Ambrose: How do we save education?
We must reward innovation while easing federal rules
Go back a bit and there was President Barack Obama promising us educational utopia. Then move forward some and what you have is a hugely expensive, bureaucratically dumbfounding mix of autocratic, divisive policies.
Next up? Just this, fellow Americans: 2015 is the first time in a quarter of a century that student test results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have sunk overall across the nation.
Experts are right now reluctant to point fingers at some single cause of declining or stagnant math and reading scores, but we have some good ideas of what won’t get us back in the right direction. That’s more of the same.
For instance, don’t look to Common Core, a program planned by a number of states to come up with top-notch school standards that would be nationally adopted. It wasn’t long before the Obama administration intruded, dishing out grants to get states to sign on at the same time critics were piling on.
Despite what has been mistakenly said, the critics weren’t just uninformed masses or skeptical conservatives but highly respected experts of varied political leanings. One was Diane Ravitch, who said it was a dubious plan unproven in the field. Others argued that top systems overseas were going different directions, that the math portion was at the least inadequate and that student testing ambitions went overboard.
Now, five years later, we learn from a Wall Street Journal report, some of the original 45 states that signed on are dropping out while others are hardly on the same page regarding teaching techniques and subject matter. The logistical costs are proving overwhelming, and some are guessing that Common Core will continue to shrink as what’s left goes in varied directions. Sticking to it in toto could do more harm than good, some fear.
Something else offering the opposite of help is the Obama administration policy telling schools to quit suspending or expelling minority students in greater percentages than white students. The administration believes it’s discrimination and not disparate behaviors that account for the punishment differences. That’s not at all clear, however, and a consequence of the policy in some districts has been a virtual surcease of disciplining, with chaos taking its place.
All of us should want fairness and stand against hurting students with overly severe punishments. But a lack of discipline Ambrose: How do we save education? | The Columbian:
