One Very Slow Octopus

This image is a metaphor. The national conversation about education is squirmy. Lots of tentacles. Lots of tentacles distracting us from the big bulbous fact right in the middle of it all. Public education is understaffed. In the cities. In the suburbs. In the country. Reforms and reformers are a dime a dozen and always will be as long as public schools underperform, which they always will, because they are understaffed.

Rigorous national standardized tests in reading, writing, and mathematics would be an excellent way to measure school-wide performance, and more immediately to measure which schools are most in need. But testing every student in every subject every year in order to evaluate every teacher's performance is an absurdity.

Charter schools and the work of charismatic school leaders are excellent means for pedagogical experiments, but too often one model or another is offered up as a cure-all, the one obvious answer that is supposed to work for everybody.

Paying a teacher more, or working her longer hours, or more days, or under the constant threat of being fired by an administrator, will not make it easier to communicate effectively with 100 students at a time.

Computers are not going to do it either.

All the random matrices of the world of education-- rubrics, lesson plans, syllabi, scopes and sequences, book lists, textbooks, multiple choice tests, study review questions, graphic organizers-- do nothing unless they are infused with meaning by a relationship with an actual human being. That is the teacher's job.

Hold schools accountable for their results with standardized tests. Give schools monetary incentives for improving results. Give schools the freedom to figure out what works the best for them. But a school is just a team of teachers. And when each one of those teachers is lost in his or her individual workload, you get the system we have now. One very slow octopus.