Educational Reform in the United States
We Missed Two Golden Opportunities
During my 44 years in public and private education, with the last 28 years being in teacher education at Maryville College, I participated in numerous educational reform efforts. These efforts enabled me to study the successes and failures of educational reform, and ponder the reason for those successes and failures.
Since I started teaching middle school in 1973, I thought that I would go back and summarize the major reform efforts since 1970. Then I remembered that this is an educational blog not a doctoral thesis.
As I was thinking about this transition in emphasis, one of my favorite musical groups of the 1950s and 60s came to mind. The Statler Brothers began performing in 1955 as a country music, gospel, and vocal group. They began traveling with Johnny Cash in 1964, and it all ended in 2002 at the Salem Civic Center in Salem, Virginia with their retirement from live concerts.
One of their fun songs was Do You Remember These?
Do you remember these…
The boogey man, the lemonade stand, taking your tonsils out?
Ah, do you remember these…
Gable’s charm, frog in your arm, loud mufflers, and going steady,
Veronica and Betty, white bucks, and Blue Suede shoes?
Do we remember these…
Knock Knock jokes, who’s there? Dewey. Dewey who? The boat neck shirts, fender skirts, and Crinoline petticoats?
Now that I have your mind off the Coronavirus…Oops, if you remember most of the items above, you are more susceptible to the virus because of your age, so stay safe.
I began my teaching career in 1973 at Cedar Bluff Middle School in Knoxville, Tennessee. I also taught at Greenville High School and Collin County Community College in Texas during the 1980s. I finished my career with 28 years at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee in teacher education. During these years it seemed as if we were constantly reforming and trying to reinvent education.
Do you remember some of the reforms during the 1970s?
Do you remember these...
PL 94-142, the Buckley Amendment, open space education (the school with no individual classrooms), and testing ALL teachers for their content knowledge since we already knew that teachers were not very smart?
Do you remember some of the reforms during the 1980s?
Ah, do you remember these...
A Nation at the Risk, President Ronald Reagan and his goal to abolish the United States Department of Education, Cultural Literacy, higher academic standards, accountability, the Tennessee Instructional Model, the Lesson Cycle (Texas) and raising the standards for admission into teacher education programs in our colleges and universities?
Do you remember some of the reforms during the 1990s?
Ah, do we remember these...
Outcome based education, goals-based education which included the following two goals: By the year 2000, all American students will come to school ready to learn, and by the year 2000 American students will be first in the world in achievement in mathematics and science. No, we did not reach these goals.
Do you remember some of the reforms since the year 2000?
Do we remember these...
The No Child Left Behind Act, Block scheduling, Teacher Quality Grants, teacher evaluations focused on student outcomes rather than teacher inputs, and the Common Core?
I would argue that few of these reform efforts had any major or lasting impact on education in the United States. In my 44 years as a teacher and teacher educator, I opposed a few of these reform efforts with all my strength. The Tennessee Instructional Model and the Lesson Cycle in Texas were really the same model of instruction. The model, a direct instruction model, was to be used in all lessons in all classes K-12. I thought this was absurd. Different academic subjects and different topics within those subjects often require different models of instruction to be taught and learned effectively. These two models of required instruction simply tied the hands of effective and creative teachers. The No Child Left Behind law is what you get when knowledgeable teachers are not part of the process in developing new curricula. Some of the requirements were so far out in left field that it became comical.
However, the one reform in curriculum that I thought had a real chance of making meaningful reform was the Common Core. The opposition to the Common Core came from politicians and self-appointed watchdogs of curriculum reform, and they had no idea of what this reform effort was trying to do and especially where it originated. The Common Core was completed in only two subjects: mathematics and English Language Arts. It was amazing to hear people blame the Common Core for all the different things they opposed in American education.
I will conclude this blog with one structural change, and one curriculum change that I think we should investigate fully. I believe that we should require all students to take the same courses in high school for the first two years. Then the students planning to attend a traditional college/university will stay in high school for the last two years to prepare for a rigorous college curriculum. The other students would be transferred to the community college system in order to study rigorous technical and vocational subjects. They should receive a technical certificate in their area of study. A significant part of their senior year would be spent working in their technical fields much like student teachers in a teacher licensure program work in the schools. We are smart people, so we can figure out what to do about football. Of course, the Coronavirus may have already figured it out for us.
The second change I would like to see in the American high school is a change as to when various courses in the high school curricula are offered. Student schedules should resemble college schedules rather than an elementary school schedule. In Brazil I visited a very good private high school. The first thing I noticed was that students had some classes on MWF and other classes on TR. These students took Physics every year for four years. In the MWF and TR schedule lots of creative design is possible.
Our response in the United States to the call for reform has been block scheduling. When this first came out, and school systems started adopting block scheduling, I opposed those who contended that block scheduling weakened the academic program. Now, after watching block scheduling for a number of years, I must conclude that it has weakened the academic program in most high schools. It is no wonder that so many of our students perform so poorly on international mathematic exams.
Meaningful reform in American public schools will be extremely difficult. Changing the structure of the American high school is next to impossible. We need some strong effective leadership in these areas. Do I have anyone who will take the challenge?
Terry L. Simpson, Ed.D.
Professor of Secondary Education Emeritus
Maryville College
Bless You My Children!
Would you like Dr. Simpson to speak at your school, teacher education event, or church? He can address a number of topics that would be agreed on in advance.
Your highest cost would be travel.
