DOO 0<3D\ SCHOOL REFORM IN

Transcription

\DOO 0<3D\
SCHOOL REFORM IN PERSPECTIVE
by
Ernest L. Boyer
President
The Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching
Rowan College of New Jersey
Glassboro, New Jersey
Wednesday, May 5, 1993
ROWAN-R.DOC, (SPC,ELB/lb), May 21, 1993
1
In April 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in
Education announced that
the nation is at risk, and declared that
if a foreign power had imposed on America the
mediocre educational system that we have today,
we would have considered it an act of war.
As it is, the Commission said, we have allowed this to
happen to ourselves.
In response to that hyperbole, we have had,
in the past ten years, one of the most broad-based
and sustained programs for school renewal in the
nation's history.
And that fact alone is worth a headline.
2
As recently as 1970, when I was U.S. Commissioner of
Education,
the words "national" and "education"
simply could not be connected.
In those days if I'd even whispered the words
"national standards,"
I'd have been driven out of town.
But suddenly, all of the caution has disappeared,
with virtually no notice or debate.
3
Further, I'm impressed that corporate America,
which for years ignored public education,
has since 1983 become an active partner in school
renewal,
which surely has helped keep the movement
going.
And I find it especially remarkable that
during the past ten years
•
education in this country, for the first time in our
history,
has "gone national."
For more than 300 years local school control
was an almost sacred priority for America.
Education in the United States has always been grass
roots.
4
5
But now we hear talk almost daily about
national goals,
*
national standards,
national assessment.
And, according to George Gallup, more than half the people in
this country
support a national curriculum,
a position that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago.
Frankly, I really do believe that when future historians review
the so-called school reform movement of the 1980s
they'll emphasize, above all else, that
this was the time when this nation, for the first time
in its history,
became more concerned about
•
national outcomes
*
than about local school control.
6
FUTURE REFORM
But all of that is prologue to what
•
I'd like to focus on today.
My assignment this afternoon is
to look to the future, not the past.
And perhaps the best place to begin is January 20, 1990,
when President George Bush announced
6 ambitious goals for all the nation's schools.
In my opinion, every goal the President announced was
provocative and consequential,
•
but it was the first goal that I found most authentic
and compelling.
7
As the number one objective for the nation,
the President declared that
by the year 2000
every child in America will come to school
ready to learn.
8
9
I recognize that "ready to learn" is an audacious,
"hugely optimistic" proposition.
And my more skeptical friends considered it a
political diversion.
But I asked them if they expected the President to
say that "by the year 2000 half the children should be
well prepared to learn"?
The point is that dreams can be fulfilled only if
•
they've been defined
and if we, as a nation, could, indeed, ensure that
every child in America is well prepared for school,
then I'm convinced that all of the other goals would, in large
measure,
be fulfilled.
10
LANGUAGE
The simple truth is that
•
it's in the early years that curiosity abounds.
This is the time when learning exponentially expands.
And, above all, it's in the early years
•
when children are empowered in the use of words.
Lewis Thomas wrote on one occasion that
childhood is for language.
And now that I'm a grandpa and can observe this process
unencumbered by dirty diapers and burpings late at
night,
I'm absolutely dazzled by the capacity of 3- and 4-year-olds to
use language
not only for affection,
•
but also as weapons of assault.
11
ROWAN-R.DOC, (SPC,ELB/lb), May 21, 1993 13
When I was growing up in Dayton, Ohio—
which is the cultural center of the free world—
we used to say sticks and stones may break my
bones, but names will never hurt me.
What nonsense!
I'd say this with tears running down my cheeks
thinking,
hit me with a stick, but stop the words.
I'm suggesting that
school readiness means that every child must be
linguistically well prepared.
And for this to be accomplished wouldn't it be wonderful
if every child
•
grew up in an environment that was "language rich"
Wouldn't it be wonderful if all children
received thoughtful answers to their questions
instead of "shut up" or "go to bed"?
And wouldn't it be wonderful if every parent
would turn off the TV and
read aloud to their children
at least 30 minutes every single day.
14
The harsh truth is that the nation's 19 million preschoolers
watch TV 15 billion hours every year.
And if all children are to come to school well prepared to learn
we simply must have television programming that is
*
uplifting,
not degrading.
And parents—not TV—
must, once again, become the child's most influential
teacher.
