WHAT OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS NEED
BY JOHN THOMPSON
In advance of Monday’s pro-public schools rally at the state Capitol, Oklahoma education bloggers have been challenged to articulate what we would do about schooling if we were a Queen or King for a Day. The first 10 of the 600-word posts are here. My contribution can be read by clicking here or you can read it in its entirety later in this post.
Moore Public School administrator Rick Cobb introduced the series in his Blogging from a Prompt: If I Were King. Cobb speaks for virtually all of the educators who I know when he explains the mess created by test-driven school reform:
I’ve seen great teachers reduced to a shell of themselves. Even worse, I’ve seen them leave the profession. Our federal waiver is only better in the same way that draining pus provides slight relief from an infected wound. High-stakes testing is a constant shell game. The design ensures that there will be winners and losers. Losers become the targets of corporate education reform.
Then, elementary school teachers protested the damage done by test, sort, and punish to our youngest children. Fifth grade teacher Tegan Sexton, in Queen for a Day!, calls for education to become a team effort. She then explains, “Some of the moves made by the governor’s office and the legislature make me a further believer that public education, in the political sphere at least, is nothing but a power grab with extraordinary amounts of money available to be exploited. And all of this is on the backs of our children.”
Shanna Mellott, in Choosing the Road Not Taken: Another Brick in the Wall, challenges an essential component of the bubble-in mania by citing Pink Floyd’s song, “Another Brick in the Wall.” We teachers “don’t need no thought control,” but the purpose of top-down school reform is to create a compliant teaching profession that stops resisting the teach-to-the-test dictates. When educators push back, defending the exchange of ideas in engaging classrooms, accountability-driven reformers double down on their micromanaging.
Mellott affirms, “It’s time to tear down this wall and design a different plan for schools. If I was Queen for a day, I would relate curriculum to the interests of the students, show teachers that they are appreciated, and get rid of testing in favor of portfolios.” Only after she speaks up for her students does she add, “The last brick that should be obliterated is using just a test to show the growth of students. A test only gives a brief look at what has been learned, not the complete picture that a portfolio would show.
Retired educator Claudia Swisher, in Fourth Generation Teacher, and Nicole Shobert, in her Thoughts and Ramblings, both embraced state Superintendent Joy Hofmeister’s reminder: “Every mandate ends up on a teacher’s desk.”
Swisher has long authored pithy and wise observations about schooling, such as “Standardized Testing tells us about learning as much as Reality TV tells us about reality.” She presented the science-based alternative route to school improvement: “Schools would provide wrap-around services for families – medical and dental clinics, social services would be housed in neighborhood schools.”
After performing her Queen for a Day role, she then demanded her tiara and scepter.
Shobert also concluded with humor; after protesting the effects of testing on children as young as kindergarteners, she added “Give every child a pony … [totally kidding …]”
This parent’s affirmation of holistic education concluded that we must “dismantle and delete TLE, ACEWhat Oklahoma Schools Need | Oklahoma Observer:
