Posts filed under ‘Education Philosophy’
Colleges Need to Get Real
From education to finance, American institutions have raised avoidance of accountability to an art form. The blurring of lines among industry players has allowed them to diffuse responsibility for their basic missions. Within education, high schools and colleges are collaborating creatively in dual enrollment programs to lower failure rates. Ultimately, however, they may be conspiring to conceal inadequate college preparation by offering college-lite for an exorbitant price to students who cannot afford it. Their efforts would be better spent getting back to basics on their own turf.
College (kol-ij) n. a place where students go to finish high school and/or get ready for grad school while accumulating massive amounts of debt. Often found adjacent to prestigious institutions offering access to elite faculty who can only be seen by students pursuing advanced degrees.
There was a time when wealthy young dilettantes who needed a little more time to grow up attended exclusive prep schools that their parents could afford with ease. The goal was success in college once they were ready. Somehow, the American Dream has mutated such that financially strapped, first-generation college students are paying premium prices for four-year prep schools, followed by unemployment and massive debt problems.
Something is wrong in this picture. The first clue is the huge debt burden among young people…many of whom are also jobless. The culprit? No one in particular. Rather, it is a perfect storm of weak public schools, nouveau all-star colleges, and opportunistic financiers. Before we can solve the problem, however, we must unravel the fuzzy roles and accountabilities lost in emerging partnerships, collaborations, and joint ventures. The punch line: colleges need to better serve their undergraduates in the primary mission of higher education, high schools need to ensure that their graduates are truly ready for college, and financial institutions need to share the burden of risk or lower their interest rates.
Let’s begin with the public school system and college readiness. Ten years ago, the nation set the goal of college readiness for all students by high school graduation. Most schools have fallen behind on that goal, according to standardized tests. Nevertheless, as an alternative to testing, many high school principals naively set out to achieve 100% college application rates among graduating seniors as a proxy for readiness. Well-meaning guidance counselors facilitated broad searches for colleges and helped students complete applications; volunteers supported students through their applications for financial aid. For many low-income families, children were going off to college for the first time. Mission accomplished.
Colleges experienced higher application rates and, in many cases, higher acceptance rates among their admitted applicants. Free market economics worked, and colleges raised their tuition and fees in response to this increase in demand. Administrators were bewildered but pleased to discover that a more expensive college seemed to attract even more applicants. In addition, oversubscribed colleges were strapped for dorm space, asking students to share tight spaces for more money. In the meantime, want ads were full of opportunities for adjunct faculty members. Access to tenure-track teachers became elusive. Students found themselves paying Ivy prices for average schools at best.
Meanwhile, financial institutions expanded college lending operations and actively courted university officials for access to students for underwriting purposes. Interest rates to students rose, and risks for banks declined with government payment guarantees. All agreements were packaged by the schools, and banking relationships were ancillary.
As colleges grew in size, undergraduates found themselves with fewer safety nets. To complicate matters, many students and their families were unaware of the strings attached to financial aid. Need-based scholarships turned into high-interest loans when ill-prepared students failed to meet GPA requirements for retaining those scholarships. Already committed, students chose to sign the loan papers and stay in school. The Dream would remain within reach. Predictably, college drop-out rates soon grew, along with a new underclass of young people faced with a mountain of debt. In the highest-risk populations, college completion rates fell to the single digits.
To address this problem proactively, some very good dual enrollment programs have been developed that offer previews into college course work at little or no cost for high school students. This has become an important part of the community college mission in many localities. However, four-year colleges also have gotten into the act to grease a path to long-term commitment for students who have little chance of success. In addition, many institutions have all but forgotten their attention to excellence in undergraduate education. They offer a rite of passage that holds empty promise for students passing through them, continuing the new tradition of poor preparation for life. As college-lite has become a reality, graduate degrees have become the expectation for many professions.
We are not doing our young people any favors by dealing in false hopes. High school diplomas need to represent genuine college readiness. At the college level, $200,000 is too much, but it must at least buy a real education. And guaranteed student loans need to carry interest consistent with that guarantee.
College Readiness is About Life Readiness
Many well-meaning observers challenge the goal of college readiness for all high school graduates. While it is valid that alternate paths deserve consideration, critical thinking is required for success in all walks of life.
