Education Reform - a House of Mirrors?

Too many buzz words (21st-century skills, paradigm shift, etc.) and not enough definitive, clear action. Here's the truth about today's schools. They have no interest or budget for making quantum leaps in education. To effect change, you must find ways to transition gently from what's being done today to a better future. You have to be a subversive, in a way. So-called 21st-century skills have mostly (except for direct learning of technology itself) been with us since our species appeared on this planet. The only difference today is that our society now requires a greater fraction of our population with those skills. High-stakes testing and the twisting of education to improve scores has bent our education system in the wrong direction. Most of us recognize that fact. Shifting the paradigm will not fix that by itself. Until success of districts, schools, teachers, and students is no longer measured in this manner, we will continue to have a problem and can only chip away at it. Due to high-stakes testing, the element of discovery has been excised from many classrooms and replaced by memorization. This is especially true in science education, which already had problems as explained in "America's Lab Report." The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have attempted to move the needle back in the correct direction, although in a complex and somewhat flawed manner. The spirit is good as is the direction, but too many are having too much trouble adapting to these standards. Without decoupling from those nasty tests, shifts will not fix things. This is why I have worked so hard for 20 years to introduce online science lessons using inquiry, exploration, and discovery with real experiments and hands-on measurement into schools -- an inexpensive and effective means of improving science learning. Students can have better test outcomes because they understand the material rather than because they memorized it. Until those tests no longer matter so much to every stakeholder, we can only work toward teaching understanding rather than memorization as the means to achieve success. That approach will give better and longer-lasting results than the typical classroom instruction does today. It won't be easy because memory-based teaching takes less effort. New online (i.e. edtech) tools can ease the burden on teachers, most of whom would love to teach understanding instead of memory. Smart Science Education Inc. is the leader in online science education that teaches understanding.

Like the tittle, but how to know you are not adding more... mirrors? "The pedagogy, practices and paradigms did not change at all", sounds a little... arrogant.

I enjoyed reading your post and had a chance to browse the Paradigm Shift site. Impressive team of advisors and resources. I am currently writing a book called: How much does a great school cost? - and my version of great is very much the ideals expressed in 21st century learning. I am in the process of creating a list of folks to survey (folks who play a part in great schools) and would very much like to find out if you or the folks on the blog might have some folks interested in contributing ideas. The book begins with a quote from Joe Biden: “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.”?The costs involved in such a paradigm shift and full scale reform at a school level are not as much as people might imagine. Courage to make change happen at the district/state or national level do not have to be significant either. What I've found so far is that the heavy lifting comes with the effort to empower, and help people re-imagine new visions for teaching and learning. The mirrors need coordination and synthesis - not as you say, be addressed as an "add on".

I think this title - "Education Reform - A Hall of Mirrors" - is one of the most powerful titles I've seen in awhile. In the same vein, another powerful title: "So much Educational Reform, So Little Progress" -

It's a mystery to my why is it so difficult today to better organize the first mission of human civilization - education!