15
FAMILY
And yet there's growing evidence that
the family may be a more imperiled institution than
the school.
Several years ago—at The Carnegie Foundation—
we surveyed 5,000 5th and 8th graders.
Forty percent go home every afternoon to an
empty house.
Sixty percent say they would like to spend more
time with their mothers and fathers.
Sixty percent say they wish they had more
things to do.
Thirty percent never sit down together as a
family for a meal.
GRANDPARENTS
And speaking of home and family influence, I'm increasingly
convinced that
children need the guidance
not just of parents,
but of grandparents, too.
GRANDPA BOYER
Looking back, I'm impressed that the
most important person when I was growing up
was my Grandfather Boyer,
who lived to be 100.
Grandpa Boyer, at the age of 40,
moved his little family into the heart of Dayton,
Ohio,
surrounded by the poor.
He spent the next 40 years running a city mission,
bringing food and clothing
*
and spiritual encouragement
•
to those who were impoverished,
and in the process he taught me that
to be truly human one must serve.
18
Anthropologist Margaret Mead said the strength of any culture
is sustained
as three generations vitally interact,
creating connections vertically across the
generations.
And yet in America today, we're building
•
a kind of horizontal culture,
with each age group living all alone.
And we've even "institutionalized" this generational separation.
Today,
infants are in nurseries,
toddlers in day care
•
children are in schools
•
organized by age,
college students spend time separated on campus
adults are in the workplace,
and older people increasingly are living all alone.
20
I'm convinced that
if all children are to be well prepared for learning and
for life,
we simply must begin to build intergenerational
institutions
to bring the old and young together.
MESSIAH VILLAGE
Here, then, is my conclusion.
School readiness means
•
having protective homes
and inter generational connections.
It means having parents who
•
first give love,
•
then language,
to their children.
HEALTH
But beyond
"love and language"
all children, to be well prepared for school, also need to be
physically well nourished.
And yet, it's sad but true that in America today
one out of every 4 children under the age of 6 is
officially classified as poor.
•
One-fifth of all pregnant women in this country
get belated prenatal care—or none at all.
Ten percent of all babies born in the United States
have been damaged in utero by alcohol and
drugs.
And then we wonder why
•
hundreds of thousands of poor children
come to school each year ill-prepared to learn.
Winston Churchill—who had a way with words—said there
is no greater investment for any community
then putting milk into babies.
And it's time for this country to recognize that
good health
and good education
are inextricably interlocked.
25
PRESCHOOL
Preschool education matters, too.
And, frankly, I consider it a national disgrace that
nearly 30 years after Head Start was authorized by
Congress,
less than 40 percent of the eligible children are being
served.
I'm suggesting that if all children are to
come to school ready to learn
this means
a healthy start,
quality preschool,
empowered parents,
and connections across the generations.
School readiness—to put it simply—
must be everybody's business.
THE BASIC SCHOOL
But there's another side to the equation.
While all children must be well prepared for school,
it's also true that all schools
must be ready for the children.
28
Several years ago—at the National Press Club—I proposed that
we reorganize the first years of formal education
into a single unit called the Basic School.
The Basic School would combine kindergarten to grade 4.
It would give top priority to language, and every student from
the very first would be
•
reading,
•
writing,
•
engaging in conversation,
listening to stories,
in what the foreign language people like to call the saturation
method.
29
CLASS SIZE
Class size is crucial, too.
And in the Basic School there would be no class with more than
15 students.
Frankly, I find it ludicrous to hear school critics say
class size doesn't matter,
especially in the early years when children urgently
need one-on-one attention.
I've never taught kindergarten or first grade,
but I have grandchildren
and when I take them to McDonald's I come home
"basket case."
Frankly, completing that small feat
is an heroically complicated task.
Just keeping track of all the orders
and keeping mustard off the floor
and tracking down lost gloves and boots
is a full-time task.
And none of this relates
to mastering the ABCs
or cramming for the SATs.
32
Teachers in the early grades have the most challenging work I
know.
And I'm convinced that
if this country would give as much status to first
grade teachers as we give to full professors,
that one act alone would revitalize the nation's
schools.
I also am convinced that
most school critics could not survive one week
in the classrooms they so vigorously condemn.
SMALL STUDY TEAMS
In addition to small classes,
I'd like to see a climate in the Basic School
where there is active,
not passive, learning.
Where students are creative,
not conforming.
