If you haven’t already, read the New York Times editorial on Obama’s education plans. A snippet:
Mr. Obama spoke in terms that everyone could understand when he noted that only a third of 13- and 14-year-olds read as well as they should and that this country’s curriculum for eighth graders is two full years behind other top-performing nations. Part of the problem, he said, is that this nation’s schools have recently been engaged in “a race to the bottom” — most states have adopted abysmally low standards and weak tests so that students who are performing poorly in objective terms can look like high achievers come test time.
Related: Last month, Randi Weingarten made the case for national standards.
1 Comment:
1 Phyllis C. Murray
· Mar 12, 2009 at 9:54 pm
In 1993, I attended the American Federation of Teachers’ QuEST Conference. AFT’s former president, Albert Shanker, summed up the problem best when he said,”Our schools have been turned into all-purpose institutions, and any institution that doesn’t have a single purpose will be saddled with all sorts of things that other institutions should be doing – and it won’t do any of them well. We must restore the central academic mission of our public schools.”
Shanker, like many others, was advocating the creation of a set of national education standards. These standards would tell schools what students at different grade levels would be expected to learn, and they would tell parents how well their child and their child’s school, performed compared with others. The standards themselves would force schools to remain focused on their primary mission-teaching children.
Academic excellence must be the goal for all students and educators. Our schools must not be allowed to become warehouses or worse yet, battlefields for minorities and other students.
Education must be the sole priority. Hence, these standards must be set high, and students must be held accountable. The rewards for achieving academic excellence also must be clear. Teachers also must be
treated like professionals, rewarded as professionals, and helped accountable to the standards of their profession. They must be allowed and in fact, encouraged to be involved in the decisions that affect their work and the academic performance of their students.
Unfortunately, these national education standards have become the latest political football in Congress. Everyone agrees that a national set of standards will improve the overall quality of education in our country. But there are those in Congress who argue that because some schools are better funded than others and because some students have more advantages than their classmates, no set of standards can be established that would fairly take into account these differences.
Recently, the American Federation of Teacher reported the following:” AFT/UFT president Randi Weingarten makes the case for revisiting the issue of national standards. While acknowledging that it won’t be easy to reach consensus on national standards, Weingarten says she believes that “there is academic content that all students in America’s public schools should be taught.”
We need to do whatever we can to provide the resources all students need. But we can’t wait until the world is perfectly. Our goal should be to establish standards that will challenge all students to do their best, and that will help schools to stay focused on their primary mission–teaching children.
Phyllis C. Murray
UFT Chapter Leader
District 8 Region 2