In the Middle of all This Education Reform, Have We Lost Sight of the Child?

I have several emails in my inbox from families with children that are struggling to read in spite of the fact that they display evidence of being bright and creative. In most cases parents write because their children are being referred to special education. “Help” they say. I also
just read several articles about education reform and heard about the points of
view of governors, school boards, teachers’ unions, President Obama, and
Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Next I listened to a pediatrician and a
psychiatrist debating about how to help kids who have been diagnosed with ADD
or ADHD. I then read an article by Susan Engel, a senior lecturer in psychology
and the director of the teaching program at Williams College. By this time, as
you can imagine, my poor brain was fizzing with all the noise.

Then, because I am a visual learner or picture thinker, I “saw” a picture in my mind that brought the issue down to the one thing that really matters in all of this talk about education - the child. Here’s what I saw:

The Debates Continue

Up in the bubble, arguments heat up over whether to have more charter schools or emphasize public schools, over how to measure the success of schools, over whether or not teachers should be compensated based on their students’ performance, over setting a goal (2014) by which all students
in America will be successfully proficient and how to measure that proficiency.
Oh, and what to do with the billions of dollars allocated to the reform of
education.

Out of everything I read, Susan Engel’s comments resonated the most with me. She said,

“The Obama administration is planning some big changes to how we measure the success or failure of schools and how we apportion federal money based on those assessments. It’s great that the administration is trying to undertake reforms, but if we want to make sure all children learn, we will
need to overhaul the curriculum itself. Our current educational approach — and
the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists
understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and
has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.”

We’re Talking All Around the Point

In all the discussion about mandates, laws, funding, initiatives, charters, etc., no one, but no one is talking about the fact that our curriculum is antiquated and so far out of touch as to miss approximately 85% of the time. I find it so ironic that in our super enlightened age with the
accumulation of decades of research, we still widely miss the mark on the way
we teach children. Each new wave of materials that is published and touted as
“all that and more” looks the same…just repackaged, renamed, and remarketed.
We’ve seen No Child Left Behind roar into action – I was a teacher under that
regime – and nothing changed for the child. What did happen was about 30,000
acquired the label of not making adequate yearly progress. What did happen is
testing increased beyond belief.

So, we’re arguing past each other, and no matter how much money is set aside, and no matter how the money is allocated or how schools are graded, nothing at all is going to help children learn unless we fundamentally redesign our curriculum based on what we know about how kids really learn.

In the meantime, bright and creative little children continue to be marched down the echoing mile-long hallway to the student study room where experts will frown a little, click their tongues and then assign them to Special Education. Some parents might ask next, "So, what is it
that you will do for Ralphie in the Special Education classroom to which he’s
being assigned?” It is critical to listen carefully at this point. What happens
much of the time is that children will be assigned to receive special helps,
but nothing new will be put forward. So how is this going to change Ralphie’s
education? Just like the 30,000 schools received the failing label, so Ralphie
receives the label of disabled, but in neither case were material helps put
forward. Again, as long as the curriculum is broken, billions of dollars coming
from the government will not help, schools will continue to fail, and thousands
upon thousands of children will continue to be pronounced “broken.”

So What Is a Parent To Do?

It is the parent’s responsibility to decide what is best for his child. I’ve heard too many parents cry out that they do not believe their child has a disability, but lacking tangible proof, they feel they have no other choice but to give in to the decision to put their child in special education.

The more intrepid of our parent customers have done their homework and have found and tried new materials at home with their children and then have gone to the educators and have said, “This works with Ralphie. Please use it before you make a final determination for him.”

Not every "expert" is going to be whelmed with being told what to do about educating your child. But there are many who truly want to bring your child to success and will welcome your input. I ask myself what the point of a label is anyway. Will it help the child learn? Or might it have such a deeply negative effect on the child so as to ensure her future failure? It's not about programs, testing and sorting kids. It is about educating your children, one child at a time. In order to do that successfully, we are going to have to choose to use curriculum and teaching materials that are consistent with what we've known for years about how a child learns best.