In this post, John Merrow asks and answers the question,
“If YOU had the power to make ONE major change in American public education immediately, what would you choose to do?”
“I posed the question to my dinner companions, three authors and one editor. But before I tell you how they answered the question, please take a minute to decide what you would do.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Make schools like Reggio Emilia inspired schools with choice, small classes, lots of support, an emphasis on play & beautiful spaces with plants, trees (nature) available.
End annual testing by restoring the ESSA to its original state.
Oy vey, ESEA. Too many acronyms!
Seconded.
I would not Dumb Down. I would tell students that they create their reality with their thoughts and that they are more than human. We are here to evolve and not to stay so misinformed.
Enact a law so that all school boards have to be elected and all candidates must live in the community. I would also like to limit spending on these elections to keep the carpetbaggers at bay.
Before I read:
Return the focus in Kidergarten to finger-paintin, clay squeezin, letter learnin, number countin, name writin, birthday and address sayin, block buildin’ and friend makin.
When I went to Kindergarten way, way back in 1956 I learned three important things: the alphabet, how to climb a jungle gym, and to be quiet. Look where it got me!! Oh yes, there were the duck and cover drills too, not so important after all.
Pass a law to fund all public schools equally, suburban, rural, urban. Every board gets exactly the same per pupil grant with extra allowance for special ed and ELL.
Agreed. End austerity followed by equitable funding that goes directly to the school districts according to needs.
Not equally. Equitably.
Exactly. In Utah, schools are funded equally. In fact, we’re often seen as the most equal funding in the U.S. But there are MANY schools (including mine) that need more help. Many of my classes are at 38 a piece (next year, they will be 40), and the district says, “Well, (school with two percent FRL) has classes of 38, so it’s equal! What I say is, “My school (40% poverty) needs classes MUCH smaller, because we have a lot more concerns to deal with in those enormous classes, which are ludicrously high, no matter what school one teaches at.
Can’t legislate LOVE, but I want loving, supportive, creative, moral, trustworthy, and intelligent teachers.
Have Administrators who ask teachers: What can I do to help you become an even better teacher?
Have a school librarian who knows books and kids.
Have lots of hands-on experiences across the curriculum.
Promote the arts for they matter and help make us smart.
Get rid of ALL those CANNED programs written by those far away from the classroom.
Stop high stakes testing. The Teachers know.
Get rid of CCSS. They are nonsense.
Fund education equally.
Have ELECTED school boards and demand transparency.
STOP all this product placement marketing in schools.
Allow time for students to sit down and have lunch. Good grief. I see kids gobbling down their food while standing up, because they want their recess.
I think this is enough for now.
Have decent adminstrations, that are actually accountable to the teachers and other employees they’re “supposed” to help.
THEN, you can have administrators that can ask teachers questions. BUT ONLY THEN.
I know you said, only ONE, but couldn’t stop myself.
Stop high-stakes testing
Mamajj: I hope you don’t mind but I think your succinct comment is the best place for me to add my own thoughts on the subject of this wonderful posting and thread…
Yes, the immediate and complete cessation of all high-stakes testing. No exceptions.
I hope you don’t mind this quibble, but I would modify it to include “any-stakes standardized testing.” Please excuse, Señor Swacker, but at this point I wouldn’t be adverse to NAEP continuing.
IMHO, this is because eliminating the critical source of numbers & stats for the 3DM [Data-DrivelDecisionMaking] of corporate education reform would force the kind of discussion that rheephormsters of all political colorations and religious beliefs loathe, fear and avoid whenever possible.
Why is that? Because once you eliminate the most essential source of figures [massaged, distorted, tortured] used to mathematical intimidate and mislead in order to shut people up and stop dialogue, you are left with—hold on to your hats—
A deep wide-ranging discussion of what sorts of judgments and decisions need to be made about a human right to a quality education, equality and equity, social mobility, child development, and a host of other issues.
