21st Century Skills?

21st Century Skills

Why doesn’t it surprise me that P21 (Partnership for 21st Century Skills) is headquartered in Arizona?  I suppose it shouldn’t. (Maybe it’s the heat? … )  Daniel Willingham posted an excellent entry on the Britannica Blog: “Flawed Assumptions Undergird the Program at the Partnership for 21st-Century Skills.”  He, along with E.D. Hirsch (of Core Knowledge), Diane Ravitch (the writer) and Ken Kay (of P21) recently sat on a forum at Common Core to discuss P21 and its ongoing efforts.

His first assertation is that P21 separates skills from knowledge, believing skills more important.  He quoted from page 6 of their Intellectual and Policy Foundations document (PDF Download):

“With instant access to facts, for instance, schools are able to reconceive the role of memorization, and focus more on higher order skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.”

He summarized it succinctly:

In other words, students can always Google the facts, so teachers can focus on skills.

I don’t how often I have heard statements like that.  “Why do they need to memorize such-n-such?  They can always look it up on the internet?” Or if in regards to math:  “Why does she need to memorize her times tables?  She can always use a calculator?” Please excuse me while I roll my eyes.   First, what if (heaven forbid) little Jimmy/Jane should be without access to the internet or a calculator?  Then what?  Hmmm… occaisionally the internet connection does crash (at least in my area) and perhaps sometime in the future there could be larger outages caused by other problems such as natural disasters?   (Oh what would would little Kendra do if she can’t update her MySpace page then?  Oh my…)

My main concern with this, has more to do with what these kids are looking up.  Wikipedia is a great start for research – but it is hardly the end-all of resources.  It is not fact checked and never will be.  That is not research (and if I were a teacher, I wouldn’t even accept it is a source.)   Sure you can “Google” up facts – but without the background information, you won’t know if what you are reading is true or not.  Without bothering to look things up in “real” books and encyclopedias, kids aren’t really researching; they are copying and pasting.  Hardly a skill, 21st-century or otherwise.

Arizona Does It Again!

The Accountability Illusion

Arizona certainly has a knack for coming in last place (or nearly so!).  The Core Knowledge Blog recently posted “Location, Location, Location” about the Fordham Foundation’s report – ” The Accountability Illusion.”

That’s the upshot of a terrific new report … which looked at 36 actual schools (18 elementary, 18 middle schools) and determined whether each one would make AYP under the accountability rules of 28 different states.  No, they would not.

As they noted… “A bad school in Massachusetts is a good school in Arizona.” Now why doesn’t that surprise me?  We were already 48th (Edit: 49th: 03-04-09) in per-student spending before the current financial crisis hit and our state government decided to slash the state budget, hitting education especially hard (Special Education being unfairly targeted).  I would hazard to guess we are now 49th or 50th…  We were 47th in teacher salary levels.  I would guess we will be lower come next school year, when contracts are up for renewal.

What does all this mean?  It means the children of Arizona, attending public schools do not receive as good an education as those attending public schools in say Massachusetts or Washington state (especially those needing Special Education for some reason or another) – No matter what the State Department of Education says!  It means the teachers in Arizona are not paid fairly for their work and won’t be for the foreseeable future.  It means the education crises in Arizona will continue until these fundamental issues are resolved.

It means I will continue to homeschool my daughter because I don’t see how she can receive the education she deserves with the resources the school is given.  Yes, I pay my taxes that support public schools, and I have no problem paying those taxes in principle.  I would just like to see something for that money.

It’s the Teacher – Not the School

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

It’s the Teacher – Not the School: This isn’t news for me, but the acknowledgment comes from an unlikely source – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  In their Annual 2009 Newsletter, they discuss the U.S. Education system and how they tried to improve it over the past several years through their program.  Despite all their money and effort thrown into the public schools all across the nation (with a few success stories), most of their efforts came up empty.  Their conclusion:

If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

Gee… isn’t that what homeschooling is all about?

We went through a private school – and had several excellent teachers.  They made all the difference in the world for my daughter!  Then we had some not so good teachers.  They made an impact too.  One we are still dealing with.

HSLDA President J. Michael Smith wrote an excellent article in his Op-Ed Column for the Washington Times on 24 February 2009: Home-schooling: It’s the Teacher, not the school. Basically he states that great teaching has nothing to do with teacher certification.  It has everything to do with caring about who you are teaching (your children) and what you are teaching.

I’ll be the first to admit homeschooling isn’t easy… it’s hard!  There are days I’m ready to throw in the towel.  But, I also know that I’m still giving my daughter a better education than she would get in the public schools here where I live.  The private schools, we simply can no longer afford, and the ones we tried were iffy at best (again, it depended on the teacher!).  We also tried a charter school.  It has an excellent reputation, and deservedly so, but it wasn’t for every child, including mine.  And again, my experience was that some of the teachers were excellent, but some were … well…  not so good.

At least now I know my daughter’s teacher cares about her and will work with her on a lesson until she “gets it.”  She won’t give up on her, or leave her behind.  If we have to repeat something… we do.  If a certain curriculum isn’t working, we can change it.