“What we can do — what America does better than anyone else — is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. “
State of the Union 2011
President Barack Obama
Where’s the nation’s educational learning plan for this?
Where in all the nooks and crannies of schools spread across America can we find what America does better than anyone else?
Is it in:
- the increasing standardization of curricula, assessment and instruction?
- the hundreds of millions of multiple choice test items that young people take classroom by classroom, grade by grade, school by school, district by district, state by state?
- state standards that prescribe info-trivia at the most rote levels of recall making for school work that’s easy to measure and cheap to test?
- the textbooks, worksheets, and practice tests that constitute the nation’s test prep curricula?
- the accountability 1.0 measures and sanctions designed in the last decade of the 20th century and implemented in the hallmark year of NCLB, 2001?
The Elementary Art of Science
I don’t hear many educators talking about sparking creativity and imagination anymore. I fear budget reductions in school districts all over the nation have left creativity and imagination on the cutting room floor. The one thing not in short supply happens to be over-the-top multiple-choice tests that have sapped sparks of innovative teaching out of classrooms everywhere.
Despite the pressure to raise scores as a result of mostly sanctions, the last ten years of current accountability sanctions have done little to change student performance against international benchmarks or longitudinally against our own NAEP data. Student data’s about as good or bad as it’s ever been, depending upon IRS Effect at work in a school.
Now the mantra’s pretty much the same everywhere, “Raise test scores or else.” Or else what? Will the educational beatings continue until America’s teachers and kids improve?
Secretary Duncan spoke to the nation’s superintendents recently and said if we don’t “do” something about NCLB, “In two years, 98% of the schools in America will be labeled failing.” Really? I think every educator I know said that about ten years ago.This administration’s at almost three years and counting to accomplish the transformation of NCLB ala ESEA reauthorization that was a campaign promise. Congress has sat on changes to NCLB across two administrations. Educators continue the march towards a label of failure even if 99% of the children in their school meet AYP benchmarks.
Change is past due. It’s time for a spark of innovation and creativity in Washington. Get rid of NCLB. Make the National Educational Technology Plan the core of ESEA. If the USDOE staff actually was to implement the NETP, its best work, rather than leave the plan gathering dust on a virtual shelf, America’s learners would get access to what President Obama says our nation needs.
And, our learners and those who serve them might start to design, create, build, experiment, invent, and innovate our way back to what America does better than anyone else.
Engineering and Design
