A Refection on Today’s Education

I began my teaching career in 1992 as an in-class support bilingual teacher working with Haitian students in Elizabeth NJ.  Back then, assessments mainly consisted of weekly classroom quizzes and tests, midterms, and finals.  There definitely were issues in the classrooms, but my general recollection is that teachers mostly enjoyed teaching.  They felt like they had time to develop relationships with their students and devote additional time to review and reteach difficult concepts.  Kids, for their part, enjoyed the results of more teacher interaction.

After No Child Left Behind, an emphasis was placed on regular student evaluation.  The idea was to create a system of data collection that allowed those outside of the classroom to monitor and compare student progress.  Districts began implementing quarterly assessments to track student performance at a local level in preparation for yearly state assessments.  This shift in focus affected the classroom environment in a profound way.  Now, not only would the teacher know that little Johnny did not understand how to do 2-digit subtraction with trading, but the supervisors, principals, directors, superintendents, and government officials would also know.  Now that they knew, they would feel compelled to do something about it.  The stress level had now been kicked up a notch.

Then, in 2009, things really began to change.  States were encouraged to implement new teacher evaluation systems that were meant to identify and root out the bad teachers while rewarding the good ones.  After 10 years of this, our educational system has become one where all parties are under constant and daily stress from all of this “accountability”.  As the article above outlines, this hasn’t succeeded in moving the needle on student achievement.  All we have are stressed teachers and administrators, who feel they have to show some level of progress or suffer the consequences.  This sought after progress is motivated by fear rather than a personal desire to do better and achieve better results.

The unfortunate and unchanging truth is that kids will learn when they find enjoyment in learning.  How can we put some of that enjoyment back into Education?  This is a question that I hope more policy makers will consider as we move into the next decade.  Technology is evolving, kids are learning differently then when I started back in 1992.  Most educators chose the profession, not because of the holidays off, summers off, promise of a pension at the end of a 30-year career, but simply because they wanted to make a difference in the lives of the next generation.  They didn’t sign on to become stressed out test givers.  How can we bring the enjoyment back for our kids and our teachers?