst charters, like the online K-12 schools that have
proliferated in several states, don’t deserve to be called schools. Vouchers
are also supposed to increase competition by giving parents direct say over the
schools their children attend, but the students haven’t benefited. For the past
generation, Milwaukee has run a voucher experiment, with much-debated outcomes
that to me show no real academic improvement.
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Fact
While these
reformers talk a lot about markets and competition, the essence of a good
education — bringing together talented teachers, engaged students and a
challenging curriculum — goes undiscussed.
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Fact
Business
does have something to teach educators, but it’s neither the saving power of
competition nor flashy ideas like disruptive innovation. Instead, what works
are time-tested strategies.
-
Opini
“Improve constantly and forever the system of
production and service”: That’s the gospel the management guru W. Edwards
Deming preached for half a century. After World War II, Japanese firms embraced
the “plan, do, check, act” approach, and many Fortune 500 companies profited
from paying attention. Meanwhile, the Harvard Business School historian and
Pulitzer Prize-winner Alfred D. Chandler Jr. demonstrated that firms prospered
by developing “organizational capabilities,” putting effective systems in place
and encouraging learning inside the organization. Building such a culture took
time, Chandler emphasized, and could be derailed by executives seduced by
faddishness.
-
Opini
Every
successful educational initiative of which I’m aware aims at strengthening
personal bonds by building strong systems of support in the schools. The best
preschools create intimate worlds where students become explorers and attentive
adults are close at hand.
-
Opini
In the
Success for All model — a reading and math program that, for a quarter-century,
has been used to good effect in 48 states and in some of the nation’s toughest
schools — students learn from a team of teachers, bringing more adults into
their lives. Diplomas Now love-bombs middle school students who are prime
candidates for dropping out. They receive one-on-one mentoring, while those who
have deeper problems are matched with professionals.
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Fact
An extensive
study of Chicago’s public schools, Organizing Schools for Improvement,
identified 100 elementary schools that had substantially improved and 100 that
had not. The presence or absence of social trust among students, teachers,
parents and school leaders was a key explanation.
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Fact
Big Brothers
Big Sisters of America, the nationwide mentoring organization, has had a
substantial impact on millions of adolescents. The explanation isn’t what
adolescents and their “big sibling” mentors do together, whether it’s
mountaineering or museum-going. What counts, the research shows, is the forging
of a relationship based on mutual respect and caring.
-
Opini
Over the
past 25 years, YouthBuild has given solid work experience and classroom
tutoring to hundreds of thousands of high school dropouts. Seventy-one percent
of those youngsters, on whom the schools have given up, earn a G.E.D. — close
to the national high school graduation rate. The YouthBuild students say
they’re motivated to get an education because their teachers “have our backs.”
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Fact
The same
message — that the personal touch is crucial — comes from community college
students who have participated in the City University of New York’s
anti-dropout initiative, which has doubled graduation rates.
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Fact
Even as
these programs, and many others with a similar philosophy, have proven their
worth, public schools have been spending billions of dollars on technology
which they envision as the wave of the future. Despite the hyped claims, the
results have been disappointing. “The data is pretty weak,” said Tom Vander
Ark, the former executive director for education at the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation and an investor in educational technology companies. “When it comes
to showing results, we better put up or shut up.”
-
Opini
While
technology can be put to good use by talented teachers, they, and not the
futurists, must take the lead. The process of teaching and learning is an
intimate act that neither computers nor markets can hope to replicate. Small
wonder, then, that the business model hasn’t worked in reforming the schools —
there is simply no substitute for the personal element.
-
Opini
Sources : NYTimes.com
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