College readiness is not just about higher education and career paths; it is about having the knowledge needed to understand one’s world well enough to negotiate one’s self interest successfully. Undereducated children are more prone to misread situations and act rationally using a primitive analytical model. Their decision trees are missing so many branches that they may be doomed to frustration and failure in many aspects of life as they miss opportunities or take poorly calculated risks. Failure to learn to think critically in school predisposes them to take the same approach as adults, seeing the world as chaotic and themselves subject to luck, popularity, or brute force. Instead of controlling their destinies in a world of possibilities, they tend to seek to control their inner circles in an ever-decreasing sphere of influence. Education is the key to breaking that failure cycle.
College-Ready Is About Freedom of Choice
Every child deserves the right to choose to pursue college or career options after high school. To preserve that freedom, I have no choice but to prepare every child for either path. Besides, sophisticated new materials and technology are making it harder to differentiate the two.
College is not for everybody, especially as an immediate next step after high school. Jobs, volunteerism, or vocational training may be better choices at any given time. However, it is not up to me to sort out who belongs where. Even when a child is adamant that he or she wishes to prepare for a trade, I must remain committed to ensuring that college remains an option.
A child may not demonstrate academic focus or commitment at a given time. A common response to the pressure of choosing colleges and applying for admission is to opt out of the process. “I don’t want to go to college. I think I’ll be a …” In many families, a proud tradition within a profession may limit perceived options. Further, education finance may create a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. None of these short-term factors warrants closing the door on college forever. And that is the choice I have made for the child whom I fail to prepare. I do not have the proxy right of that future adult, especially when acting out of lowered expectations.
Building a life on the platform of mechanical ability is not guaranteed. Local technical schools that include heating and plumbing or carpentry expect students to be well-versed in trigonometry. Physics and other sciences may figure heavily in construction and electrical systems. Persuasive speaking and effective communication pay off in marketing and operations. A successful entrepreneur or company tradesman might show tremendous leadership ability; however, he or she would be hamstrung without training in finance or managerial decision-making. The future holds unknown possibilities, and lifelong learning is crucial to everyone.
Choosing to continue ones education after high school is risky as well. The intent to pursue higher education must be matched with strong skills to meet academic challenges. There is little that is more discouraging than an encounter with a former student who is unemployed and saddled with debt from an unsuccessful year or two in college. Genuine college preparation is part of the sacred trust between educators and their students. All of them.
No Time for NCLB Lite
Twitter tells us that testing is bad for everyone. I disagree. I love the changes I have seen in my students as they have grown in knowledge and maturity while meeting the challenge of high stakes tests. Yes…urban students with special needs, many with English language fluency issues as well. They can do it. Oh, and, by the way, they are the very children we are not supposed to leave behind.
The digital v. analog paradigm shift is an artifact of history. However, as an analog person, I see a similar conflict between the process people and those with a results orientation. Educators tend to build processes, while education policy has moved in the direction of results. This may be no less intuitive than the shift to a digital world. Why does everyone seem so surprised that teachers might benefit from a lesson in translating their processes into results?
As process people, teachers design ways for students to engage in learning, constantly inventing and reinventing the path to knowledge. They can manage a classroom. They can direct instruction. But, they cannot control the student’s moment of knowing. As students struggle, educators tend to tighten any controls they can. Yet the student’s independent thought is essential to success in applied problem solving. This has become one of the classic conflicts in education.
In the current politicized climate, teachers must learn some new tricks…and apply them persuasively… while being observed by the hanging judge. This external control works no better for adults than it does for children. So how can we step back from this rhetoric without taking our eyes off the ultimate goal for our children? I will hypothesize that we can keep the tests, maintain the benchmarks for English language learners and students with special needs, and achieve the desired results. However, we must make partners of all educators, not sort them by individual results. And we must pay them collectively for results at least in the short run.
Twitter tells us that testing is bad for everyone. I disagree. I love the changes I have seen in my students as they have grown in knowledge and maturity while meeting the challenge of high stakes tests. Yes…urban students with special needs, many with English language fluency issues as well. They can do it. Oh, and, by the way, they are the very children we are not supposed to leave behind.
It is crunch time for NCLB; time for the sprint to the finish. Unfortunately, instead of working together to achieve our collective goal, we are engaging in vicious hunts for scapegoats and building hyperbolic arguments against testing. Suddenly, “the current testing environment” has been redefined as value-added testing in every subject at the beginning and end of every school year. That is not NCLB. However, this device has led many to question testing altogether, sadly removing accountability for the students who are most in need of the benefits of that accountability.
