Stuck In Time

     So I am a parent of a middle schooler. It's all there: the gym uniform, the locker, the passing periods. I am not sure how it happened as I keep trying to convince my self that he hasn't been around the house  long enough to be in middle school, but he has. Somethings haven't changed. There is still a lot of math homework each night. The assignment is different. We always had 1-30something the odds, because the answers were in the back of the book where now he needs to do almost all of the problems. His teachers are far more human and caring than I remember mine to be, in fact, I remember so few of mine its scary.
     Sometimes I question, what is it that we are exactly doing here. The structures of most schools feel ancient. The grades, the subjects, the assignments, what's the difference between 1954 and 2014 other than we teach it earlier, children get more of it, and its more likely that the parents won't understand either the content or the process. My mother shares stories of her Grandma Fritzie complaining about "new math" in the 1950's. Scott, who went to high school with me, posted this picture of his child's 2nd grade homework on Facebook:

I was on the floor laughing not because it was "Common Core" math, but because my 2nd grade student had essentially the exact same problem on the exact same day as his child. We live in different communities. We have different teachers. Our school's use different publishers, and yes Pearson has not purchased every publishing firm yet. Our children have never met, yet they are learning the exact same thing on the exact same day.

Slowly we need to break out of this concrete confine of educational structures. We need to recognize that our children our different. They are not better, not worse, not stronger academically, not weaker academically. They are academically different. I know my children are. I have two boys, each with strengths and challenges. One who will be able to do discuss any academic assignment you ask and one who will look at you and be bothered that you are asking him to do an academic assignment. One who can't often put his shirt on in the right direction and one who insists on selecting his outfit in just the right manner. They are different and to assume they both need the exact same assignment on the exact same day as Scott's child is a waste of everyone's time.

      The real education reform needs to come from within. It is about communities, schools, parents, teachers, and students understanding that we have different children and each day we need to help students continuously grow and improve. It isn't about how we rank them but rather how fast we can help them understand the next concept. It isn't about if they were graded fairly but rather did they have room to create a meaningful product that demonstrated the concept but also encouraged them to demonstrate innovation and creativity. It isn't about which homeroom they are in but rather is the school working together to make groups of significant enough scale that allows EACH child to have learning experiences at their instructional level and pushes them forward to the next concept. The whole concept of "graded" bothers me. To grade is not to assess in order to determine what the child needs support with and what to teach next but rather to rank against a scale. It in itself is an output of comparison not learning. My biggest worry is that we will have a child sit for two or three years in that math class and not understand a single thing. The push to strive forward and cover the concepts will leave that child hating math and hating school because its a machine not a journey for them.

       We are stuck in time. No Child Left Behind, Common Core, Race to the Top, SmarterBalance, and PARCC, are simply tools to reinforce the factory line instruction of children. Interestingly enough only "Value-added Measurement" - growth based teacher and administrator evaluation, challenges the concept that all children need to learn the same and encourages us to push all children at their level forward. While I think the tools behind this may be wrong, at least the concept that all children need to improve and grow is encouraging. We are stuck in time. I need to go now and look at my child's grades on Skyward to see if he is missing any assignments. Those missing points will affect his grade and his ability to get into that next level class. Clearly this is all about what he has learned and what challenge he is ready for next. Stuck in time!

Is Mr. Vernon Still There?