Out in suburbia, middle-class kids coast through school uninspired. There is “severe disengagement with learning.” (Pope)

This observation is offered then dropped from further discussion. What it suggests is that even among well-off white kids from functional families, the school system is failing. Maybe the question to be answered first is: why even among the most advantaged students from the wealthiest systems with the best teachers do apathy and indifference reign? How can we hope to address successfully the additionally stresses faced by low income minority students if the basic educational model itself fails to generate positive results under favorable circumstances? If the system doesn't work in suburbia, it surely can't work anywhere else.

How about the school superintendent and the school board listening to parents? How about looking at the schools that have long wait lists and asking why that is and then duplicating those programs at other schools? How about asking parents why they leave the district, choose private school or move from public to private schools?

Give students and their parents a choice in where they attend. That will make more of a difference than blaming a bankrupt citizenry for not shelling out more money to the education bureaucracy.

And stop pretending Sharpton represents any legitimate group. He is a charlatan who tries to keep racism alive.

Yes, "minority" students will always think of themselves as victims so long as people like Al Sharpton can make money convincing them they are so.

"...you might wonder why year after year there seems to be so little, if any, favorable change in K-12 education."

I don't wonder that. The reason there is almost no favorable change is because most suggestions for improving the classroom focus on things that are peripheral to the problems. In order for things to improve, any classroom requires
1. an effective teacher
2. a motivated and prepared student
3. a rigorous, effective, efficient and sufficient curriculum
4. a focused and effective learning environment
I call those four things the "Square of Effective Learing."

Our classrooms struggle because
1. our teachers are constantly pulled out of classrooms for nonacademic activities, forced to swallow failed teaching methodologies, and prevented from doing what they need to do for the students
2. our students are not prepared to be in the classrooms they're in, they're forced to adhere to failed learning methodologies, and they're prevented from learning the material they need to learn, whereupon they become completely unmotivated
3. the typical mathematics and language arts curricula in most of our public schools are wholly inadequate, depending on weak content, poor structure, and failed methodology
4. the typical classroom is constantly distracted by nonacademic activities, constant group work, and lots of blah, blah, blah with little real content

Those are real problems. Chester Finn notes the curriculum issue, although his solution is for the federal government to walk in and take over. That solution will NOT help parents become more involved in the classroom -- it will, in fact, prevent it. We do NOT need more government in our classrooms -- we need less. Much less.

If anything is to improve in education, the curriculum needs to improve, the classroom needs to be refocused on academics, the students need to be prepared to be in the class they're in, administrators need to hire good teachers and then let them teach, and all local, state and federal government types need to back off and let the classroom work. Current administration is largely opposed to all of that, filled as they are with edu-nonsense about how children supposedly learn and what they supposedly need to know.

"We" parents don't settle for mediocrity. We parents are butting up against an administration that obstinately refuses to do what needs to be done for the students. And we parents cannot seem to change their mind, get them to listen, or get them out.

Now, some of us parents are being offered vouchers that are tied to state and federal tests. That will not be helpful. It will only serve to bog down our charter schools and private schools in the same curricular mess that limits our public schools. Give parents real choice, real options that aren't bogged down by the wants of The Self-Serving, and watch everything improve.

Laurie H. Rogers
Author of "Betrayed: How the Education Establishment Has Betrayed America and What You Can Do about it"
and "Betrayed" - a blog on education
http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com
wlroge@comcast.net

A motivated student can wrestle an education away from any school, no matter how bad it is. No school, no matter how good it is, can impose an education on an un-motivated student.

It seems to me that of the four elements of Ms Rogers' "Square of Effective Learning", it is the second, the motivated and prepared student, which is both the most critical and the most fragile.

What would education system look like if it were built around motivating students and keeping them motivated? Given what we know about motivation, that cognitive behavior cannot be inspired by the usual set of carrots and sticks that drive mechanistic behavior, we need to offer students autonomy, mastery, and purpose if we want to motivate them to learn. So great schools that foster motivated students will provide opportunity for students to explore their interests (rather than the common core curriculum content crap), to master skills (rather than become familiar with concepts), and to pursue a goal larger than themselves (rather than a grade on a test).

This motivation would also require a personal relationship between the student and an adult in the school who has responsibility for that student.

In primary education it would look more like Montessori and in secondary education it would look more like the student-directed, project-based education found at The NOVA Project. Both of these models have been proven effective for a lot of students. Why prevents us from adopting them?

These types of transformative changes are stopped out mostly by out-dated, industrial era thinking by people in district administration offices, state bureaucracy offices, and political office.

Sorry. I missed a letter.

I call these four things (the 1. teacher 2. student 3. curriculum 4. learning environment) the "Square of Effective Learning."

I probably need new glasses.

I mostly agree with coolpapa except that I think that the primary/secondary system eventually looks more like Waldorf education than Montessori. You can't get the technique right until you figure out who the child is and what you are trying to teach her. We live in a fragmented society whose only overriding value is individual greed. An educational system premised on inculcating this trivial goal can only appeal to a student's basest instincts and inevitably disappoints the brightest and most sensitive children.

Children are intrinsically idealistic and creative -- until we knock it out of them. Or until we abandon them to technologies that turn them into passive, button-pushing robots (with random, often destructive hyperactivity as the main outlet for unengaged energies). This may serve the short-term needs of corporate society for vocationally-trained drones but it is the death of freedom.

I'm afraid we have a fundamental problem that no amount of tinkering around the edges can cure. Waldorf provides the only educational approach that I know of that is based on a comprehensive vision of what it means to be human and how those amazing potentialities can be developed in an orderly fashion based on the child's growth cycle. Check it out.

Coolpapa said: "In primary education it would look more like Montessori and in secondary education it would look more like the student-directed, project-based education ... Both of these models have been proven effective for a lot of students. ... These types of transformative changes are stopped out mostly by out-dated, industrial era thinking by people in district administration offices, state bureaucracy offices, and political office."

Actually, the typical classroom looks very much like what coolpapa proposes, with nearly constant "student-directed, project-based education," and this type of classroom has devasted an entire generation of students. Its efficacy has most definitely NOT been proven.

People who believe in this sort of classroom do continue to blame traditional, instructivist learning for all problems, as if that's how things are anymore or have been for the last decade. Our country actually has been drowning in student-directed, project-based learning for 20 years, and more continues to be pressed on classrooms, teachers and students from administrators, legislators, and interested corporations. At the bottom of all of it are frustrated students and insufficient learning.

Coolpapa, if you want to motivate students, provide them with effective, efficient and sufficient instruction, clear examples and orderly presentation of material. Allow them to succeed. Allow them to excel. Allow teachers to teach, allow students to understand what the heck they're doing, and watch students thrive. I see that every day as I tutor.

Laurie H. Rogers
Author of "Betrayed: How the Education Establishment Has Betrayed America and What You Can Do about it"
and "Betrayed" - a blog on education
http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com
wlroge@comcast.net