And where students learn to cooperate,
rather than compete.
Creativity and cooperation will be essential in
Century 21.
33
III. ASSESSMENT
This brings me to the crucial issue of assessment.
In his State of the Union message the President—as the third
national goal—also declared that
by the year 2000
all students would be tested at the
4th-,
8th-,
and 12th-grade levels
in all the basic subjects,
to see if they are academically proficient.
34
35
I know there is great danger in this goal.
And many argue it should be vigorously opposed.
But it's my own opinion that for educators to resist evaluation
would be a big mistake.
The simple truth is that school accountability will be
the central issue of the 90s.
And if educators do not help shape the process
someone will do it for us.
36
At the same time I do worry about where this testing goal may
take us.
I worry that we're asking students to
•
recall isolated facts,
*
to fill in the bubbles,
to put check marks on the paper,
which even chimpanzees can be trained to do.
And in the process, we end up measuring that which matters
least.
37
Howard Gardner, psychologist at Harvard, reminds us that
children have
not only verbal intelligence,
they also have
•
intuitive intelligence,
social intelligence,
spatial intelligence,
aesthetic intelligence.
And yet the tests we use today often screen out many of the
intelligences of children that are most consequential!
And we declare children failures before they discover
who they are
or what they might become.
38
Years ago my wife, Kay, and I were told by school officials that
one of our children was a "special student."
He was special because of his performance on a single
test
and, as another teacher put it, "he's a dreamer."
My son did dream, of course. He dreamed about the stars and
about places far away, about getting out of school,
but we were absolutely convinced that he was very
gifted
and that "somehow" his talents simply didn't match
the routine of the school or the structure of the
system.
Well, let the record show that for ten years this so-called
"special student" has lived successfully in a Mayan village—
he knows the language,
he understands the culture,
he runs Mayan schools,
he builds fantastic bridges.
And he survives living in conditions that would have totally
defeated the psychometricians who concluded years ago he
simply "couldn't learn."
40
Recently, I reflected on why the testers were so wrong in
predicting Craig's success.
And it suddenly occurred to me that the answer was
quite simple. The problem was they didn't have the
right instruments to measure his potential.
They didn't have a test on how to survive in a Mayan
village,
and they didn't have a test to measure whether he
knew how to build a bridge
or understand emphatically another culture.
James Agee wrote that
with every child who is born, under no matter what
circumstances, the potentiality of the human race is
born again.
And our challenge for the year 2000 is to evaluate our
students in ways that can identify and celebrate their
talent,
not screen it out!
As a national strategy, I propose a 3-year moratorium on
national assessment. I also propose that during the decade of
the nineties, master teachers in the school and researchers
from all across the country be brought together
in a kind of peacetime Manhattan Project,
to design for the twenty-first century a new
assessment process that promotes learning
rather than restricts it.
41
42
III. SCHOOL CLIMATE
This brings me to the issue of school climate.
As a 6th and final goal, the President and Governors declared
that
by the year 2000
every school in the United States will be "disciplined"
and "drug free."
Once again, it's obvious that no one would quarrel with this
objective,
•
but where do we begin?
During our study of the American high school, I became
convinced that we have
not just a school problem
but a youth problem in this country.
I concluded that all too many teenagers feel
unwanted,
•
unneeded, and
disconnected
from the larger world.
Even in the school itself there's a spirit of anonymity.
And many students drop out simply because
no one noticed that they had in fact dropped in.
44
SMALL SCHOOLS
Frankly, if I had just one wish,
I'd break up every large school into units of no more
than 400 students each.
I'd assign every student to a "family unit" of no more
than 15-20 students to meet with mentors at the
beginning of each day
to talk about their school work,
to share their hopes and fears,
and to know that someone truly cares.
TRANSITION SCHOOL
And speaking of restructuring, I'd also reorganize the last 2
years of high school into a more "flexible" unit called
•
the transition school.
In the transition school, students
would not only come to class,
•
but would also have assignments outside the school
to learn to work,
and also learn to serve—
relating what they have learned to the realities of life.
45
SERVICE
In the Carnegie report High School, we proposed a new
Carnegie unit,
a community service program
in day-care centers,
•
in youth camps,
in retirement villages,
so students can
have a larger sense of purpose,
and see a connection between what they learn and
how they live.
Martin Luther King, Jr., said
•
everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.