Like the “modest proposal” made the other day by the owner of this blog, that would be not the end but the beginning of the end for the flimflam artists in mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$. The last thing they want to do is engage in a genuine give-and-take about, oh I don’t know—
New Orleans. Chicago. New York. Detroit. Los Angeles. To mention only a few…
But some might say “so what”? Well, I refer y’all to someone who knew a thing or two about the power of truth telling:
“Truth is powerful and it prevails.” [Sojourner Truth]
But can’t the truth be hidden forever under the crushing weight of wealth, power and privilege?
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” [Buddha]
For those not convinced, I remind one and all of such immutable features of the human experience as the divine right of kings, the unsuitability of women having the vote, the incapacity of ordinary people to govern themselves, and the impossibility of gay marriage.
Boy, some things never change…
😜
Thank you, one and all, for your comments on this thread.
😎
No public money of any kind to private schools, including charter schools. Invest in neighborhood schools and employer citizens.
I would close all charter schools as of June 30, 2018.
Bottomless resources for support for children with disabilities of all kinds, and transform the landscape so there was no shame or resentment involved; also, no judgment from the peanut galleries (outsiders) on it.
That is a wonderful idea in a simple question!
I would like to acknowledge the definition on “expert” in both academy and humanity. Next, there is certain percentage of the revenue from the whole to each group in order to sustain civilization and peace among all sentient beings.
Everything is in an interdependent relationship. In short, the answer for:
“If YOU had the power to make ONE major change in American public education immediately, what would you choose to do?”, is that:
People need to be cultivated the value of humanity and trustworthy in an expert of both academy and humanity. Therefore, we will mutually agree and content to let each expert in each domain to transparently/publicly propose their strategy in order to lead people to live reasonably in peace and in prosperity. Back2basic
Make the curriculum authentic/place based.
I think I know what you mean by “place based”, but not positive. If it means what I think to means, I like it….
“Bad Hair Days”
If I could make one change
I’d ban the billionaires
From spreading all their mange
With all their crazy hairs
Gotta tell you.. read this twice and it made me laugh both times. That’s good. And, it’s a poem with the word “mange” in it! Yeah….
Thanks.
Glad you liked it.
I’m also glad I was able to use the word mange in at least one poem.
Now, I can feel that my life is complete.
My dog had mange once. It was nasty. Made her itch and scratch like crazy all day and all night. It was almost as bad for me as for her. I had to bathe her in a borax solution every few days for about 3 weeks to get rid of it.
I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
Or even on my worst enemy’s pet
And your dog loved you for it, as dogs always do:0) Woof!
What we do for our pets! I once had a cat (a stray taken off the streets of NYC) that developed an eating disorder. No fooling, that’s what the vet told me. I’d pick up the cat and I was like, damn, this cat feels THIN. And, people didn’t believe me. But it was. The treatment was a bit involved but the kitty recovered.
What this has to do with a blog about education? I don’t know. I guess after 30 years of teaching, I trust my instincts. If something just doesn’t seem right (the cat, the kid, the car etc…etc..) a lot of times something is not okay.
Getting old often stinks. I feel a bit mangy myself at times. But having a lot of past experiences to draw upon sometimes really comes in handy. Like, don’t do that dumb thing again. Ha, ha. Have a great day.
“Catorexia”
My cat🐈 was catorexic
It wouldn’t eat a bite
The vet, she tried to fix it
By counseling at night
But cat refused the healing
Grew thinner by the day
My story ain’t appealing
My kitty passed away
Long, long day and you made me laugh again. Yeah…..
Promote the community schools model. There are lots of changes I think need to be made, but the question said “one.”
I’ve “cheated” and read the article. While Mr. Merrow comes up with the same answer as I do (16 years later!), I’d like an acknowledgement from that he was wrong and the numerous educators who have been saying this from the beginning were right.
What came to mind immediately: a president in the White House who would actually listen to his or her Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch. (In other words, WISDOM in Washington, D.C.)
Yes!
