I was reading something yesterday that really struck me.  Education has become just as polarizing as birth control, abortion, and every other partisan issue in this country.  This perplexes me.  Education should be the least divisive issue in our country.  Who could possible be against educating kids?  Kids, you say? In case we have all forgotten, education is about KIDS.  Not adults, not corporations,  not bottom lines, not test scores.  IT IS ABOUT KIDS.

I am also tired of us blaming NCLB (which I think is wrong and doesn’t work) and the test.  The test doesn’t come into our classrooms and dictate what is taught.  The test doesn’t determine what type of curriculum the administration buys for its students.  The test measures what the student knows and in theory has been taught by their teacher(s).  The test does not dictate what is taught.  People do.  People, not the test, make these decisions.  I am just really tired of the test being blamed.  So, often it is the decisions made by administrators and teachers that dictate a students performance on the test.  I am tired of the test being the scape goat.  When I was teaching high school (at the implementation of NCLB), I was responsible for what my students learned.  I was responsible for their learning.  Were there some students who made the decision to not learn?  Yes.  Was I ever tempted to let that be an excuse to make my job easier?  Yes.  Did I?  No.  I was on them constantly.  Ethically it was my job to teach EVERY SINGLE KID IN MY CLASS.  Every. Kids.

If those kids didn’t do well on the test, it was my fault to some degree.  If they didn’t master some skills.  I was accountable.

We also have to remember that many of the teachers who teach the students who need the best teachers are new and inexperienced teachers–TFA or traditionally trained teachers.  I will say from my personal experience  teaching TFA corps members during their first year, that their toolbox of strategies is not nearly as full as it should be or as full as teachers who have gone through the traditional channels.  But most teachers in their first years are only marginally as effective as they could be.  Teaching to the test is much easier if you are a new teacher–as it’s a road map for what to teach and most schools don’t have a good mentoring program in place to help new teachers into the profession.  There is also (most times) not an effective evaluation and feedback protocol in place to help new teachers and support them to develop the skills they need.

I have found that the class I teach for first year TFA corps members becomes a mentoring class where we talk about how to differentiate and how to plan lessons and how to try different ways to teach material and to talk about why we teach certain things and how important they are.  These are the conversations that new teachers need.  It takes approximately 3-5 years for a teacher to become a fully functioning effective teacher (and if they aren’t by the 5 year mark–then maybe they should be encouraged to find a new profession–our kids deserve the best).  The problem education has is that 50% of teachers leave before they hit the 5 year mark.

So we perpetuate low performance with the high amount of new teachers we have to bring in to the profession, especially in our urban schools, and then they leave when they are the cusp of becoming effective teachers, often citing lack of support as one of the reasons for leaving.

Our system is broken on may levels and to say it’s about a test is simplistic.  To say it’s the teacher’s fault is also simplistic.  To say it’s the students fault–is just wrong.  To blame it on poverty or social status is just an excuse to not work twice as hard.

We need to stop making excuses.  We need to come together and realize it’s about the kids.  We don’t have more time to waste with rhetoric.  It’s time for action.