Why is there so little consensus in public education?

It seems odd to me that after millennia of experience educating children and centuries of efforts to publicly educate them, a really good solution is yet to be found.

The practitioners of (public) education are highly educated; all have at least a bachelors degree, many have masters degrees and a not an insignificant number have doctorates.  The vast majority have several years of experience, many have decades of experience.  In any other endeavor those qualifications alone would spell success.

So why does public education perform so poorly?

It is precisely because those with the most education, the most training and the most current and ongoing experience have the least say in how it is done.

Teachers do not meet to identify (global) problems and then create solutions.  Teachers have always been powerless in directing their profession.  They are at the mercy of superintendents, school board members and government bureaucrats, each with their own agenda; each with their own idea about how to fix the mess, and who then tell the real experts how they ought to be practicing their craft.

As but one example, it is superintendents, school board members and bureaucrats who keep chronically disruptive students in classrooms.  It is their belief, not teachers', that keeping "bad" students in the same classroom with good students makes them all better students.

It is time to empower teachers in educational decision making.

It is time to gather them, listen to what they say about why public education isn't working and more importantly, listen to their ideas about how best to fix things.

That hasn't happened, and likely will not happen because the people who hold the power to make those decisions have no interest in sharing it, even with teachers.  Especially with teachers.

And there we are.




photo Mark Bralley