I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who once said, “the greatest inequality is the equal treatment of unequals.” The Governor and the General Assembly are attempting to treat all schools as equal schools. They are not. Every school has its own DNA. The type of resources available and needed differ by school.
The A-F legislation is a very poor attempt to simplify accountability. It is like comparing Division I football programs that have 90 scholarships with Division 3 programs that offer no scholarships. They both play football, but the similarity is lacking after that. Every school educates, but they educate different students from different backgrounds with different levels of parental involvement.
The A-F legislation is also flawed in another way. Virginia is generally in the top 10-20% when educational achievement is compared to other states. The Governor and General Assembly have decided that the way they do things in Florida, Louisiana, and Oklahoma is better than Virginia; yet, those three states are well below Virginia in academic achievement. Those states want to get to the middle while Virginia is already near the top. When you adopt strategies from states that have not achieved, you are most likely going to regress toward the middle. The A-F bill is a major mistake. In fact, EVERY education group in Virginia (VEA, VASSP, VAESP, VASA, VSBA, VPTA) opposed the bill because IT MAKES NO SENSE!
Actually the law does make sense if your goal is to undermine public education so politicians can justify tuition tax credits and/or vouchers to private schools. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Of course, private schools and home school students are not subjected to being graded because they have NO ACCOUNTABILITY to the state.
In addition, while I fully support standards, assessment, and accountability, our national and state effort has lowered the standard for what we should be focusing on in schools. The state assessments have created a false proxy of what is most important in education. In fact, when schools are fully accredited and meet AMO’s, they celebrate – they see the test results as the ceiling. They are at the top. In reality, the test scores should be the FLOOR not the ceiling. There is so much more than test scores in the education of a child. We have gotten so caught up in testing that we have lost sight of a true education.
In a publication titled “Are They Really Ready to Work?,” the authors emphasize that jobs of the future will require much more than core content knowledge and passing a SOL or end of course (EOC) test. These jobs require applied skills which the authors define as:
Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
Oral Communication
Written Communication
Teamwork/Collaboration
Diversity
Information Technology Application
Leadership
Creativity/Innovation
Lifelong Learning/Self Direction
Professionalism/Work Ethic
Ethics/Social Responsibility
The Partnership for 21st Century Schools advocates for a similar system of education where the SOL are the floor, not the ceiling. They call for standards and assessments within an aligned curriculum and instruction program. Professional development for teachers would support a positive learning environment. The core curriculum should remain but it should be the floor or foundation for everything else. On top of that core curriculum, there should be a focus on interdisciplinary themes which are woven into the core subjects. Those themes include global awareness, civic literacy, health literacy, environmental literacy, and financial literacy. Even that, however, is not enough. They go on to advocate for a skill set that includes a focus on creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, and communication and collaboration. In addition, the curriculum and assessment should emphasize information literacy, media literacy, and being able to apply technology effectively. Finally, they advocate for life and career skills that focus on flexibility, adaptability, initiative, self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability, leadership, and responsibility. For a closer look, go to http://p21.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=254&Itemid=119.
It is hard to argue in our global economy that these skills and abilities are not important to the future of this country. However, our federal and state assessment requirements measure only items which can be assessed in a multiple choice format.
Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind and Drive, makes an interesting point about China and India. Both of these countries have a population of over 1 billion. If these countries decided to educate the best and forget the rest by providing an outstanding education to the top 15% and forgetting the remaining 85%, these two countries would still have more highly educated students than we have workers in this country. We cannot afford to fall behind. We need to increase our focus on education.
When you compare what we do with what we should be doing, there is no doubt that we have lowered our expectations by creating a standards and assessment system that has become our goal. Passing a 40 or 50 item multiple choice test has become the ceiling. Such a shame to short change our future generations.
Based on the most recent data I have seen, we spend about $97,500 per child in Virginia to educate that child over 13 years (prek-12). At the same time, we spend $325,000 to keep someone in prison for that same 13 year period. This is a sad commentary about our vision of what is important.
We need a dynamic vision for the state and this community for the future. That vision must include an infrastructure that demands an outstanding public education system that is measured on more than SOL/EOC assessments. We need leaders who will stand up for what is right for the next generation. We need leaders who understand that we need to be preparing students for their future, not our past.
The A-F bill needs to be repealed. It is a disservice to public education. It should be replaced with legislation that moves us beyond a reliance on just one assessment. Until we demand more of elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels regarding public education, we will continue to get what we have gotten – simple solutions to complex issues, comparing apples to oranges, and inadvertently undermining public education.
-Roger Jones Roger E. Jones, Ed.D.Professor and Chair, Leadership StudiesLynchburg Collegejones@lynchburg.edu
