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Notes provided by: Colleen Kirby Cho Reinventing Public Education Hosted
by Representative Jay Kaufman These are notes that are in no way meant to be exact wording but are to convey what I understood was said at this informative public conversation. So if you have any bones to pick, direct them my way rather than at Jay. If I have mistated anything let me know and I'll be glad to correct it. Jay Kaufman introduced the idea of having a big conversation about redesigning the Public Schools as we know them. He pondered, what would Horace Mann do today if he were able to create a school system from scratch? Jay introduced the ideas of Horace Mann. He said his main ideas were:
He then posed some questions. How can we revisit Horace Mann's goals in the 21st century with an inherited school system that was invented in the 19th century? Is our school day too short, our school year too short to cover the time when many parents are away from home working? Can we implement workshops, afterschool programs to effectively cover the time parents are already away from their children, but in a way that children's needs are met? Can we implement the new knowledge of how the brain develops, such as really teaching to the multiple intelligences identified by Howard Gardner and other researchers? Parents with enough money can live in any school system and can send their kids to private schools so they do have access to choices in where to send their children to school, but parents without this wealth are limited in their choices. This is not ideal and maybe we can address some of this unfairness. Jay says he has some bold proposals such as it would be good to get rid of our current Board of Education. This received great interest from the audience. He said the current board has a political agenda and doesn't have the expertise of genuine educators looking for what's best for children. He says the right has been developing creative ideas to address education but they have a particular agenda that seems motivated to prove that public schools aren't working with the long range goal of dismantling them and privatizing schools. The push for testing appears to be set up to fail schools rather than to try and make them better. In some cases, the tests have been productive as teachers are motivated and structure their curriculum so certain topics are achieving good coverage but other areas are ignored and learning in depth is thrown out the window. In some communities charter schools and vouchers are beneficial but there does not need to be a "one" standardized model for all schools and all communities. He suggested that rather than the current Board of Education we should have an accreditation board made up of educators who approve individual school plans. Each school could devise a pedagogical vision, set a budget, set a 5 year goal, and implement assessment and evaluation of those goals. Then the accreditation board can approve or suggest improvements and in this way schools can try radical approaches and not be cookie cutter "do the same thing" kind of schools. Then as parents learn of the different school approaches they can send their child to the school that best meets their educational philosophy. During the Q & A I did voice my concern about this idea as it seems that we would be losing the oversight of local communities on their schools if all children went every which way to schools rather than remaining closer to home. I do think having a strong parental and community interest in the local public schools allows for involvement and continuity in the school population and actually allows for much greater oversight than just leaving it in the hands of a state board. Jay did agree that this is a serious concern. Jay has filed a bill this year to eliminate the Board of Education. The same bill he filed last year which ended up not seeing the light of day. But perhaps with the new house leadership there might be some movement this year. And if we all call our representatives and ask them to cosponsor it perhaps it will have legs. He does not think the Board of Education should be an elected office peopled by politicians. Jay brought up the difficulties with school funding being dependent on property taxes. The first public schools were paid by property taxes as it was only wealthy landowners who were able to send primarily their sons to school. Now however property taxes means that we have institutionalized gross disparities in funding for schools across the Commonwealth. Wealthy communities can afford better schools than those in poorer communities so we have a system that is separate and unequal. This is what has now been called unconstitutional in the Hancock case. Jay asks how we can address this funding inequity. The only other funding pool that is large enough is either income taxes or sales taxes. Norma Shapiro brought up the concern that if the state is sending the money to pay for the schools they will then want to have more control and thus the role of local school committees becomes even less important. I do wonder though, if our current situation is already ceding most control to the state as it is with our funding limited by proposition 2.5 and our curriculum and testing mandated by the state. Jay also suggests that what we really want to teach is life-long learning. Learning is about taking risks and it is not possible now for many teachers to do this with the strict standardized tests on top of tests that are now being mandated in all schools. A standardized education is not ideal for all. We need to bring democracy back into the schools and allow for differentiation-he hesitates to use the words choice or charter schools as they have negative connotations. We need to empower teachers and students. It is disheartening to find out that half of all new teachers are now leaving teaching because they feel stifled and were not able to do what they were trained to do. That is they were not able to pass on the excitement of exploration or the real joy of learning to their students as they are being told to teach exactly this at this time and in this way in order to be ready for the monolithic standardized tests which are supposedly monitoring student learning. Jay also spoke about how our current infrastructure separates the schools from the rest of the community and how we need to redesign how we use our schools and make them part of the community. Can't school information resource centers become resources for the entire community? What about adult life-long learning also taking place at the schools, physical education resources, and so on such that we create a learning commons so that all residents in the community benefit. Jay closed by saying that Education Reform has been tinkering with the public schools but that we might need to make some quantum leaps. Much in the way that Thoreau opined that we need to build castles in the air and then do the work to build the foundations under them. SPOT
offers these notes as a service to the community. |
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