Passionate for Public Schools

An article landed in my news feed one morning earlier this Spring: "I Was a Voucher School Parent".  If you know me, you know that I am passionate about public schools, so I immediately wanted to get to the bottom of the writer's little three-letter "was".  What caused her to put the voucher school behind her?

Here's the definition of the type of school her daughter attended: voucher school: "a private school that uses taxpayer dollars to subsidize tuition without the oversight and accountability of public schools".  Granted, some might say that the phrase "without the oversight and accountability" suggests that  oversight and accountability are  good things, and that if a school operates without these things it's not good.  I happen to think that oversight and accountability (in many ways, thought not all) are good things.  Too much oversight belies a lack of trust and can be stifling, but everyone should be accountable in appropriate ways.

The graphic above shows what I think about vouchers.  

When states give vouchers to families so that their children can attend private schools, they take money away from public schools - the very schools that are charged with providing each and every  student with "FAPE", a free and appropriate public education.  All students are entitled to FAPE - typical students, special needs students, gifted students, nice students, naughty students, poor students, privileged students - ALL students.  

Many people do not know that when states give vouchers to students so that they can attend private schools, those private schools are not charged with providing education to "all" students.  They don't accept all students; that is why they are private.  Most private schools are not equipped or staffed to serve the needs of special needs students or English language learners and therefore, they do not take these students and are not by law required to take them.

Many people do also not know that when states give vouchers to students so that they can attend private schools, those private schools are not required to administer state-mandated standardized tests.  While I do not support using standardized test scores to measure  teacher effectiveness, the tests do provide some measure of student learning, albeit a snapshot.  

I am a public school teacher, and I believe in the notion of a social contract that ensures education for all children.  That contract includes funding public schools from the taxes that everyone pays.  I also believe that people are free to enroll their children in private schools, but when they do so, they are responsible for paying the private school tuition over and above the taxes they pay that go for public education.

Public schools educate ALL children, and as citizens of this country, we should work hard to ensure that they are funded at levels that will make this possible.

No one, especially teachers who love children and hold their profession close to their hearts, wants to hear stories about "failing" public schools.  But when funds for these public schools are taken from the school and given to families so they can enroll their children in a private school, there is no guarantee that the private school will provide the education they are looking for, and students in the public school are hurt.  The best thing to do is to adequately fund public schools.

 

PISA test scores? Wait a minute!

I read the following on Diane Ravitch's blog: "Let others have the higher test scores. I prefer to bet on the creative, can-do spirit of the American people, on its character, persistence, ambition, hard work, and big dreams, none of which are ever measured or can be measured by standardized tests like PISA."  I respect Ms. Ravitch for her credentials.  For a long time she supported standardized testing, teacher accountability and school choice.  After serving as an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education during the Bush administration and as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board that supervised national testing she had an epiphany about teaching, learning, and assessment.  She realized she had been wrong.

PISA is the Programme for International Student Assessment.  This year's test results are in, and American hair is on fire.  "Stagnant!" declared NPR and other news outlets.  

But is our position in the middle of the pack truly something to be alarmed about?  I don't think so, and here's why.

A test is a snapshot on any given moment on any given day.  A test like the PISA (try it for yourself here) only measures things that can be measured - questions that have a right and wrong answer.  A test like this cannot measure creativity, critical and innovative thinking, problem-solving abilities or people skills. 

It's little wonder that US scores rank behind those of Asian countries.  First of all, many of those countries simply do not include scores of all students. Special education students are not tested (and may not even be in the schools), neither are those who are not proficient in the testing language.  In the US, we test them all (special education students and students who do not have proficiency in English) and include all their scores, even if (in my opinion) is is not appropriate to do so.  To compare our scores as if they were apples-to-apples is a flawed comparison at best, and should push readers toward a careful analysis of the testing sample.  Secondly, the type of educational environment in Asian countries that produces the high test scores is one that is not likely to be embraced in the US.  Regimented learning, long school days, pressure from parents and stressed out students may be a stereotype, but it comes from recognizable and identifiable characteristics of the educational systems in those countries.

Think for a moment about the 21st Century skills that students need and that we hear so much about.  Employers are looking to hire people who have them, and teachers are being evaluated on how they teach them, but are they - CAN they - be assessed or measured on a test like the PISA?  Leadership, ethics, accountability, adaptability, personal productivity, personal responsibility, people skills, self-direction, and social responsibility all appear on the rubric I use when I observe teachers in their classrooms as their instructional coach.  You will notice that these skills are NOT content in and of themselves, yet they are critical components of success in life and success in employment.  These are "soft skills" and as far as I know, there is no standardized test for them.

Let's return to Diane Ravitch's thoughts about standardized tests in general, and the PISA test specifically: "We measure whether students can pick the right answer to a test question. But what we cannot measure matters more. The scores tell us nothing about students’ imagination, their drive, their ability to ask good questions, their insight, their inventiveness, their creativity. If we continue the policies of the Bush and Obama administrations in education, we will not only NOT get higher scores (the Asian nations are so much better at this than we are), but we will crush the very qualities that have given our nation its edge as a cultivator of new talent and new ideas for many years."

Click here to read Ms. Ravitch's entire post.