“Teaching to the test” has become the lowest common denominator among educators who have succeeded with achievement tests. It has been highlighted as an argument against testing…because it rewards bad instruction. I would suggest that schools where teaching to the test was needed to improve test scores must have had a pre-existing history of substandard instruction. In fact, teaching to the test may be a necessary evil during the transition to higher level instruction.
Educators with lowered expectations do not attempt to give all students access to the curriculum. As they teach to the test and the bar keeps rising, however, these same teachers are forced to broaden their students’ skill set. It begins with a core set of skills that are always tested. Then, critical thinking skills are deepened. New test content expands the breadth of topics that must be covered. Higher benchmark scores require students to be even bettered prepared. As more and more students achieve success, even skeptical educators find themselves getting closer and closer to teaching the full curriculum.
It has not been a pretty process, but 2014 was not set as a deadline for testing. It set the pace for all teachers to learn how to give all students access to a competitive curriculum. This goal must not be forgotten. It is time to set aside our differences and make it happen.
On College Readiness
Critical success factors for a student in college include…
- Independence – self directed learning, defining one’s own program of study, time management strategy, mining of resources, and quest for knowledge.
- Perception – high level of awareness with insight and attention to task as well as strong reading fluency and comprehension.
- Communication – excellent writing, tailored to audience and genre, and strong oral and multimedia presentation skills.
- Collaboration – the habits of working in study groups, able to organize, convene, and effectively collaborate to increase knowledge and/or deliver group products.
- Leadership – solid citizenship in the classroom and decision-making during unstructured time.
- Perspective – conversant in the arts and humanities and cognizant of time and context.
- Analytics – strong analytical tool kit for application in math and physical and social sciences
- Leverage – ability to combine a good general knowledge bank with tools of analysis to achieve understanding and solve problems.
- Organization – management of materials, processes, and concepts for efficient access and effective use.
Pedagogy and culture must support students in their readiness to succeed in college, reaching beyond the school as necessary to provide access through productive use of out of school time, dual enrollment programs, and independent study options. Assessment tools must be robust enough to authentically evaluate the many dimensions of student accomplishments.
Philosophy of Education
Education provides the leadership, guidance, scaffolding, and material resources for successful transformation from childhood to early adulthood. The child forms his or her intellect with the knowledge, academic skills, and critical thinking needed to address opportunities and dilemmas in real life as well as to continue the pursuit of understanding as a lifelong learner. The academic village serves as a microcosm for society in which to develop physically and emotionally and to explore citizenship in a democratic world. Education must have meaning and relevance, but the student should be transformed by education into a broader minded individual open to further expansion of horizons and prepared academically for access and competitiveness.
Teaching involves laying down basic schemas, elaboration and rehearsal to establish memory, periodic reinforcement to retain long-term memory, and development of metacognition. Children engage more effectively in learning when they have a connection to the content and develop deeper understanding through exploration. However, teachers must periodically assist students to formalize their strategies for problem solving, essentially identifying the skills learned, techniques applied, and ways to validate results. In this way, students create their own pathways to algorithms yet consciously develop analytical toolkits that they know how and when to use in the future. In addition, basic knowledge and skills must be retained in memory to reduce search time early in problem solving and allow students more time to pursue more complex and interesting aspects of cognition.
Educators must protect and facilitate equal access to general education for diverse learners while fostering the highest achievement of each child according to his or her individual potential. Every child has a platform for success; programs must be designed and modified until every child has been accommodated. Natural variations in learning style and growth and development create challenges for educators as they develop an academic milieu that provides for all learners. Great and small leaps in comprehension occur unpredictably, and students can encounter unexpected obstacles to their learning. Great care must be taken to understand the whole child beyond expectations related to age, grade level, and performance.
Heterogeneous groupings of children allow them to benefit from one another’s strengths and diverse points of view. Student support services are provided to create a level playing field for students with disabilities and greater challenges for gifted learners within the same classroom wherever possible. Lesson plans must offer a variety of approaches such as multi-sensory explorations, inductive and deductive processes, and group workshops. Students should be prepared to perform well on periodic standardized assessments; however, more authentic alternative assessments must be used throughout each unit of study. Educators must be informed by the data gathered through formal and informal assessment to improve their practices continuously.
Finally, college preparation is essential to the vision for every student, especially those for whom education has been a struggle. In fact, the absence of high expectations for the future can be the greatest obstacle for underachievers. The high school diploma is not the ultimate goal; rather it is the key to unlock the next door, the reason to keep going. Graduation merely signifies the transfer of stewardship from the school to the young adult.
