Want to Help Fix Education?

Dig in the Right Place.

THE HEADLINE in the New York Times caught my eye: "Lenient Grading Won’t Help Struggling Students. Addressing Chronic Absenteeism Will.”

“Looking at many indicators of student success — test scores, college preparedness, behavioral issues in schools — it can feel like K-12 education in the United States has reached a particularly grim moment.”

????? There is a scene in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones and his sidekick, Sallah, are pondering the location of the Ark of the Covenant. A wooden staff and its bejeweled headpiece can pinpoint the location, but Balloq, Indie’s long-time arch-rival for antiquities, has likely already figured it out.

????? But all is not lost! With the help of a mystic, Indy and Sallah determine that the staff Balloq is using is the wrong height. Hence, it will not point to the right location for excavating the Ark.

????? Indy and Sallah turn to each other and, with relieved glee, exclaim, “They’re digging in the wrong place!”

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????? Fixing what ails U.S. K-12 education – and only some of the indicators are noted in the quote from the article – is like that scene from Raiders: most efforts at reform are usually digging in the wrong place. For example, the author of the Times article details the debate around using different types of grading systems to assess students. There’s nothing inherently wrong with investigating grading systems, just like there’s nothing wrong with investigating a hundred other fixes like

? Moving Algebra from grade 8 to grade 9,

? Adjusting teaching for different student learning styles,

? Having students stay with the same teacher throughout elementary school or

? Integrating students at different grade levels in the same class.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these ideas – some have positive effect-size research backing them up – but I’ll argue they won’t point to the location of the educational Ark. They are all attacking what ails U.S. K-12 education at the edges instead of at its core.

????? The article's author agrees and points our consideration to another major problem facing districts: student absenteeism. She quotes one researcher:

"Our research shows over and over again that student attendance is an incredibly strong predictor of pretty much every outcome you care about: High school graduation, college ready, college enrollment, college graduation."

The kind of absenteeism the author is focused on is “butts in the seats.” Get truant kids off the streets and back into the schools. No argument there. Physical absenteeism is growing. I saw it firsthand as a teacher many years ago, and it is often caused by the trauma a student experiences at home or in their neighborhood. Endemic poverty, for example, is a huge deterrent to school attendance and, thus, learning.

????? But I’m worried about an equally insidious form of absenteeism: mental. All students can have their butts in the seat but still be mentally absent from learning. One critical reason is that the standard curriculum rarely allows for student agency, which gives students a voice and choice in what they learn. Schooling is still largely top-down and standards-driven to prepare kids for high-stakes exams. So, maybe kids are physically and mentally absent because the curriculum as it’s usually taught isn’t always engaging and doesn’t allow for much student interest, investigation, and discovery.

????? The core of the problem with U.S. K-12 education is that we disagree on what we want our students to have achieved by the time they walk across the high school graduation stage.

? Higher achievement as measured by assessments? (Close the learning gap!)

? A deeper sense of patriotism?

? The acquisition of knowledge and skills that can be applied “later”?

? A diploma?

? “College readiness”?

? To be curious, inventive, critical-thinking problem solvers – aka life-long learners? (Those are my hands you see waving enthusiastically.)

Having been involved with K-12 education in multiple capacities for fifty years – teacher, textbook and technology developer, author, and consultant – I can easily be depressed about our state of K-12 schooling and where we are digging to fix it.

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????? But occasionally, a ray of sunshine breaks through the clouds. Serendipitously, just as I finished reading the Times article, a friend who knows of my interest in K-12 education sent me an article detailing a beautiful story from Nokomis Regional High School in Newport, Maine. There, English teacher Nick Miller, with the support of his Principal, Mary Nadeau, has started a semester-long fly-fishing elective incorporating four English standards: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Students also learn skills and techniques for catching and releasing fish while developing an appreciation and knowledge of the environment. Miller smartly enlisted the support of a local fly fishing company for the equipment and a foundation that funds learning experiences outside the classroom.

????? “When you can get students excited about what they’re doing and what they’re learning, that’s when you’re really going to have some great learning happening,” Principal Nadeau noted.

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????? Maybe I need to redefine “agreement,” I thought as I finished the article. Maybe it’s not universal agreement, which is like orchestrating a thousand shovels to dig in unison. Maybe it’s local agreement in a thousand communities like Newport, Maine, where inspired school leadership inside and outside the classroom and community support join together to figure out and dig for their meaningful educational Ark.

????? And maybe one day, electives like Nick Miller’s will replace the standard “If it’s freshman year, it’s Algebra.”

????? Those communities will know what the diploma really represents when their students walk across the graduation stage to receive it.