How to Fix the Schools

Author’s Note: These quotes from the book may be used on the website and/or the book cover or flaps. 

The Major Challenge: 
The central purpose of American education is to educate all our children to the best of our ability---and their ability. And I do mean, all. The ablest should be challenged to the top of their talent, and not be allowed to drift into boredom and lazy work habits. Weaker students should be helped achieve to the top of their talent, too, and to stay in school as long as it's beneficial to them. 

It's my position that we have failed to do this. 

Principles: 
Schools must help all students at all ability levels to reach their optimum development. 

Student progress toward all goals of education should be guided, recorded, and reported. 

All achievement by a student, however minimal, should be recorded and reported. 

Homework: 
Especially in secondary schools, teachers are likely to say, “An hour a night is not too much in my subject.” This can add up. If four teachers feel the same way, a student would have four hours of homework that night. Is this what we truly believe is best for a child or teenager? With thirty hours at school and twenty hours of homework, children might have a longer work week than their parents. 

Some can feel so overwhelmed that they do the work carelessly, or “lose” it, or lie about even having an assignment. None of this is conducive to learning. 

Reading: 
No student who is a year or more behind in reading in the third grade should be permitted to study any academic subject beyond that point. If expected to do so, he or she will learn less and less, struggle more and more, and eventually lose motivation. 

Grading: 
Evaluation is at the heart of education; all endeavors of students and educators should be examined to determine if they reach their objectives, and if those objectives have value. 

The ABCDF system basically fails because it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, while it sacrifices countless students in the process. 

If good grades are to be meaningful, bad grades must exist, and so we sacrifice a portion of our youth. 

One illustration of how criteria can vary appears in how differently P.E. and arithmetic are graded. I once asked a group of parents how they'd feel if the P.E. teacher took the class out, ran them around the track, giving A's to the first few to finish, B's to the next group, and so on, with tailenders getting F's. They all agreed that this was unfair, and thought effort and participation were better bases for grading. They said, “Some kids are just faster.” I rejoindered by saying that “Some kids are just quicker.” What they objected to was exactly what is done in arithmetic. 

Testing: 
The simple truth is that most teachers don't know much about test construction. They don't seem to understand the concepts of validity and reliability, or how to demonstrate them in an exam they've created. 

Our present practice may well block students' maximum performance. Engineers would never think of applying their professional expertise on a major project without consulting resources and/or colleagues. Only in school examinations do we require that this not be done. I know it's essential to isolate what each student knows and doesn't know, so his or her achievement can be properly assessed. Nonetheless, we do this in a different context from that in which the achievement will be needed later and evaluated later. 

Educational Change: 
We need major change, and I do mean major, if education is to be all that it might be. But getting such change is like towing the Queen Mary with a rowboat. Not only do you have the massive weight of the monster, but there are also its many ties to the pier. 

The schools are a living organism which must adapt to changing circumstances, and be reassessed from time to time. 

Finance: 
We expect a lot for our education dollar. If you divide the average amount spent annually per student by a 180-day school year and a 30-hour school week, the resulting figure approximates what parents spend for an hour of baby sitting. For this we get counseling and various other services, extracurricular activities, athletic and other entertainment, transportation, in addition to teaching. Nonetheless, many people feel they pay too much, and criticize the schools for wanting more. 

Curriculum: 
Society has come to accept reverse logic. We've come to accept the role of the public schools as primarily one of preparation for advanced work, rather than seeing higher education as part of an overall plan.