From the article”
““Get rid of them completely,” one asked? “Yes,” I said, “because about 75% of what they do is destructive: dumbing down the curriculum, making school a pressure-cooker, equating a person’s worth with his or her scores, falsely evaluating teacher quality based on a single number, and so on.”
I continued. “Maybe about 25% of what they do is worth-while, but, if we got rid of them completely, we would be forced to develop alternative ways of assessing learning, and we could come up with approaches that weren’t inherently destructive.”
You’re getting there, John. But any test or assessment should be for the benefit of the student in his/her learning of the subject matter. What can the student learn about his/her own learning? If the teacher doesn’t know pretty much what the student knows/doesn’t know by the time the assessment/test comes around that teacher really hasn’t been paying much attention to the student-or the class size is huge-LOL!
The concept of teacher as “diagnostician”, as attempting to diagnose whether or not a student has or has not learned something is one of those false concepts that obstruct the purpose of the teaching and learning process wherein the student must be the focus of the process, must control his/her own learning with the teacher being the expert guide to/for the student offering/giving expertise as needed.
There is an old country saying “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.” Well, in demanding that a teacher diagnose (standardize testing) and force a student to supposedly learn the subject matter at hand one is asking the teacher to force the “horse to drink”. Or as one country-boy biology teacher put it when the administrators were trying to force him to implement various malpractices: “I ain’t sucking on the back end to make ’em drink either”.
Overturn Milliken v. Bradley and Pierce v. Society of Sisters. If the rich Republicans have to send their kids to the same schools everyone else does watch how fast those schools get adequate funding.
Legally mandate (including enacting the taxes needed) that:
#1) that within walking distance (or as close as possible, i.e. in spread out rural areas) every parent have the “choice” of a traditional public school, overseen by a democratically elected school board, that is a totally transparent and accountable to the public via that school board (none of this Devos-ian baloney about schools being accountable through parents decision to choose / not choose to enroll/dis-enroll their child fro a certain school), and provides a full, rich curriculum, including the arts, music (instruments and dedicated music teacher, drama, P.E. (a dedicated P.E. teacher whose sole function is teaching P.E.), and that is staffed by fully-credentialed, unionized teachers with the majority of those teachers holding at least 10 years of teaching experience or more;
unless and until that happens, no charter school of any kind must not be opened near that school, or existing charters be closed to make #1 happen;
AND
#2) that a veteran (5 years or more) teacher’s salary, combined with the local cost of living enable that teacher to purchase, pay the mortgage, and own a small, modest home or condo within a maximum 30-minute drive from that teacher’s school site — with salary increases, and/or housing subsidies and/or enacting whatever legislative program is necessary to make that happen; in exchange for that, of course, the requirements for becoming and remaining a teacher be made even more stringent — i.e. as it is with doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.
Reduce class size to 14.
Dude. I would take 25. Or even 30. 14 would be so amazing that I can’t even imagine it.
Support teachers and help them grow professionally by addressing the needs and goals they identify and set for themselves, and give them the respect they continue to earn.
Require that all “educational reforms” must originate with experienced real classroom teachers [not from billionaires, lawyers serving in state or national legislatures, not from Ivory Tower University Professors of Education who haven’t seen the inside of a real elementary or secondary classroom for any extended time since they were students in one of them], 2. Require that all teachers have actual teaching majors in what they are teaching [no more coaches teaching science because they have first aid and human anatomy classes required by their PE major, or 12 hours of Social Studies with such classes as the “sociology of building a winning team”, “the history of skipping stones”, “playground politics and building better teamwork.” or the required Pol Sci 101-2 and HIST 101-2! 3. Require the same per-pupil funding for students in grades k-6, a little higher equal funding for students in grades 7-8, and still larger funding for students in grades 9-12. 4. require that 85% of all state funding go directly to classroom support paying for such things as teachers salaries, up to date student textbooks, classroom supplies, and student counseling, remedial, occupational and physical therapy services, That means that the administrative overburden of schools must be limited to no more than 15% of the funding. 5. outlaw any for profit businesses that provide any services to publicly funded schools.
