First blog, here we go..
I was watching the Ted Talks series and was intrigued by a session led by Sendhil Mullainathan called "Solving social problems with a nudge"http://www.ted.com/talks/sendhil_mullainathan.html. He refers to an issue he calls "last mile problems" where we seem to come up with a variety of innovations to improve life here on earth, yet we sometimes stop just short of solving problems for good. It seems that we often have difficulty going that last mile for a variety of reasons, but primarily we tend to use the same models for improvement because they are what we know.
The problem with more complex problems is that they are not always solved by traditional means. Here lies the issue in education. We seem to continually attempt to improve education using the same tired models such as using standardized tests as the sole means of measuring school improvement.
There have been many inspired ideas in education over my 20 years as a teacher. Cooperative learning, multiple intellegences, and differentiated instruction to name a few. These ideas were attempts to improve educational practice, and have succeeded to a large degree.
We have, however, hit the "last mile ". We continue to use standardized testing to measure their effectiveness when we should be looking at much more authentic examples of whether a child is learning. As teachers, I hope we have the courage to continue to have our voices heard in this arena. Our students deserve no less
Kelly - we often have ideas and solution that mask the key issues in education and ones that may/may not have a direct impact on student learning. I am more concerned about the impact of these ideas rathern than the ideas themselves. For example, the "flipped classroom" is something I have been critical of... until I saw how this little shift created a significant shift in the mindset of a teacher around assessment and student learning. For me, it was a lesson to care less about the "technique" or idea and more about the deeper conversation - student learning.
ReplyDeleteI am thankful I am in Canada where standardized tests are rare (but still present). We are having effective dialogue around moving away from this so i am excited to see where this goes in BC.
Congrats on the new blog! Enjoy the journey and loved your first post on the last mile.
I agree with Chris--the core of what any solution will have to reach and impact is student learning. There are probably many ways improve student learning, and as long as they do shift the teacher and student (and principal and parent...)POV to student learning (and the real evidence for that), then it is successful. If new strategies and ideas do not create change in this core, then it is but a band-aid or a distraction from the real problem. Standardized testing is one of the current distractions away from working on deep student learning, and we are kept so busy by the demands that we are unable to do much for than be busy--and being busy is not learning!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this thoughtful post.
The problem with writing such a great post is that you leave us all wanting more...
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