Mike Petrilli is spot-on in this sense: Clearly, a good education is much more than test scores. He's right about the importance of extracurricular activities in providing that education--and I hope he'll agree that we should find ways to make sure kids in our highest-poverty schools have access to those kinds of activities. But as a former social studies teacher who taught my students civics and debate, I know that the skills to which Mike refers also can and should be learned in the classroom--not just after 3 p.m.--while students are debating the causes of the Civil War, drawing conclusions from science experiments and planning group art projects. I'm stating the obvious when I say that No Child Left Behind's testing regime has left little time for these kinds of in-class activities.
As for Checker's suggestion that my proposal leads to "schools that do everything but teach," let me say this is not an either-or approach. Relying on testing and sanctions, NCLB's message to teachers and schools has been: It's all you. In other words, if teachers would just work harder and care more, all our students would succeed. Teachers, by themselves, even without additional support from families or the community, can help kids immensely, especially if they can work one-on-one with students, are well-trained and have access to excellent curriculum materials. But teachers alone can't get kids all the way to proficiency, when disadvantaged children typically enter school already three years and 30 million words behind.
In my inaugural speech as president of the American Federation of Teachers, I called for a bolder view of what schools should do, and said that while high standards and accountability must be a centerpiece, NCLB's approach does not work.
But if you read my speech closely, as Checker urges, my message was twofold: first, let's put in place a federal education program that, unlike NCLB, provides space and opportunity for children to be taught a rich, well-rounded curriculum, with standards and accountability that support rather than undermine that curriculum; and second, let's--at the same time--try to address the outside factors like nutrition and healthcare that affect a child's ability to reach her full educational potential. And yes, I said that we also should try to help parents so they can better support their children's learning.
The AFT's goal is to ensure that children are learning to their potential, and that teachers are teaching effectively. To suggest otherwise means you don't understand what drives teachers--or their union, for that matter. Look at a union-run charter school (the UFT Elementary Charter School) in New York City: 81 percent of this year's third-grade students met or exceeded state standards on the state English Language Arts test, and 98 percent of third-grade students met or exceeded standards in mathematics.
We know that without a rich, rigorous education, so many of the kids we teach will be lost in our 21st-century economy. And no one wants to go back to the pre-1990s education world, in which standards were lax or nonexistent.
The AFT hopes to put forward a third way, one that learns from the best of the standards movement and other school improvement efforts, and draws on the collective wisdom of the more than 1.4 million people we proudly represent. Stay tuned.