Require all states to recognize collective bargaining on all matters that have to do with education
Like that idea, too.
Teachers, principals, superintendents must be certified under the unified regulation by national standard that applies to all States in America.
Whether school is private or public, teaching can be unified in all levels from k-12 to university. This is to ensure that all students regardless of their status and background, they will be truly educated Americans with the same education background after their graduation.
In short, these graduated learners can represent American interest whenever they choose to run for any level in elected or selected official government after their graduation. Back2basic
Wow. So many different answers, but none like mine (so far). I don’t think the issues in our country are as much about education as they are about the lack of supports in the different agencies upon which education depends
So, I’d focus on basic health: every child has proper care for physical, dental, and mental health. And all children would come to school well-rested and ready to learn.
You can have the best teachers and programs, but if the kids are sick or hungry, nothing you do will yield the results that you want.
Truly fund excellence to adapt and expand curricula and instruction to find and cultivate each child’s unique gifts rather than trying to standardize and make robots of each child.
Instead of top-down, I’d switch it around so the bottom was in charge using Finland is an example.
Teachers 1st working with interested students and parents. No one else would be allowed anywhere near public education.
Limit the numbers of students a teacher sees at one time. You can spend all the time you have on one student. Let us admit that small numbers of students for which a teacher is responsible raises the probability that the teacher will have time to assign essays and call parents. Class size does,not do,this. I see 135 students a day, with no,class exceeding 29.
Bill Gates went to Lakeside School in Seattle and his children went there too.
Average class size is 17
Tuition for 2017-18 was $33,280
There’s more … a lot more.
https://www.lakesideschool.org/about-us/fast-facts
And what is Bill Gates and all the other autocratic, billionaire deformers are doing to the traditional public schools?
Meanwhile: U.S. states’ education spending averaged $10,700 per pupil in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but that average masked a wide variation, ranging from $6,555 per pupil in Utah to $19,818 in New York.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-states-that-spend-the-most-and-the-least-on-education-in-one-map/?utm_term=.de842bd95ff7
What about the average salary for Lakeside School Employees?
Average Salary $61K
https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Lakeside_School/Salary
Compared to:
It was $45,622, according to the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a mean (or average) salary in 2016 of $45,240 for West Virginia high school teachers, $44,420 for middle school teachers and $45,520 for elementary schoolteachers. Mar 5, 2018
How much (or little) teachers earn — state by state
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/03/05/how-much-or-little-teachers-earn-state-by-state/?utm_term=.e16233b020c5
If Bill Gates really wanted to improve education for the traditional public schools, he’d be fighting to lower class sizes and increase teacher pay so all the traditional public schools would at last match the school he and his children attended.
I want to see only genuine educators, with formal training in education and at least five years of classroom teaching experience in schools, calling the shots in education, not politicians, billionaires, corporations, dillettants, etc. dictating policies, funding and what goes on in classrooms. (Formal training and classroom teaching experience would have to be in legitimate, accredited college Ed Schools and public P-12 schools, not fake schools like charters and their similarly fake Teacher Ed programs that only train teachers to be drill sergeants implementing the one-size-fits-all “no-excuses” model –which means that people who received their training in alternative programs, like TFA, Relay, the unaccredited Broad program etc., would not qualify.)
Birth to 3!
Prenatal care and then support parents as their child’s first teacher.
Literacy in the home. Hearing vocabulary. “Reading” (felling / holding) books. Play. More play. Turn off the screens. Hearing more vocabulary. More play…
(and for the adults… Hemingway… and Postman and Weingartner’s “built in crap detectors.”)
Yes! Literacy is my passion. It should star on day one. Connecting oral language to the written word is paramount. Of course that would require parents to talk to their children occasionally.
I just finished reading The Grapes of Wrath, I never took the time to read it when I was young. What a story it tells!
I would put an end to discussions that frame education as the only lever required for upward mobility.
