Education

We cannot solve our problems with the same conscientiousness [thinking] that created them.  Albert Einstein

Once we accept our limits we go beyond them.  Albert Einstein

With gratitude to all of my 6160 colleagues, and our Dr. Myers.  I've enjoyed learning with all of you, and appreciate the level of deserved professionalism you all give to early learning and early childhood eduction.   We are on a role!  Let's keep going!

Extra: In Respectful Response...

 With respect I would like to address the comment made in regard to the nature of testing and assessment.   Broad assessments given to school children here in the U.S. are, I believe, administered in good faith and with only the best of intentions, but, the process is flawed, and lacking in validity.  Both testing and assessment are methods by which educators hope to assess the retention of academic concepts in large numbers of students.  Of course we want to know how our students are progressing in school.  However, broad state and national tests administered to state and district run schools are an extremely expensive exercise in futility.  Furthermore, testing does not beget better learning... it is, at best,  a misguided attempt to assess/improve teaching.  In Finland for example, where high student achievement is making international headlines,  national testing in lower grades is voluntary and is only given to 10% of the students in a certain age cohort from one year to the next.  Therefore a majority of Finnish students do not encounter a standardized exam (National Matriculation Examination) until they have completed their upper-secondary education. Now, in returning discussion to the U.S.,  even more pin-pointed state generated tests, can only measure academics, which is a very small component of student success.  As we have learned through our studies, what schools teach and how it is taught is dictated in large part by culture.  Each state in our country (the U.S.) is proud to have its own culture.  With all states following their own agendas in regard to education, we end up with 50 "pictures" of education.  Even within each state, there tends to be wide variances in how concepts are taught, schools managed, and what resources are available.  The real crime, in my opinion, is that we have wealthy school districts and poor school districts.  If we continue to fund schools through taxation based upon local property values, we will never have equal funding for schools, and we will never have equal opportunity education in the U.S.  All one needs to do is sit in on classrooms in various states to understand the vast gap that exists from one state to another in regard to what is being taught, how it is being taught, and critically the resources available.  My teaching experiences, because they are so varied, have afforded me a unique perspective in regards to the vast educational differences that exist in this country.  From the Midwest in Indiana, to rural Wyoming, to inner city South Central Los Angeles, to Houston, Texas, and Northern New Mexico, the differences in techniques and available resources are vast!  Available resources have a huge impact on teacher salaries, and that tends to have an impact on who can afford to be a teacher, from one state to another.  When salaries from one state to another drop, teacher expectations and quality teacher ed. tend to drop, and unfortunately teaching quality often drops, and finally student outcomes drop.  Until we have equal education in the U.S., (and even within each state) administering a national or state assessment examine is pointless, causing extreme stress for districts that simply do not have the resources to create education systems that can provide "high quality" education.  What would happen if every child in the U.S. were entitled to the same amount of education dollars?  And what would happen if every teacher in the U.S. were expected to have the same high quality teacher training?  And what if every teacher in the U.S. received the same take home pay?  Presumably that would mean that very wealthy districts would have to function on less, and very poor districts could function on more.  And how would that change the national view of education, not to mention our national views about poverty and other societal issues which have a huge impact on learning and education?  Until we have equal education resources for all students, we are not going to have equal educational opportunities.  Therefore, we are not going to have equal student outcomes, and large state and national academic assessments (which are expensive) will do little more than point out the obvious educational gaps we have in the quality of education and learning from state to state and district to district, while tactfully ignoring the social conditions (whole child aspects) that impact education and student success on every level.  What was it Einstein said?  "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." (http://www.einstein-quotes.com/ThinkingKnowledge.html)  We have a high, well documented level of conscientious (understanding) about learning.  The way we educate our children needs to catch up.  It is time to put the science of what we know about learning into educational practice.

How do you know when they get it? You observe them doing it.

Learning assessments for children are the norm in schools today, and have been for quite some time.  As a matter of fact, my girls this week will be taking trimester exams.  We have cleared the schedule of all extra curricular activities in regard to sports and music, so they will have time to overload their working memories in an attempt to retain as much information as possible, just long enough to get it onto a test form.  As educators we know that learning takes place through repeated practice, exposure and use of concepts.  It is a simple matter of adaption.  All species adapt to whatever is routinely experienced in their environment.  If a person needs to use the word onomatopoeia on a daily basis in order to function in their environment then the person gains a thorough understanding of the word and masters the use of the word.  In environments where the word onomatopoeia is not necessary for daily life the concept will not be committed to long term memory and mastery of it’s use may never be reached.  But for the latter environment, the word onomatopoeia is clearly not necessary.  In schools, much of what children learn is for future use, not immediate use, especially in regard to concepts relating to science and history.  Furthermore most children learn about frogs, for example, without ever having seen or handled a real frog.  We’re back to learning to ski without skis.  But taking children to ponds, lakes, and streams, in order to perform naturalistic observations on frogs, takes a lot of time and for some parts of the country a lot of resources.  So it becomes easier (for school districts, not the students) to buy a book about frogs, and have the child read and assimilate everything they need to know about frogs.   The way we teach and assess the learning of children in the U.S. is for the convenience of adults who must “process” large numbers of children through an over burdened education system.  It takes a whole lot less time on the part of teachers to grade a multiple choice test, rather than assess a child’s understanding of a concept through written or constructed application, for example.  Scantron tests have nothing to do with learning, and are certainly not designed for the benefit of students.  Scantron tests are for the benefit of educators who are required to assign and report assessment values for each of their students.  Not all U.S. schools however evaluate students in this way.

Montessori schools typically do not assess students via testing.  From the Montessori perspective grades are considered vague and misleading as an evaluation of a child’s performance.  Montessori teachers, instead, are trained to carefully observe children and record observations on a daily basis.  Because observations of the children are recorded on a daily basis, status of a student’s progress is always known and accessible for last minute conferences with parents.  Daily observations allow teachers to be extensively aware of the skills each child has mastered, is developing, or has not yet attempted.  Regularly scheduled fall and spring parent teacher conferences, are a time for the parents to share their observations of their child while out of school and for the teacher of a child to share observations of the child while at school.  Together the parents and teacher devise a plan by which to support the child’s development.  

In regard to education in other countries, my interest of late has been with the country of Finland.  Finland of late has gained significant notoriety in regard to what appears to be highly effective educational reform.   Teachers in Finland are extensively and extremely well trained.  Teachers in Finland are expected to be pedagogic specialists. (Sahlberg, P., 2011) Teacher training includes training in the design and development of student assessment. (Sahlberg, P., 2011) In fact, a significant amount of time spent out of the classroom is dedicated to the design of student assessment.(Sahlberg, P., 2011)  In my opinion, teacher created assessment is highly effective.  Teachers in Finland are free to design tests that truly give an accurate picture of student learning.  Teachers design curriculums that require students to think, use, and apply the knowledge gained.  In this same way, students are assessed.  Many assessments are hands on and project based.  Project-based/ application-based assessment is an ideal way to learn.  In this way learning and the assessment become one in the same.  As a Montessori teacher, I can draw many comparisons between aspects of Finnish assessment and Montessori assessment.  

(Sahlberg, P., 2011)

Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish lessons:  What can the world learn from educational change in Finland. New York and London: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.