Block scheduling. No Child Left Behind. Character education. iPads in the classroom. Standards-based instruction. Outcomes-based education.
Sound familiar? These are examples of once-new approaches to education that cooled off and dropped out of the conversation.
And now we have proficiency-based learning, promulgated through a Vermont state law that says it has to be used, starting with this year’s sophomore class. Says the Vermont Agency of Education: “The focus of proficiency-based learning is on students’ demonstration of desired learning outcomes. Students not only gain the skills, abilities and knowledge required in an area of study, but more importantly, those necessary to be successful in college, career, and civic life. Proficiency-based learning is designed to identify and address gaps in order to provide equitable learning opportunities for each and every student. This is in contrast to traditional systems which advance students based on seat time.”
Well, isn’t that a slap in the face to all the teachers in all the classrooms in all of Vermont since public education debuted in the 18th century. The Vermont Constitution, adopted in 1777, was the first in English-speaking North America to require public funding for universal education. According to today’s state education leaders, all those teachers did all this time was “advance students based on seat time.”
We beg to differ. Did you have a favorite teacher? A person who connected with you, inspired you, helped you expand your worldview, nudged you toward the life you’re leading now? Did you tell that teacher, “Thank you for the seat time”? Of course not. There was so much more to it.
There’s a whole cottage industry in education that comes up with new, got-to-have methodology. Most turn out to be fads that flame out like shooting stars. There’s something to all these methods, something worth saving, another arrow in the teaching quiver, but none is the be-all-and-end-all, and it was kind of pointless to pretend that this — this! — is the thing that’s going to make public education great again.
Methods are what you have to use when you’re not that great at teaching. Great teachers teach. The rest do the best they can, abetted by the latest methodology.
Proficiency-based learning is being adopted statewide. It substitutes 1-2-3-4 for grades of A-B-C-D-F, and augments those grades with an exhaustive list of questions on how well a student has mastered a particular skill and where he or she needs to improve. It takes an individual approach to the education of each student, all of which is fine for what happens in the classroom.
However, it’s not so fine in connecting with the public. Witness the nearly 100 parents who jammed into the Stowe Elementary School music room last week to talk about the new setup. It’s not so much the system, they said, but how it’s been rolled out, and how it could affect college admissions.
To her credit, school Superintendent Tracy Wrend, who also oversees Elmore-Morristown schools, said communications about the new system “have been insufficient at best, and ineffective.” She promised to do better, even though, like most Vermont school superintendents, she doesn’t easily embrace transparency.
The Stowe School Board basically dodged responsibility, saying principals and the supervisory union are developing the new system, and that’s where complaints should be addressed. That’s a tone-deaf response to the concerns raised by the community. See above.
Schools need to think about an outward-facing grading system, the information they give parents and taxpayers about how the kids are doing. But they’re not going to have that; they’re going to retreat behind a wall of impenetrable language that further separates the public from what goes on in the schools they fund.
It’s getting harder and harder for our newspaper to cover education because, like urban planners or filmmakers, educators don’t speak in conversational English. They are developing an arcane lingo all their own, and the first thing our reporters have to do is to translate it so our readers can understand what’s going on.
A suggestion for our schools: We all understand the grading system as it has existed from time immemorial, so why not keep it for communicating with the public, so normal people can easily track how well a kid is doing? Then, there could be a teachers-only grading system that goes into much greater detail, as the proficiency grading system purports to do.
But please, give us the executive summary.
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