Channeling Diane — Students in poverty face so many obstacles: food scarcity, homelessness, medical issues, unstable home environments, etc. It is entirely unreasonable to expect schools to single-handedly fix all these problems, and then on top of that teach students what they need to know to succeed in the modern labor market. But because education is framed as this universal silver bullet right now, many people are disappointed by and trash their local schools.
If we start to clearly distinguish between teaching and learning versus solving more basic health and behavioral problems, maybe we as a society can stop pretending that schools can “fix” everyone, and we can start to demand the full slate of resources needed provide opportunity to everyone.
Make democratic citizenship — what Aristotle called “the character of democracy” and the principle that “the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole” — the central focus of pubic education.
ummm…pubLic education…lol
John Merrow got this one right… if testing remains in place as it is now any new resources no matter how they are distributed will be spent preparing kids to pass them. The standardized tests we administer to children today insidiously create the comparison of children within an age cohort. This, in turn, leads to developmentally inappropriate instruction for many children and needless competition among students and schools to “succeed” on test-taking. Worse yet it reinforces the notion that schools are designed to sort and select students.
And here’s the best thing about Mr. Merrow’s idea: unlike the ideas of his dinner friends it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime! Indeed…. it would SAVE millions of dollars!
The one thing I would want changed is the whole charter school smoke and mirrors status:
1. No more public funding for charter schools
2. Any charter school that wants public space must pay for the space providing there is space
3. No schools without union representation – right to work states have proven this statement with our colleagues in these red diaper doper baby states struggling to make ends meet
4. No more people like Michelle Rhee, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Koch Bros. Scott Walkers of the world. What the hell are these people doing in education whereas they know absolutely nothing about education.
5. While were at it no more Eva moskowitchs of the world. This woman scorns public school teachers yet this yapper earns somewhere in the neighborhood of half million dollars a year while she steals money from the public to run her schools crying poverty.
Lets rid these charter school leaches who lye about everything using their smoke and mirrors to undermine our public schools while they steal money from the public and then take millions of dollars in “donations”. Please rid these people and schools.
Bring in at least one residence preparatory academy for gifted/talented children in every state of the Union . use this model:
http://www.imsa.edu
Our nation needs to provide an adequate and proper education to our gifted/talented youth.
So Mote it Be!
I would make the county the minimum size of geographic unit that could be used to determine the borders of school districts. Whereas now 500-sq-mile Westchester County, NY, has an absurd 48 separate and distinct school districts, under my plan it would have no more than one.
This consolidation would lead to a variety of efficiencies that would free up money to go to classrooms, but the real transformation would be in the areas of spending equity and integration, particularly in the parts of our country that are the most stratified and least integrated. Money would go directly to the kids and schools that need it most and spending gaps would be eliminated instantly with no net increase in overall spending.
Reduce mandatory education to K-8, because those who do not care about AP Physics or even algebra will not learn much in high school anyway. Spending 13 years in school only to re-take algebra in college is madness. Re-introduce basic algebra and geometry in 8th or 7th grade. Make at least one foreign language mandatory, teach it in middle school. Make community colleges accept students with middle-school only for vocational training. On the other hand, get rid of prerequisites in high school, instead allow placement test for any subject one wants to take. Allow students to choose their own textbooks as long as they cover the program, and make sure the school pays for them.
Your suggestion is a guaranteed prescription for an ignorant and easily manipulated population.
Well, mandating a foreign language in k-8 is not a bad idea.
You think it will be more ignorant that it is now? I doubt this.
Yes, children are no where near far enough along in their development when they are 13 years old. They are just beginning the mental explorations that can take them to many places not thought of at that point in life. Would I have thought to have gone to live in Peru after high school without taking Spanish and having the guidance of my Spanish teacher? I doubt it. I’ve spoken with many a former student who has stated that they wished that they had applied themselves more fully in school to have learned that much more when they had the chance. We may think we know a lot when we are young teens but in actuality we don’t know squat.
