I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on standardized education and, for the most part, the consensus is that it is mortally flawed.
It is clear that not all kids benefit from the one-size-fits-all approach to education, but I have to ask—how the heck are we supposed to fix it?
There is no doubt that teachers do their best to give individual attention but they can only do so much. With today’s class sizes, too much individual attention means that other students aren’t learning what they need to learn that day. Too little individual attention means that kids are falling through the cracks, dropping out of school due to frustration and not reaching their potential.
Education researchers and administrators have spent decades coming up with solutions to the problems. One solution was standardized testing. If too many kids are falling through the cracks then we have to make teachers and schools accountable, right? If teachers are sticking to the curriculum, and teaching it well, then all the kids should know the material well enough to ace the tests.
Okay in theory but it completely negates what educators were trying to do in the first place. For almost thirty years, it has been well known that all children learn differently. So now teachers find themselves in an even more frustrating position. If everyone learns differently and at different rates, then how can they all write the same test well? They can if the teacher teaches to the test and only to the test.
Now, instead of focusing on the kids, teachers are focusing on the test and schools are focusing on the test results. Surprise, surprise—the kids still aren’t doing all that better. Ten percent are still failing. Not only that, but some parents have been quietly asked to keep their kids home the day of the test because their child’s low results would reflect poorly on the school as a whole.
Many blame funding for the issues with standardized education. How can we help the kids who need it when we can’t even afford photocopies? Last year, a study released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives revealed that there is a $1.2 billion funding gap in Ontario. That means that there isn’t enough money for programs for kids from low income families, EAL (formerly ESL) learners, and kids with special needs—the very kids that need the help the most.
Others, like Clayton Christensen, author of “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation will Change the Way the World Learns,” say that funding isn’t the reason for the problems. Funding is only an issue because teaching to individual needs is expensive within the current system.
“Because there are so many points of interdependence within the public school system, there are powerful economic forces in place to standardize both instruction and assessment despite what we know to be true—students learn in different ways,” Christensen writes. “The problem is that customization within interdependent systems is expensive.”
Essentially it means that if teachers customize their teaching, then the curriculum has to be changed and, if the curriculum changes, the textbooks have to be changed. For the curriculum and textbooks to be changed, the school boards have to change the way they work. For that to happen there has to be major changes at the Ministry level. Finally, we’d have to change the way teachers are trained and certified.
That’s a lot of changing and what are we changing into? Christensen suggests computer-based learning where kids essentially learn using software catered to their needs. In Canada, that could be a logistical nightmare, not to mention exacerbating problems like childhood obesity and teacher disengagement. Also, who would develop the software? The same people who write the flawed textbooks?
I really don’t know what needs to be done to fix the system. Hopefully, education researchers are cooking up the solution right now. I guess we’ll have to wait and see, and then, of course, criticize the heck out of whatever they come up with.
