I couldn’t applaud more loudly reading my newspaper this morning, as Virginian-Pilot editorialists did an excellent job calling for reforms of education reforms.
First, they took on the Standards of Learning, and they’re right.
The SOLs must be recognized as accomplishing in excellent fashion what it was designed to do. In the 1990s, public education was awash in pop culture nothingness and sad results for any child hoping to learn something beyond MTV. Textbooks mentioned Madonna more than Madison and the SOLs changed the way Virginia and the nation looked at schools for the better.
Virginia students are the better for it, but admitting that the two-decade old Standards are showing their age is no defeat. The internet age has revolutionized our economy and should be allowed to revolutionize education to match it. That means these standards and testing need to be modernized, and fast.
“It’s an approach that forsakes classroom instruction and a deeper exploration of content and settles instead for a satisfactory mark on a standardized exam that yields an immediate, tangible benefit.
“In terms of promoting education and a lifelong love of learning, it leaves room for improvement. On multiple levels. (Pilot)”
I would add that the SOLs performed exceptionally in accomplishing their task, which was to get serious about content learning, which few schools were in the early 1990s. They are now.
Then Roger Chesley comes along with another education column that I may frame and put on the wall.
Virginia Beach, in the wake of eliminating letter grades for elementary school students, has also ditched Honor Roll and President’s List awards, replacing them with rewards for “citizenship” or “collaboration” or the new sign of scholastic excellence, “turning in work on time.”
“Regrettably, the folks running Beach elementary schools have taken the sting out of falling short in the classroom – by penalizing the students who do well…
The change stinks. (Chesley, Pilot)”
Chesley’s right, and his criticism of “everyone’s a winner” philosophies is spot on. I hated losing when I was a kid. I hated when I didn’t do my absolute best and someone else outranked me.
When losing doesn’t sting, winning doesn’t matter. That ain’t capitalism, folks. That’s not the free market.
I hate losing. I gloat like gangbusters when I win. The thrill of victory and agony of defeat is being changed to the silence of victory and the celebration of defeat.
It’s a change that gives us Obamacare websites that don’t work.