Because dark money never sleeps, repeal “Citizens United”. The charteristas and privatizers can buy elections and thus our schools. Oh, and disallow Gates, Bezos, Hastings, Broad and the Waltons and the rest from making “charitable” deductions, so they pay their fair share of taxes.
If we have a genuine love and concern for our students and put them first, everything else will fall into place.
Declare a basic philosophy for K-12 education and make it part of the Constitution. My suggestion is
There is only one interest in the design and implementation of K-12 education, the children’s.
Normally, no explanation is needed, but just in case some people think, they can spot some wiggling room in the suggestion:
Design curriculum, build buildings, decorate classrooms, print books, choose leaders, train and pay teachers with only one interest in mind: the child’s. So forget about the interest of the economy, the job market, the teachers, the superintendents, politicians, employers, donors, university profs and even parents.
Too damn simple, Máté!
At the same time what you state goes to the fundamental purpose of public education as gleaned from the 25 state constitutions that give a reason for providing public education:
“The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”
From which your philosophy in guiding any action, that of primarily keeping only the child’s interests in mind, logically follows.
“From which your philosophy in guiding any action, that of primarily keeping only the child’s interests in mind, logically follows.”
Well, the key word is only, and I wouldn’t use “primarily”. I do have a problem with “promote the welfare of the individual”—individualized learning rides on this, and you can easily squeeze “choice” in there too.
It’s important to talk about the interest of children rather than of individuals. The rest is quite flowery, and hence can be interpreted in many ways. Imo.
The idea is that the interest of all children needs to be considered, and individual interests cannot be served at the expense of this common interest.
On the other hand, if we want to be pragmatic, I think the main issue should be to eliminate any version of school choice that is to be funded from public money (hence public school money).
I have no problem with “choice”. My parents chose for me to attend Catholic K-12 schools. Now I have very serious problems with public tax monies going to pay for those private schools.
It is not the “choice” that is the problem it is the expectation by private, whether they be religious or not, interests to be paid for those private services. If someone wants to start and run a private school that’s all fine and dandy, but don’t expect the public monies that are constitutionally mandated for public schools to come flowing to you.
So we do not necessarily want to eliminate “choice” but prevent public monies from going to private interests in the very private fashion that it does these days (closed books, pedagogical practices, etc. . . in other words no public scrutiny).
And one final thought before heading off to the garden: I contend that if we attend to the interests of the individual in him/her being educated that the common interests will benefit as the individual will be able to see those common interests as taught in the public schools, and/or even in private schools (yes, I came out of that Catholic education with a fairly strong sense of community interests and common interests).
Indeed, Duane, individual choice is not prohibited as long as it is not funded from public funds.
Going to the garden? Teaching there? 🙂
Nah, retired now. At my last school, here in rural Missouri we have a pretty good Agriculture program, greenhouse, etc. . . . They “grade” a butchered cow, have a good FAA program, etc. . . . But then a fair amount of the kids are country kids.
At the first school where I taught, it was basically surrounded by conservation areas with a pond out the one side of the property from my classroom. We had an outdoor classroom with benches and a teachers podium. I’d take my classes out there to have class. Once for giggles I had the students fish. Oh, I made sure that I “connected” it to Spanish, you know in case an adminimal challenged why, vocabulary for fishing, etc. . . . The only one to catch a fish was a girl who hadn’t ever been fishing. So it was a successful class!
Flowery? Perhaps. I used the language of the constitutions from which I took the wording, and, yes, considering the times in which those constitutions were written “flowery” language was considered a positive thing. I would argue that the interests of the child are inherent in “promoting the welfare of the individual”.
As far as choice, well one can squeeze it most anywhere. It’s a rather pliable concept. And that is one of the reasons the edudeformers and privateers have captured its usage. Who can be against choice? It’s the same with “standards”. Who can be against having standards for the students? Only heathen, uncivilized people obviously.
End Charter Schools and stop Eva Moskowitz now!