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You
are here: A Teacher Speaks Out: Children and Test Scores Are Not the Same
Reprinted with permission from the Los Angeles Downtown News
With slightly improved elementary test scores, a few new school sites and a replacement headquarters on the horizon, the Los Angeles Unified School District appears to be taking first steps to overcome its reputation as a florid failure, an institution in which, to borrow from Yeats, "the falcon cannot hear the falconer."
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a creature of the LAUSD: son of an LAUSD teacher, I was educated in LAUSD schools, and I teach at the high school from which I graduated. This may not appear to be progress, but I have had a box seat from which to observe the twists and turns of an enterprise on which our city's future depends.
If LAUSD has largely failed in its core mission – the education of children – demographics and the times have changed so rapidly that to succeed would have required a miracle. While LAUSD is an easy target, glib dismissal is viable only for those few who can afford to opt out. With nearly three-quarters of a million students, LAUSD is our champion in the battle to determine who we are as a society – whether an educated population remains our ambition or we are willing to embrace the bifurcated societies depicted by Huxley and Orwell. LAUSD may be a shabby champion, but it's all we've got. It is too soon to evaluate the reforms, which divided LAUSD into 11 mini-districts, initiated by Interim Superintendent Ramon Cortines and implemented by Superintendent Roy Romer. An even larger wager has been placed on Open Court, a scripted program to teach reading. Open Court is mandated for grades K-2 at about three-fourths of LAUSD's more than 400 elementary schools, and it is about to be expanded to grades 3- 5. While the best teachers have traditionally regarded teaching as an art, Open Court is an attempt to "teacher-proof" instruction by insisting that precisely the same lesson be taught in every classroom. The recently released Stanford 9 scores suggest progress in the primary grades, perhaps vindicating Superintendent Romer's insistence on standardization, though state funding for smaller classes is likely at least as responsible for the gains. In any case, deeper issues are involved, and LAUSD's leadership may not understand what all good teachers know, that raising test scores and educating children, while not incompatible, are not exactly the same.LAUSD's culture is the root of the problem. The District's vision has long been sublet to vendors and consultants, often MBAs, whose perspective on organizational dynamics may apply to businesses and bureaucracy but is largely irrelevant to classrooms. Experienced teachers, busy with instruction, roll their eyes with each new pronouncement from District offices. It's hard to do otherwise when yesteryear's advocates of whole language have reinvented themselves as devotees of Open Court, hoping no one would note the contradiction. Careers in LAUSD advance despite being wrong at every turn; being right is not as significant as being malleable. One wonders which fashionable, "research-based" program these experts on instruction will be flogging two years hence.
New teachers are understandably confused by the jargon-filled thicket they have entered, in which "cooperative learning," "authentic assessment," "constructivism," "brain-based learning," "whole language," "portfolio assessment," and "service learning" have been given equal weight, even while bonuses are distributed based on scores on the inauthentic, utterly individualistic Stanford 9.
As K-12 schools have deteriorated over the past two decades, colleges have become increasingly involved in remediation. As a result, many new teachers lack the background to know what to teach and how to make their curricula powerful enough to engage today's jaded children. Continuing education for teachers is desperately needed, but quality professional development in LAUSD has been nearly nonexistent, despite the high cost (at least $100 million per year) of pupil-free and shortened days. LAUSD is developing a computerized system to track the professional development experiences of teachers, but little attention has been given to improving the content of these experiences. In LAUSD, as in many institutions, substance is at best an afterthought.
In no arena is this more evident than instructional technology, a powerful, vendor-driven boondoggle-in-the-making. At a time when careful piloting is more appropriate than broad implementation, and scant evidence exists that technology improves learning, huge numbers of computers are being installed in soon-to-be-wired classrooms. Unfortunately, technical support is woefully inadequate, and teachers receive little or no guidance about how to use computers or the internet to benefit students – nor could they, as appropriate use of instructional technology has yet to be well-defined anywhere.
LAUSD's leadership needs to understand that education is a human business, not simply a management challenge. Our students arrive at school with problems that cannot be solved by Open Court, and we must daily work to convince them that education is inherently valuable, a first step to becoming an accomplished person. The best teachers believe that there is not a minute to waste, that nothing less than the souls of their students and survival of democracy are at stake. If President Bush, Governor Davis, and LAUSD's leaders cannot inspire this feeling of urgency, no call for accountability, however loud, will have any impact.
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books have encouraged millions to read, but Ms. Rowling's most enduring contribution may be the word muggle – a person without a drop of magical blood. Targeted by mind-numbing media, our children are in danger of becoming muggles or worse if we don't communicate to them the joy of learning. If they don't know the excitement of understanding nature or seeing the past alive in every moment, then higher test scores will be both unattainable and of dubious value.
As the school year begins, our work is cut out for us. For our city's sake, we must find a way to do it well.
Alan Warhaftig teaches American Literature and co-coordinates the Fairfax Magnet Center for Visual Arts in the Los Angeles Unified School District. A graduate of Stanford University and a National Board Certified Teacher, Mr. Warhaftig co-founded the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Music for Educators professional development program. He was recently named coordinator of Learning in the Real World, a national nonprofit organization that examines the pros and cons of computers in schools. He can be reached at warhaftig@alumni.stanfordorg.
Copyright © 2001 Los Angeles Downtown News and Alan Warhaftig
Please do not copy or redistribute without permission of the author.
Posted with permission by
New Horizons for Learning