Sometime ago software mogul Bill Gates decided he had something besides computer technology to offer American schools. When Gates speaks, America listens. After all he did build a Microsoft empire and become one of the richest people on the planet…every apple he touched turned to gold.
At the same time the American educational system began suffering a loss of identity. Following half a century of stellar performance, American children began to falter. Basically this was the result of two opposing forces fighting for possession of the classroom’s soul, one focused on intelligence, the other on happiness. The aftermath has been continuously plummeting test scores with US students falling behind their foreign counterparts in all areas, except one – confidence. When asked how they felt they had performed, American youth were surprisingly pleased with their performance EVEN WHEN THEIR TEST RESULTS WERE SCRAPING THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL!
Enter Bill Gates and his sidekick Michelle Rhee, the former and highly controversial Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools, proposing a solution: Run schools like corporations and pay teachers based on their students’ standardized test scores. To reinforce their message, they were both major players in the creation of the recent documentary “Waiting For Superman” that blames poor performance on the “Bad Teacher(s)” and the unions that protect them like Luca Brazi.
The success of a corporation like Microsoft that produces technology depends on two areas of performance: the idea generators and the final products (in this case the sum of metal and wire parts). Likewise, the success of a school depends on two areas of performance: the idea generators (educators) and the students. A strong teacher can generate excellent ideas, but a student may not have the right parts in place to become an excellent product and vice versa.
Merit pay is a constructive incentive except when the goal of making money trumps student learning. This past week in the Atlanta public schools 178 administrators and teachers were cited for participating in widespread cheating that involved 44 of their 56 schools. This included erasing and correcting mistakes on students’ answer sheets, silencing whistle-blowers, and rewarding subordinates who met score goals. When the focus is on the product and not the process, this is what can happen. Who gains? The adults. Who loses? The children. In this case they are mostly African Americans students in an economically disadvantaged district.
The quality of a computer is far easier to control than the quality of a student,
especially when human nature and ability are key components. Educators can’t remove the deficient parts of their students and replace them with perfect counterparts to ensure the quality of their products. Faced with this dilemma and now with money riding on it, desperate educators may do desperate things, like cheating on tests while simultaneously cheating their students out of an education.
The core of the situation is this: You can’t run a classroom like a boardroom.
Even the best teacher can have failing students. As an art teacher, it is already hard enough to determine how to grade and evaluate – for a classroom teacher, I can’t even imagine the stress and anguish merit pay creates.
Turning schools into corporations cheapens the beauty of the educational system and what it really should be about – creating, experiencing, exploring, understanding, exciting…….
Wow. Talk about propaganda. You change the incorrect information without making any note of correction (horrible journalistic ethics right there) and do not allow my comment to be posted. How would you have responded to the maker’s of this film if they acted in such a manner?
Will, we tried to DM you on Twitter; but since you are not a follower, it was not possible. If you check our Twitter profile for today, you’ll see that our early morning Tweets are all in response to having been hacked sometime yesterday afternoon. It caused considerable havoc, and we have spent the better part of the day on damage control. Your concern and sentiments are understandable. However, we do not feel we have intentionally engaged in propaganda nor in any unethical journalistic behavior. Our main concern is in providing accurate information to our readers.
If your main concern is accurate information, then why not publish a statement of correction? Accuracy includes acknowledging one’s mistake — especially when that results from failing to do the proper research.
Also, I do not see how that alleged havoc has any bearing on failing to approve my comment and acknowledging your error. You obviously read it since you changed the post. It was obviously working well enough for you to edit the post. So…
Will…again thank you for your concern and sentiments…advice taken:)
The American education system is losing its identity and maybe it is becoming part of the corporate hive-mind. I don’t think that’s the biggest threat. Entertainment and all its enticements that go along with it, that ‘s the problem. When education competes with entertainment for attention, guess what wins.
Forget about the possible ill-effects of computers in the classroom. I’d like to see some research that correlates the wide-spread adoption of cable TV and test-scores and maybe even goes further to establish cause –> effect. Our entertainment is now more portable than ever and hence more accessible. It’s now brilliantly packaged into hand-held devices and the Man has convinced us to have them become part of the family.
My phone is reminding me that American Idol starts in a few…