Identifying
Gaps: Education in My Country
Michelle Steele
Introduction to Global Education
7/9/2013
I have to start by saying that I
cannot talk about education in my country. One of the beautiful things about this
course is that is has sparked many conversations recently between myself and
other educators I know. The more I
talk to other educators from other parts of the United States, the more I am
shocked by how differently our systems work from state to state. From my New York colleagues, I’ve
learned about regents testing, consortium schools and charter schools, none of
which we have in Vermont. In a
recent discussion with a teacher from Colorado, I learned of their “TAG”
(Talented and Gifted) program, wherein students are labeled “TAG” (usually
between kindergarten and 5th grade), and therefore given different
opportunities/classes (from what I could gather) throughout their public school
career. Nothing like this exists
in Vermont. These vast differences
state to state have left me feeling like I don’t really understand education in
the US at all. I am however,
prepared to talk about education in my department and in my school.
I have identified two major gaps I
would like to talk about. First,
I’d like to look at the very small picture of my World Languages
Department. Second, I’ll zoom out
a little more and talk about a gap I see at my school.
From the 2009 Programme for
International Student Assessment, Volume IV (What makes a school successful):
“
…high-performing
education systems stand out with clear and ambitious standards that are shared
across the system, focus on the acquisition of complex, higher-order thinking
skills, and are aligned with high stakes gateways and instructional systems. In
these education systems, everyone knows what is required to get a given
qualification, in terms both of the content studied and the level of
performance that has to be demonstrated to earn it.”
The strengths this paragraph
describes are weaknesses in my department. First, as a department, we need to buy into the idea of
higher order thinking (and 21st Century) skills. We tend not to use these, especially at the Novice level. I believe that all students should be
using all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy all the time. Language is extremely complex, and even the skills involved
in using an online dictionary (analyzing whether you are looking for a verb or
a noun, scanning the various dictionary translations to see which one best fits
your context, searching for an expression or idiom that fits your phrase, etc.)
can be considered higher order thinking. Convincing ourselves that these higher order
thinking skills (along with 21st Century skills, to which we also
roll their eyes) are important may only come through our own professional
development opportunities. I will
continue to model and show support for these ideas, and while I’ve made some
headway, I haven’t convinced anyone yet. I have been a big encourager and
supporter in our department of professional development, and hope to continue
that with my colleagues.
The second part of this paragraph
says that in successful systems, every student knows what is required to get a
given qualification, including the level of mastery they need to demonstrate to
meet the standard. In our
department, there seems to be a perception that transparency around grading
goes against rigor. A few of my
colleagues have told me that letting them know ahead of time how they will be
graded is “letting them off too easy”.
No one uses clear rubrics with performance indicators, and students are
never given these ahead of time. I hear that “rubrics take too long to
grade” or are “too confusing”. I
would really like to develop new department-wide rubrics that we can agree on
for assessing student writing and speaking. I think my colleagues are interested in this, and we may
have a chance to do so with the new grant we were just awarded to work with
Middlebury College professors on our own professional development. We plan to do some curriculum work and
in doing so, I hope we can clearly explain the standards we expect students to
meet, and develop clear rubrics that show them how they will be assessed and
how they will demonstrate their mastery of the material.
Now, to zoom out a bit further and
look at my school as a whole. From
the same report,
“In the most successful education systems, the political and
social leaders have persuaded their citizens to make the choices needed to show
that they value education more than other things. But placing a high value on
education will get a country only so far if the teachers, parents and citizens
of that country believe that only some subset of the nation’s children can or
need to achieve world class standards. This report shows clearly that education
systems built around the belief that students have different pre-ordained
professional destinies to be met with different expectations in different
school types tend to be fraught with large social disparities. In contrast, the
best-performing education systems embrace the diversity in students’ capacities,
interests and social background with individualized approaches to learning.”
(Ibid, p4)
To me, this excerpt talks about
equity. We, as a school, need equal
expectations, even for diverse students.
I see such huge disparities in my school, and even larger
ones in my nation. The 2011 Trends
in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) report also backs this
up, reporting,
“Internationally, on average, the 17 percent of
students with Many Resources had substantially higher mathematics
achievement than the nine percent with Few Resources— a 119-point difference.”
The TIMSS report shows that lack of resources leading to
lower achievement is a problem worldwide, not just in the United States. But as the PISA suggests, the most
successful systems are still the ones that are able to overcome this gap by believing
all students can achieve at high levels and use individualized approaches to
learning.
To take a personal example, I teach French and Spanish. Foreign Language is still seen by my
community as a subject fit only for college bound or “top tier” students. My department perpetuates this
misconception by saying that French and Spanish are very “academic” and “not
for every student”. We have
touched on this idea as a department, and have talked about how to open our
courses up to the “have-nots” at our school, but we need to address this
inequity head on. Beyond our
department walls, the divisions in social class are stark and obvious. Anyone would deny that we “track”, but
the separation between our elite and our blue collar is clear in the classes
they are enrolled in school-wide. As
a first step, I would like to see our school move to a more personalized
approach to learning (personal learning plans are on our plate for the near
future!). Our State Commissioner
of Education is advocating for every student to have a Personalized Learning
Plan, and our school is set to embrace this idea very soon. I think the idea is also part of a
larger culture shift. I have heard
teachers in more than one department say things like, “Oh, that students just
isn’t smart enough”. This idea
that some can achieve while others simply cannot undermines our mission as
educators and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy for struggling students. I
hope that at least our department (as a starting point) can begin to find ways
to reach across economic lines and engage all students from all backgrounds in
rigorous work.
I would like to end with a
quote from the foreword of the PISA report by Angel Gurria (OECD Secretary
General): "Success will go to those individuals and countries that are
swift to adapt, slow to complain and open to change." I do not think that
the US yet fits that description, but I am hopeful for my home state of
Vermont.
TIMSS 2011 Assessment. Copyright
© 2012 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement
(IEA). Publisher: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Lynch School of
Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA and International Association for
the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), IEA Secretariat, Amsterdam,
the Netherlands.
