Dear Legislator or Appointed Official,
I'm in my 21st year in public education and I've seen many changes. Some have been good and some have been head-scratchers. All have been enacted with the greatest of intentions, but their effectiveness has varied greatly. Recently, I've been thinking about our current accountability systems (NCLB, Common Core, etc.) and struggling to really find the benefits that our current systems have for STUDENTS. I understand that these systems are designed to allow for comparison among states and countries, but I don't know how that helps the low socio-economic freshman in my building that is searching for an education that is relevant to his or her future. I don't think he or she really cares how we compare to our neighboring states or other countries. He or she cares about how school is going to make his or her life better.
As public educators, we depend on our patrons for financial support and we handle our country's greatest resource - the next generation of adults. So I get the need for accountability, I really do. However, as I have been reflecting on our current systems, I have come to the realization that we are being held accountable to the wrong things. We should be held accountable to each individual STUDENT to prepare him or her for their next step in life. Whether that step is college, military service, a trade, or an hourly production or service job the primary focus of education should be to prepare each STUDENT for that step. I think that our current test-driven accountability system takes the focus off of the student and places it on the test. That is a great disservice for our kids!
I know that tests are easy to gather data from and generate nice, neat comparisons. But what is easily measured is not always valuable and what is valuable is not always easily measured. What would happen to our education system if, at graduation and again a few years later, we asked students and their families for their feedback on how we did preparing them for THEIR future? I know that type of data gets a little messy and it's not always easy to gather, but isn't it the most valuable piece of data we could use?
One of the issues I see with our test-driven accountability is that we try to force all students into the same box. I know that there is a base of knowledge that each student must know and it is our job in education to facilitate that knowledge. But our kids each have different strengths and passions. Our current system does a great job of taking their passion and squelching it by inadvertently telling them that their passion doesn't matter unless it is in one of the tested areas. I'm reminded of this quote from Albert Einstein, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid." We need an accountability system that encourages students to work in their areas of strength and passion, not the areas that others deem important.
My goal in this letter is not to be a whiner or complainer. Rather, I think it is time that we take a step back and look at the focus of our accountability and ask ourselves if it is really being effective for students. I know that in my building, we are making efforts to put the focus back on each individual student. We will not ignore test scores and the current accountability systems, but we will make them a secondary issue. Our primary focus will be to help students discover their strengths and passions and then use those to develop problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, and communication skills - skills that will serve them no matter their chosen path following graduation.
Sincerely,
David Steward, Principal
Monett High School
