This article stands as a good example of why working for change in schools is problematic, and very very messy politically. There’s so many moving parts: going way back to school desegregation, bussing, vouchers, and fights over public versus private schools…and one recalls a time when teaching kids at home (home schooling) was a battlefield. One also recalls that school reform and innovation has been called for since at least the late 60s, and I’m told, well before that. How far have we come in the intervening half a century or more?
Alas, many of those fights never really went away. What is the current consensus on bussing, for example? Is there one? And home schooling could be dramatically increased by cloud tools. Is that okay with everybody? Seemingly everyone agrees that students need an environment that feeds their individual learning styles and approaches, but apparently today’s classroom is still mostly a matter of forming the student to fit the needs of educational institutions, rather than the other way around. How can this still be the case?
Today, we also have a very big fight over charter schools pros and cons, and how many of them we are going to have, where, and under what restrictions or regulations. We have additional fights over NCLB, and issues of student evaluation, teacher evaluation, individual school evaluation, “testing” in general. Oh, and there’s the new Common Core standards that have found their way onto the battlefield, but as the article points out, the fighters can’t tell who’s on which side.
Did I forget anything here? Oh yeah, and what about online learning, and what effect that will have on traditional teacher roles and job security, and if business can be allowed to “do eduction” and make a profit from it.
(Speaking of profit, technological change has opened up some real possibilities of getting past the near monopoly prices for plain old text books printed on paper. But sorting out that “eBook textbook marketplace” has been a nightmare of collusion and price fixing so far, yet the multimedia learning product of the near future will play a major role in learning, and will replace paper textbooks more or less completely)
It goes without saying that all these “players” claim to have the best interests of the children at heart, but also goes without saying that the children are rarely able to represent their own interests, and generally, families and parents take a very back seat on whatever bus of the moment is driving educational policy.
How can PSA hope to keep our sanity in dealing with this set of circumstances? We see clearly the opportunities and potential of cloud based learning tools, however much “blending” is involved….and yet we have little if any interest in joining into a free-for-all battle where it’s far from clear whose interests are being advanced.
Fortunately…PSA does have a plan that involves working with the best learning tools that the 21st century can provide, as well as focusing on the needs of the grass roots above all other needs, and involves working with, and training, a cadre of those who are, or who are closest to, representing the learners themselves.