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Posted on 11/16/2001 2:37:07 PM PST by ancientart

According to many polls, parents think American public schools are mediocre at best. But while they worry about American education as a whole, these same parents give their own kids' teachers very high marks.

And the parents are right on both counts. American teachers are dedicated, hardworking, caring, self-sacrificing, and competent - no matter what the politicians tell you.

But the system as a whole is functioning, well, sort of like my brother's old Chopper.

Paul's Chopper was the envy of every kid in the neighborhood. It had a powerful engine and lots of chrome: a beautiful bike.

But he never rode it. No one ever rode it. He bought it disassembled and never did quite figure out how to get it in working order.

American education is very much like Paul's Chopper. Forty years of efforts to fix a system that, initially, wasn't broken have left us with a disassembled mess.

The politicization of education and the mania for top-down education reform have made teachers' jobs more difficult in every area of the curriculum. We've had far too many changes far too fast, and even the most promising reforms have had unanticipated negative consequences.

Take the D'Nealian handwriting system. Please.

The advocates of D'Nealian maintained that it was easier for kids to move from D'Nealian-style printing to cursive writing, that kids liked it better, and that it took half the time to learn. And so - drop that old Palmer method.

But now: teachers everywhere had to be retrained. New materials had to be purchased. Parents, trained in a different style of printing/handwriting couldn't help their kids learn to write. Algebra teachers ran into problems because the D'Nealian letters aren't as good for mathematical notation as old-style printed letters. Students moving from a Palmer-style school were disoriented if their new school taught D'Nealian and vice versa.

Now this doesn't mean we should start a nationwide campaign to get rid of D'Nealian. Or to change the math curriculum. Or to improve reading. What we need to do to fix American education is - nothing!

If the top-down reformers will just go away, teachers themselves will figure out how to fix the problems in every area of the American education curriculum.

Here in Aberdeen, for instance, elementary teachers have come up with a great way of improving mathematics education. They maintain a checklist of each student's progress on basic mathematics skills, passing the list on with the student from grade to grade.

Simple. Efficient. Inexpensive. And it works!

Teachers didn't have to be forced to come up with this system. Aberdeen teachers, like teachers everywhere, are constantly looking for ways to teach more effectively and to coordinate their work with that of other teachers. All they need is time: time to prepare, time to plan, time to pray.

Politicians love to pose as supporters of education. They want to be “education presidents,” “education governors,” and so on. But the top-down reforms they push are the very things that are making American education less than it could be. They bog down teachers and administrators in a swamp of needless paperwork, stealing time that could be far better spent.

A recent Gallup poll shows that teachers are among the five most trusted professional groups in America, ranking even higher than clergymen in terms of honesty and integrity.

And politicians? Well, they're down near the bottom of the list.

When it comes to our kids' education, isn't it time to trust those we say we trust rather than those we say we don't?

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