Guiding Principles For Educational Reform

One reads a great deal concerning education reform nowadays. My field of expertise is reading. After teaching in a regular elementary classroom for a couple of years, I completed a master's degree in reading and learning disabilities. Except for a five year break to attend seminary and serve as a full time minister, I have been a teacher of elementary reading. In 1995, I completed a doctorate in reading/educational psychology. At that point, I began teaching reading methods in a college setting.

Over my thirty years of involvement in education, I have seen many, many reforms. In the field of reading, when I began my teaching, basal reading programs were in, and we attempted to teach every skill known to humanity. Next, whole language gained quite a following. When I started attending elementary school in 1960, math was a "drill and kill" activity. It is rather easy to see if you learned under this method. When I was about half way through my elementary school education, the so-called "new math" hit the educational world. I liked this math. People become very opinionated about educational reform. Classroom teachers form strong opinions. Politicians form strong opinions and include reform as part their political platform. They know education is a hot button issue with voters. One group that I watch with great diligence is the religious right. It seems as if they have turned such aspects of educational reform as phonics-based reading instruction and support for the No Child Left Behind Act into something resembling religious dogma. It seems to make little sense, turning reading methods into a religious or quasi-religions crusade, but that is what the leaders of the religious right seem committed to support (James Dobson, for example).
I reiterate: educational reform is not new. First, education reform cannot be test-driven. I have observed thousands of teachers over the years, worked with thousands of pre-service teachers, and supervised well over a hundred student teachers. I must admit, one does rarely encounter a lazy, careless teacher, but it is unusual. The attempt to control teachers and student achievement by means of standardized tests is a misguided approach.
A recent study by the Educational Testing Service, makers of the SAT and nationally used teacher certification exams, revealed that there is much in student performance that cannot be controlled by schools. In fact, ETS discovered four variables: absenteeism, the percent of children living in single parent families, the amount of television kids watch, and how much preschoolers are read to daily by caregivers (especially parents) were very accurate predictors of reading test results used for No Child Left Behind reporting in eighth-grade. Home factors are things that schools and teachers cannot control.
Funding Head Start results in a measurable increase in IQ scores for disadvantaged children. Why not fund more "parents as first teachers" programs to go into the homes and teach parents how to help get their preschoolers ready for school? Second, an effective reform program would insist on scope and sequence. By scope, I refer to the content taught, by sequence, I refer to when content is to be mastered. It taught reading without any real coordination of materials, curriculum, or expectations for mastery in terms of when expected benchmarks should be met. What we need are flexible standards and flexible benchmarks.
Educational critic and researcher, John Goodlad, notes that the most common activity one observes in today's elementary schools is seatwork (i.e. worksheets, quiet work from textbooks, etc). The most common activity noted in high schools is lectures. Both of these approaches are notoriously ineffective. Children learn best by doing. Kids need to make a classroom democracy, not just study government in their civics textbook. Reforms come and go. However, on these three principles, we can arrive at a reform that will stand the test of time. Isn't it about time?