Where is the Reset Button?
Video games, internet routers, and I’d bet even ATM machines have them. When something goes wrong, you can press this magical button and you immediately return to a familiar place where you can start over and try again. Unfortunately, that is not the case with our education system.
Countless school districts are having to bite the bullet–hard–across the US. And not only because of eroding economic resources, but also due to dwindling student bodies.
The first decade of the 21st century was spent realizing that the factory model of education doesn’t work any more, and that big comprehensive schools are leaving thousands of children behind. It happened in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and here in the Bay Area too. It was as if school districts were scrambling to “fix” a problem that they still failed to fully understand what it was, and even today we can’t quite put our fingers on it.
In Oakland, thousands, if not millions of dollars went into bringing outside consultants with a sky-high stack of research showing how the small school model is beneficial to both schools and students. Individualized instruction plans, they said. Smaller classes and smaller teacher to student ratios, they preached. In theory it seemed that the elusive “achievement gap” would once and for all be bridged. But there was no set plan, no long term contingency plan. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed a large pool of resources to carry the plan forward, but that well soon ran dry. It was almost as if the district had said “let’s try this thing out and it doesn’t work, we’ll shut it down.”
Many small schools in OUSD started out with ambitious plans and dreams: creating national models of excellence, being the torch-bearers for future generations. Creating full blown arts programs with award-winning performances. But it all went up in a cloud of smoke behind a laundry list of red tape and despite private donations, a general lack of funds.
At the same time, after 9/11, a new type of student was forming. One whose right to education was being denied. With the schools punishing “bad” students, and rewarding “good” ones. These are students born in the Web 2.0 era, where memorizing the names, places and dates has become a trite and meaningless activity. Why memorize dates when they can be found with a simple search query?
These students, with their skills and deficiencies are in the midst of a petri dish of scrutiny and experimentation.
Of course, education doesn’t have reset buttons or quick fixes, yet as a society we need to prioritize the value of education. What are we doing to not be part of the problem?