And I'm convinced the young people of this country are ready
to be inspired by a larger vision.
47
V. PARTNERSHIP
This leads me to one final observation.
Today, we hear endlessly about how the schools have failed,
•
and surely education must improve.
But the longer it goes, the more I am convinced
it's not the school that's failed,
it's the partnership that's failed.
Indeed, I'm beginning to suspect that
the family is a more imperiled institution than the
school,
and that if we want schools that are disciplined and
drug free,
•
we'd better get the message to the parents.
48
49
Several years ago at The Carnegie Foundation we surveyed
22,000 teachers and I was struck that
87 percent reported that lack of parental support is a
problem at their school.
89 percent say that "abused" or "neglected" children
is a problem.
And 67 percent report "poor health" among their
students.
One teacher put it this way:
"I'm sick and tired," she said, "of seeing my brighteyed first grade kids
fade into the 'shadows of apathy' and become
deeply troubled by age 10."
Another teacher said that the difficult part of teaching is not
the academics.
The difficult part is dealing with the great numbers of kids
who come from physically, socially, and financially
stressed homes.
What is the future of this country, this teacher asks,
when we have so many needy children?
50
Today's schools are being asked to do what
families
and communities
and churches
have not been able to accomplish.
We expect principals and teachers to
eliminate graffiti,
stop the drugs,
reduce teenage pregnancies.
And if they fail anywhere along the line
we condemn them for not meeting our high-minded
expectations.
51
Looking to the year 2000, I predict that schools increasingly
will become
•
community service centers for the family;
afternoon and
•
summer enrichment programs.
But there is simply "no way" for teachers to do it all alone.
52
When all is said and done
excellence in education means excellence in
teaching.
In looking to the year 2000
this nation simply must give
more dignity and more status to the teachers
who meet with children every day
and guide the destiny of the nation.
SEVENTH GOAL
What I'd really like to see is a 7th national education goal.
I'd like to see this nation pledge that
by the year 2000
•
all teachers will be well paid and well supported,
with gifted teachers highly honored.
55
And as a symbol of this new initiative, may I also respectfully
suggest that President Clinton
invite the teachers of the year to a dinner in the East
Room of the White House.
After all, we have state dinners for visiting heads of state
from nations overseas,
why not pay special honor to the unsung heroes from
the nation's classrooms
here at home?
56
CONCLUSION
Here, then, is my conclusion.
To achieve excellence in education for Century 21, we simply
must
focus on the early years of learning,
break up large schools into smaller units,
build a clear link between education and the world of
work,
create new, more effective methods of assessment,
give new dignity and new status to the teachers,
and create in every school a climate where students
become creative, self-directed learners.
57
PRAYER
Finally, as a backdrop to everything I've said,
the issue of equality of opportunity must be candidly
confronted.
The harsh truth is that this nation continues to be
tragically divided between the privileged and the
disadvantaged.
•
And it's pathetic that children in our most
impoverished districts
often are the least well supported.
58
I am convinced that time is running out,
and if we do not focus on our most troubled schools,
public education will decline
and the nation's future will be imperiled.
59
Recently, I received a copy of a little prayer from Marian
Wright Edelman
that recognized in a simple yet effective way the need
to focus on all children.
And it occurred to me that this prayer might be an appropriate
way
to close my remarks this afternoon.
PRAYER
The prayer reads:
"Dear Lord we pray for children
who spend all their allowances before Tuesday,
•
who throw tantrums in the grocery store,
•
who pick at their food,
•
who squirm in church and temple,
and who scream into the phone.
"And we also pray for children
whose nightmares come in the light of day,
•
who rarely see a doctor,
•
who never see a dentist,
who aren't spoiled by anybody,
and who go to bed hungry, and cry themselves to
sleep.
"Dear Lord we pray for children
•
who like to be tickled,
who sneak Popsicles before dinner,
and who can never find their shoes.
"And we also pray for children
who can't run down the street in a new pair of
sneakers,
who never get dessert,
who don't have any rooms to clean up,
and whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser.
"Dear Lord we pray for children who want to be carried
and we pray for those who must be carried.
"We pray, for those we never give up on
and also for those who never get a second chance.
"We pray for those we smother with love,
and we pray especially for those who will grab the
hand of anybody kind enough to offer."
,

DOO 0<3D\ SCHOOL REFORM IN

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