Ed reforms shallow and in the end, feckless

If the goal is to educate, one has two choices; focus on the individual needs of students or, focus instead upon the needs of (arbitrary) groups of students.  "Arbitrary" in so far as all educational achievement gaps are individual and grouping them in order to apply group solutions serves no ultimately useful purpose.

In order to believe there is a "group achievement gap", the belief must rest on a foundation; that membership in the group affects individual performance.  In order to accept that there is an Hispanic educational gap, one must accept that being Hispanic by itself, affects educational achievement.  It is prejudice.

All achievement gaps are individual.  The most direct and effective solutions will be those that address individual needs individually.

There are those who will argue that we cannot afford enough teachers to give every student the individual attention they need.  Grouping is cheaper, they would argue, than individualizing.

"Cheaper" at what cost?  Grouping students is an expedient, a management tool created to address a problem that didn't exist until the students were grouped for no educationally useful purpose.

In addition to meeting the individual needs of students, teachers are compelled to manage the group dynamic.  Attention must be shared.  In some classrooms, teachers spend so much time and energy on controlling a group of largely recalcitrant children, there is no time to spend in individual attention to individual needs.  Keeping students in "formation" can consume far more time and energy than would addressing their individual needs.

The model in use in public schools is to teach, learn and test in groups.

30 kids with little more in common than the year of their birth, are formed into a thought choirs and expected to learn in unison for the next twelve years.

That model is a manifest failure.  Half of high school graduates are not prepared for college.  Far too many can't even read.

I am aware of no reform of the accepted model, proposed or enacted, that will raise performance more than a few percent; likely less than the margin of error in the measurement.  Even as bold (and inadvisable) step as holding back "non-readers" in the third grade is not going to greatly change the outcome meaningfully.

The only reform that has the potential to really change the game, that could actually result in meaningful improvement, is the abandonment of group learning and the embrace of independent learning.  I suggest that the fundamental goal of public education be reformed, from the effort to standardize individual performance to an effort to recognize and enable individual performance.  The goal of public education should be the creation of independent learners; people who can learn without the need for public "schools".

From a practical standpoint, it is impossible and therefore unrealistic to insist that an entire group of students demonstrate mastery level learning before the rest of the group can move on.  Inevitably faster learners will be held back and slower learners will acquire fewer and fewer basic skills.  And, no one will have had to demonstrate that they have truly mastered anything.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of switching from group to independent learning is that we will finally be able to insist upon mastery level learning.  If learners are required to master basics at every level before moving on, there will be no third graders who can't read.

An insistence upon mastery level learning is critically important and eminently useful.  Students who have mastered basics can acquire advanced skills more easily and effectively.  Students who have not mastered basic skills will not catch up; they will continue to fall further and further behind.

Why does educational reform remain shallow and feckless?

Why don't the people who insist upon cemetery seating and group learning, a dead horse if ever one died, ever have to defend their insistence?

Why don't those who insist that the individual needs of students must continue to be subordinated in deference to the needs of arbitrary groups of students, never have to justify and defend their position?

The short answer is; they
never have to explain, defend
or even acknowledge any of
their positions on anything,
 
... because we can't make them.

Might makes right.




photo Mark Bralley