Posted by
Ben Amis on Monday, August 20, 2007 12:57:03 AM
I was able to catch part of the Democratic Presidential debate on ABC today, the last part, and came in just before they began discussing education. I heard some interesting, and perhaps troubling, answers from the candidates about education reform, and as someone who has worked in the educational system before, I thought I would throw in my two cents.
Most candidates, well, as I recall all of them, said this: More early education. They reasoned that starting children earlier meant that they would do better. I believe they're wrong, and will explain why in just a second. Before I do so, I'd like to briefly mention the other answers that some of the Democrats gave, and other didn't. For example, some wanted to reform NCLB, others wanted to get rid of it. Some candidates also suggested more arts education, teacher pay raises, and more "qualitative" education (although there wasn't much elaboration on the word). Some interesting ideas.
Now, why do I think more early education is the wrong way to go? Because our educational system doesn't need quantity, it needs quality. Just because we hold children in school for a few more years doesn't mean that we're going to be able to teach them more, at least not on a decent amount more. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, was right when he said we needed qualitative education, but he didn't adequately explain what that meant.
First, those that said we need to reform NCLB was right, it forces teachers to teach the test rather than to give a quality education, but it's not the source of what I see as the biggest problem in American education - standardized testing. These types of tests limit our children's learning ability and forces them to pick from a group of answers, placing further limit on them concerning creativity and logical reasoning skills.
To develop these all-important skills, states need to establish testing systems that utilitze writing - articles, essays, open responses, and other forms of prose writing, and elimate or at least extremely decrease the number of standardized questions. These types of questions allow students to expound and explain their answers, and demonstrate knowledge that they would not be able to express by simply picking A, B, C, or D.
For example, a history question may ask "Who was elected President of the Confederate States of America, and who did he select as his leading general?" with answers of A. "Lincoln...Lee"B. "Lincoln...Grant" C."Davis...Grant" or D. "Davis...Lee". Of course the answer is 'D', President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee. However, that question tells us nothing about those two men. It doesn't allow the student to explain that Davis was born in Kentucky, like his counterpart, Lincoln, but raised in Missouri, and was a Democratic Senator from Missouri when the south seceded. It also doesn't let the student tell that Lee was a Virginian, and was against such things as slavery, and even wanted to, as was invited to, fight for the Union. However, went with the Confederacy when Virginia left the Union because he said, "I am more a Virginian than an American."
This is the most important step that must be taken in order to put our children back on track.