Teachers Feel Ignored In Education Debate

I am interested to see what happens with the educational future - Students are being asked to preform on state tests that then are translated by the states for the federal government - these tests determine federal funding for schools - first of all, a little bit of background knowledge before this rant begins - in 2014 100% of students must meet standards - this means every student on every test no matter if they are special ed etc. - there are many questions that I will pose throughout this post - but first, how many 12 year olds do you know that will take 8 tests seriously? doing the best they can on every question - spending an hour on each test to do the best they can for a reason that they do not understand and for a result that they cannot see? Just how many adults do you know that would spend 8 hours on a test when it does not impact their job? Your performance rating or evaluation has no correlation to this test how would you perform? So we are here, as a system, trying to determine the funding of all public schools by having a test given to students once a year - but how and why would the students feel invested? Maybe people do not understand that the high stakes testing puts pressure on students to perform for their teachers grade - it is not the grade of the student that suffers - instead, currently, students are tested only one time a year - If you were in management and had a performance review once a year of 100% of your employees and each of your employees had to be fluent in select skills and if any one of them failed you lost your entire funding what would your thoughts be? Looking realistically, what if this performance review was 8 hours long for each employee and the person taking the test knew that they would still have a job no matter how they performed - Ask yourself this question- "Every employee would try their hardest for you?" So, would 100% of them care enough to put it all on the line - their focus, their time, their concentration? finally - are your employees 11? 12? 13 years old? - Only if we look at the bigger picture - do we see how many more gaps in logic exist in this plan - You need to be able to discuss these ideas with people and for the plan to make sense - You need to hear the opinions of a wide range of people - Only when we forget that there are experts - Politicians often are not the experts, despite what they might think - only when we allow people not familiar with a specific field to make the decisions do we arrive at such flawed illogical solutions as we currently have in education today - Unless, we redefine what currently exists and what needs to happen to build a successful system can we move forward - Look logically at how we can fix these problems - Organize the structures of the entire school to become an efficient and effective body of people, thoughts, ideas, etc. - Still we are just now entering this conversation and I do not know if we have the proper people at the table having this conversation much less making the decisions - To be honest, do we ever have the proper people presenting information relating to education? Understanding how things work, investigating best practices are jargon terms all teachers now - Should this not translate to a successful system that adapts with the changing society? - There are people who make fortunes solving problems much more complex than this - We should wonder if too many people in society are driven by the green - the chase of fortunes that may or may not exist for the next big innovation or insightful solution - too many minds are diverted from the educational problem - I believe that often the teacher population hurts itself by not understanding the world around us - Listening to the ideas that exist and work in our society today - Learning from the frameworks that have been successful, the adaptations that have occurred throughout the past century - this is what educators should do best - Reality check- But teachers know, that too often teachers themselves are the worst audiences to discussions of change - Ever try to speak to a group of teaches? Attention? Unless, you allow for multi-tasking; which defeats the purpose - too many believe they are listening to old news and remain blind to the necessity of the present - Tangent aside - It is important that we realize for the future -  education does not have the promise of Fortune for the masses to swarm and try and solve the problem - so knowing we may fail to attract the necessary brain trust to brainstorm the solutions that are essential to educations success how do we prevent this? Unlike some of my other rants this is something that is discussed almost too much within my group of friends but is nearly never discussed amongst the larger public - Letting such important topics fly under the radar is irresponsible but seems apart of a government that fosters politicians who seek simply to be re-elected versus statesmen who plan for the future and allow for growing pains to occur

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