Reforming Education

I am hoping to keep the conversation that started with my post on the Ohio Graducation Test going.

Anonymous posted the following comment:

“We as a nation/state do NOT under fund education. We DO misspend the funds.
Evaluation of educational outcomes need to be evaluated to determine proper spending. Maybe the test is not the best, other measures can be incorporated. “

Shelby points out that students are not successful on the tests because society has failed to provide basic needs such as health care, early childhood education, and a decent standard of living for families.

I think this is a valuable discussion, so I am hoping we can continue it by answering two questions.

1) What would you do to reform education?

2) Where is the waste in education and how you would reallocate wasted dollars to make them more productive?

To start off the discussion, I would suggest that reforming education must begin with making changes in society. I agree with Shelby. Many students fail to reach their potential because they are off to a bad start and keep losing ground as they go. As a society we should be able to provide basic healthcare for all children, and that includes mental health, vision and dental care. There should also be free pre-natal care and support for new mothers who may need parenting skills, or additional medical or mental health care following delivery.

The war on drugs has failed. Drug and alcohol treatment needs to be made available to nonviolent drug and alcohol offenders in place of incarceration. The children of drug and alcohol addicted parents need support and safe places to live until their parent or parents can care for them again. Grandparents, other relatives, and foster parents need to be provided with mental health and economic support when caring for these children.

My prediction is that by focusing on improving conditions for children, we will also decrease the need for prisons and welfare. I am not sure that drug treatment is more expensive than keeping people jail, even if we have to put them in drug treatment more than once. Our whole society is too drug and alcohol centered, but that is another topic and another post.

Early childhood education needs to be improved. Pre-school should be available for all children, and any parent of a child under 5 years of age and receiving public assistance should be required to participate in a pre-school and parenting program. If the parent is working, the parenting and pre-school programs should be offered as part of subsidized childcare regulated by the state. Employers hiring parents of children under the age of 8 should provide four parenting days off every year with pay, beyond those offered as sick days for all employees. These could be used for parent conferences, children’s doctor’s appointments or caring for sick children.

More money should be spent on classroom education in the first 3 grades. Students who are not making grade level progress should be identified and given remedial help. Classrooms should be small enough to provide students with individual attention, no more than ten students per adult and no more than twenty students per classroom for grades K-2 in schools where students are failing to make adequate progress. There should be no more than 20 students in grades K – 4 in any school. The emphasis should be placed on learning basic reading skills and basic math facts and processes. There are some things you just have to know, and the in first three grades students should learn these basic skills. Flash cards have their place. It is amazing to look at McGuffey’s readers and discover the level of reading 2^nd graders were expected to have mastered. They were learning in one room schools with coal stoves, and absolutely no technology. The teachers usually did not have a four year college degree and usually taught grades 1-8 in the same room. My grandfather only graduated from 6^th grade but he could read, write, spell and do math better than many of my high school students. We spend a lot of time trying to change education and do things differently, but learning basic reading, writing and arithmetic hasn’t changed since McGuffey’s day. Students who cannot read above 5th grade level, spell basic sight words, and who don’t know their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts do not need to be tested on chemistry, algebra and writing five paragraph essays, but I am seeing these students at the high school level trying to pass the OGT.

The reason they don’t have the basic skills is as varied as the students. Some have moved so often that there was never any consistency in their education. Others have had constant attendance problems either because of parental neglect or illnesses. Some have attention problems that kept them from focusing in classrooms where there were a lot of distractions, and others just were not ready to learn a particular skill at the time it was introduced and the rest of the class was ready to learn it. These students just never mastered the basic skills they should have learned in the first four grades and have been passed along ever since. The skills are no longer taught because most of the other students already know them. They are not given another chance to learn them but are provided crutches in the form of multiplication tables, calculators, word processors, books on CD, tutors who help with the homework so they won’t fail their grade level classes. Many times the underlying problem such as frequent moves, parents who don’t make them come to school, a problem in their home that distracts them from learning, is never dealt with and continues to interfere with learning. It often not only affects their own education, but the atmosphere in the classroom where the unhappy student acts out and disturbs the learning environment for everyone. We need to put money into helping students early on through social workers, guidance counselors in the elementary school, and the domestic relations court system.

Then there are also some students who simply do not have the ability to learn the basic academic skills. I am opposed to mainstreaming special education students in courses they cannot pass even with modifications. Students with extreme academic disabilities should be included in nonacademic areas such as lunch, gym, music and art. They need classes geared to their ability for academics and a curriculum that focuses on employment and independent living skills.

The OGT does not test the student’s understanding of the reproductive process, birth control methods, knowledge of child development, parenting skills, the effects of drug and alcohol addiction, personal finance and budgeting, but being able to make wise decisions about these things will have a much greater impact on the student’s life and the lives of their children than being able to write an essay or balance a chemical equation. Every child should be required to take a course in sex education, personal finance and parenting skills before graduation.