How to fix teaching without magic
Education reform (education deform) is doing kids, the profession, and the country short-term and long-term harm. Ed Reform Inc. "believes" in short fixes, silver bullets, the power of personal cult persuasion, mantras, and now the twin goddesses of all – technology and data.
More than half of all children in United States now live in poverty (Washington Post/UNICEF). As someone who has taught in a financially-socially challenged district for many years I can attest to the overwhelming negative influences of poverty. They are both direct and indirect. What is now normal in many communities was not the norm too long ago. The influences are single parent families, multiple families living under one roof, incarcerated family members, under-employment, no employment, no history of employment, poor language skills, the culture of poverty, early birthing, poor neonatal care, high percentages of children with unbelievable disabilities, addictions, and GANGS, globalization, and the death of low-level jobs due to technology.
These variables cannot be pooh-poohed. Absurd belief in words like GRIT and EVIDENCE and TESTING – currently trending by Ed Reform — simply cannot overcome the long list of negatives. But Ed Reform claims they do.
Actually, private, for-profit charter schools are the proof that poverty matters. Private, for-profit charter schools eliminate poverty as a variable. Charter schools pick the kids. The kids do not pick the charter schools. It is segregation once again. Any charter school which has the same number of second-language learners, special ed kids, drug-addled parents, non-reader parents, and incarcerated parents will have the same outcome as a public school forced to take in all. But charters don't. Even in those areas of high poverty where parents opt INTO a charter school – they are a self-selected group. They are the tiny minority of guardians who strive, no matter what conditions they exist in. Their kids do homework, usually have a working parent or grandma, and someone is a major positive role model. These kids are skimmed from the public sector and basically housed in a special setting. For them this is good – no argument. But don't compare that school to what is left in the public sector.
I believe a needs formula is required in schools of poverty. We need to save those desperate kids. If a classroom has X amount of special ed kids, X amount of incarcerated relatives, scores X on reading or math, has more than X amount of people residing in one house (or room), more than X amount of kids on Section 8 housing, more than X amount of kids in Title 1 programs — it should trigger an automatic cut in class size. There should be no more than 15 kids in such a class. Free pre-school needs to be mandatory. Wrap-around social services (nurses, shrinks, dentists, How to fix teaching without magic: