No Child Left Untested: Fall of the Educational System

For some time now I have slowly felt myself losing the passion to be in the classroom. When I went to college my first major was Health Care Management, I wanted to go into a field where I knew I could get some money knowing in the back of my head I wanted to do education, but I knew there was a lack of respect and definitely a lack of a good paying salary in the field. I completed my first year of college in my original major but something wasn't clicking I didn't like it...so I followed my heart and changed my major to Elementary Education. As soon as I changed I was a brand new person I enjoyed attending class and my grades went up a great deal. I couldn't wait to graduate so I could go out and touch all the young minds out there. I truly wanted to work in struggling schools because I knew they needed teachers like me the most.

Fast forward 6 years after college and here I am now, sitting here writing this blog unhappy with my career. I love education, yet the educational system around me has slowly snatched my joy and passion for teaching each year I have been in the system. May it be by changing teaching standards, constant changes to curriculum, numerous irrelevant assessments, FCAT driven schooling and the list goes on. If you ever look at our local, state, and nations Departments of Education where on that panel or in that final decision room do you see a current classroom educator helping them make decisions? Oh yes, they give us the big and played out "I've been in the educational system ___ years I was in the classroom ___ years and I am fully aware blah blah blah blah blah....." speech but they all start to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher to me now. They were in the classroom probably before I started elementary school. As they keep reminding educators yet forget themselves is that education is something that is constantly changing and it is very visible that it is having a hard time keeping up with our ever-changing world. Too often the powers that be in the Department of Education are so quick to make sudden changes based on different educational trends they hear buzzing around.
Often changes are proposed and supported through research do indicate the innovations are beneficial. So they move forward implement the innovations and before results are in if they worked effectively in the classroom or not they have already moved on to another idea. Aren't teachers constantly chastised for not aggregating and disaggregating data? So School Board, where is your data analysis of all these techniques that you strongly suggest we use?

They keep pushing this No Child Left Behind when really it should be called No Child Left Untested. Our students are being thrown into the fire, constantly being set-up to fail in life. I could have sworn the educational system was supposed to do the complete opposite. Being adults now and some of you are also fellow educators I want you to take a minute and honestly think back to when you were in school/college.....there was big test you know you should have been studying for and it’s a day or two days before the big exam and you are cramming away trying to take in as much information as you can.....test comes....you take it....now how much of that information did you actually retain that you crammed? Come on now be honest, probably 1% of that information and half of that % was information you already knew. Sound familiar to any of my educators reading this. Well it does to me you may know it as “Crunch time” a term used by many administrators in Broward County. With that being said to effectively teach our students the skills better yet the foundation for them to CONTINUE to build on when learning, we must effectively teach skills over a period of time. However, the sad thing is we are currently in what is referred to as "Crunch time" and people are running around going crazy. It’s still funny that they would use those words to describe teaching students. What about education should be rushed? We have 180 days to teach key elements, skills, strategies, and life skills for students to develop yet approximately 125 of those days are used just worrying about teaching students for the FCAT. I don't care how much they try to say they do not want us teaching for the test and that we are building skills it is a bunch of crap. Simply stated they want educators to teach students how to answer questions. All the evidence of what we are required to do proves my point. Long story short from August -March we are required to everything except actually teach. We are to drill different skills and strategies into students and program them on how to answer certain types of questions and then wonder why so many don't know how to function independently in the world, why they have trouble filling out job applications, writing essays, resumes, and in the future some have trouble being successful on college level, if they are lucky enough to make it that far. To top it off teachers are being told, “grow or go!” meaning if your students scores don’t grow or increase it’s a strong possibility your job will be in jeopardy. Well if my job is on the line so are the teachers who had that student from Kindergarten to 4th grade because the foundation they laid apparently wasn’t effective enough for me to build on but wait they taught to the test and the kid passed so I guess that was good enough.

Another reason I know we are failing students is that we don’t teach them the fundamental skills anymore. For example Language Arts is something foreign in the school system, constantly educator hear "we don't have time for Language Arts" we must keep our attention on covering all the Instructional Focus skills and beating students over the head with mini assessments and small group instruction and pull outs so administration, the school board, and DOE can take credit for things they did not do. So parents don't be surprised if you child doesn’t know what a verb, sentence subject and predicate are, or how to effectively write essays because grammar was over looked because the FCAT was more important. Language Arts is something that goes with us for the rest of our lives may it be at your job when your boss asks you to draw up a proposal, write grants, etc. What company wants to take something that has run on sentences, verb incorrectly conjugated, wrongly abbreviate words , and the list goes on. However, I'm sure that DOE knows best we are just to sit tight-lipped and do our job, well what they consider our job to be and that is prepare for the FCAT.

Moving on with all this assessment our students are continuously slipping through the cracks. Administration let’s their pride get in the way and there is no way they can let the school board see that they really have a lot of students who should be retained in their current grade. So the solution to that problem…you got it assess some more and keep doing it until they pass. I won’t go into detail or explain the whole conversation that is had between administration and teachers but in some point of the conversation it is either said or implied “make sure the student passes” how you go about it on you but they want the student to be promoted. Yep, they are promoted and become next year’s teachers problem and then on to the next one. Now we wonder why our drop out rate is so high students are being moved along and placed in environments where they don’t know what is going on. Many may argue holding students back can cause them to drop out as well but I believe there should be some alternative. The student repeats the grade but a different curriculum should be used on that grade level because of course I wouldn’t want to come to school if you are covering and teaching me with the same materials. Obviously those didn’t work the first time. Once again proof we are failing our students and setting them up for failure.

In several different trainings I have attended it was said that the FCAT came into existence because different businesses were saying that our students were not coming out of school prepared for the real world. How is this test going to effectively prepare them I have no idea. I know my generation and the ones before me came out just fine being taught the "old school way" yes we can continue to teach that way and still be effective we can still put those lessons on Promethean boards, use laptops for research projects, have students review Language Arts, Math, and Science podcasts to help foster learning. There is no excuse to why we could not keep what we had and improve it. We took the Stanford Achievement Test and we weren’t even “prepped” for it our teachers taught us all the basics and gave us the foundations we needed. We only heard about the test at the most a week before we took it. We have totally messed up the educational system and I honestly believe it needs to STOP NOW!!

As I hasten on I was trying not to make this too long, however, there is another issue I have and that is the "who you know" disease taking over our school system. Granted the disease is about as big as HIV/AIDS because its everywhere, one place it definitely does not need to be is in our school systems. There are so many UNQUALIFIED people in classrooms, working as curriculum support, serving as principals, and holding school board positions because of who they know. It hurts to know that I bust my behind to move up in the world and they take their position for granted and fail to use it in a positive and more importantly effective way to stand up and right what is wrong because 9 times out of 10 they have no idea what the heck is going on. Which also brings me to the recent cuts of over 300 teachers this summer in Broward County and many more all over the U.S. Call me rude if you must, but I believe the first to be cut should have been non educational degree holding teachers. Yeah you have a certificate saying you are certified because you took the test but where is your foundation? Do you really know how to "teach" or are you a teacher's guide pro? I am aware some non-educational degree educators have been successful but there are just a handful.

I had a conversation with a friend last night that use to be a fellow co-worker. We both agreed that we are failing our students and that we are not focusing on developing our students as a whole. Do our students really know why education is important; do they really understand how much they need it to succeed in life? What about building character, making the right choices? They don’t help get the overall school grade given by DOE so I assume they are no longer relevant for us to teach students. Overall, I can honestly say I no longer enjoy my career I no longer want to wake up and come to work. I keep hearing oh it’s all about the kids, but when you have to endure what comes with actually “not teaching” students it drains me. I cannot stand to know that I am hurting and hindering students I joined this profession for to help. I plan on homeschooling my student whenever that time comes. I just pray that I can find others like me, parents and whoever else is willing to stand up and get these changes made. There is little that can be done by just talking but action is needed.
One challenge I have for my friends who are in higher positions in the area of education is, are you content and happy knowing that you help support the DOE in failing our students? Are you willing to step up for what is right, or is having that position title more important? I just ask everyone in education, take a step back and evaluate why you entered this field of work. Was it for the money (I doubt it) was it because you couldn’t find a job in your original area of study and this would have to do? When you get your answers do what you feel is right so we can stop failing our students and continue to help build a promising future because they will be the adults of the world sooner than we know and that is a scary thing to think about….