Sir Elton John on The View Today! And, a "Few" Thoughts About Education

First, The View this week includes Sir Elton John sitting down at the table with the ladies. It is the first time he will co-host the show and really, is anything dull when Sir Elton is around?

Check out a quote from me on sharing, in Parents Magazine Online

On to the Question of the week: "As an educator, what do you think would really fix schools in America?"

Dear Lord, this is a loaded question. I am going to try to hold off on ranting here but I can't make any promises. I can promise the answer won't be short.

When I was in my late teens and described what my future would be like, I would often say "I'll probably get married, have a family..." I would just let it roll of the tongue as though it was something I understood innately. I said it off the cuff as if there is no real work involved and for sure not truly understanding or knowing what the commitment meant. I, like many of you, later learned after we entered into these very important life changing events, that both marriage and having a family are very real work and require both physical and emotional labor that cannot be described in any handbook or blog post. You simply have to live through it to understand it. Period. I feel the same way about the field of education. Politicians, celebrities, media personalities speak off the cuff about "fixing schools" much like Mitt Romney did on "The View", last week. You cannot just "fix" schools. You need to know schools, work in them and get to know the intricacies of what teaching means in order to understand what is truly humanly possible to help children and their families in realistic and sustainable ways.

Education Begins at Home

Show me a school that is failing and I'll show you a school that has low parent involvement, high levels of poverty and children that are unsupervised after school and have poor access to health care and nutrition. To fix schools such as this, much more then the school needs to be fixed. We must look at the root causes of why a school and their children are failing. I'm not talking about blame but I am talking about holding all parties accountable. For one, social and familial structure has to be saved or at least supported in this country no matter what form it takes. Families come in all shapes and sizes and have a variety of different issues. There needs to be services available to support the needs of the family. Parent training needs to made affordable and available starting at birth and remain open to all that need it. Parents need access to affordable daycare and babysitting programs that take into account early intervention, parenting skills and literacy skills (this should be offered to the middle class and the rich as well) so parents can work if they choose to. There is a great organization that is being formed here in New York City to serve this purpose and I am fortunate enough to consult on this project. I will announce once the program is open for business.

Politicians need to stop worrying about having an exact number of school days or elongating the school year but facilitate and even mandate family partnerships with cultural institutions, libraries, social services. Families might even be given opportunities for foreign travel exchanges. What children do outside of school matters and for families who don't know or can't afford, they don't do. Schools cannot replace families. If you look at failing schools that have succeeded you have administrators and teachers working around the clock pedaling faster and faster to get children to pass the tests, not to create life long learners. You can't have a Ghandi or a Martin Luther King Jr. running every school. Being a strong, passionate educator should be enough.

Tests Hold Only Half the Answers to Success

They are important, they are not everything. With No Child Left Behind just a few weeks away from a rewrite and Diane Ravitch, once one of it's avid supporters, now denouncing its usefulness, I'm curious to see what alternative forms of assessments will come into play. We will just have to hope and see.

Not Top Notch? No Space for You!

We are a results driven society and while this seems to push productivity it has also created a school system that frenetically assesses children. It leaves very little time to analyze the data collected to create learning environments that support learning. In New York City, the application process when applying to middle school is similar to a college application process. Just a couple of years later, they have to do it all over again for high school. The impression has become that the schools are highly selective and the processes are very difficult. Society is shouting that if you are not a top notch student your life will be an uphill battle and if you can't cut it there will be few options for you to succeed. Forget what it does to the parents. College is the ultimate goal and measure of success and for many fields a graduate degree is required. Many students are not ready for this step and they are getting lost. I have been told over and over by students that they feel like a "failure" if they do not get into college or simply can't afford to go and don't want heavy loans for their future. Many "average" individuals have done great things and have certainly carved a secure place for themselves in society (I'm one of them!). It is time to get serious about making college affordable, accessible and offering up alternatives to higher education such as trade schools and internships as real options.

Teacher Training:

I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in education and I can tell you honestly there is very little that I learned in my graduate years that I did I not learn in my undergraduate years. How could my time have been better spent? Many times teachers only learn about new curriculum once they get hired by a school and often have to take time away from their classroom to learn through on or offsite professional development. Colleges and Universities must be connected to the most recent curriculum and philosophy's used by schools and train their student teachers accordingly. I also believe every education student should spend a portion of a semester if not an entire semester abroad, studying and following the education system of another country. I was shocked at how many of colleagues had never been out of New York City , let alone the country. For those of you who have traveled you know the experience you get learning about another culture. It changes the way you see yourself and others. I believe giving teachers a chance to spend a substantial amount of time studying the educational patterns of a foreign school system would raise the level of teachers and learning in this country.

Wise Up

Politicians need to stop throwing the baby with the bath water every few years. No program is perfect and no program works for every child. We need to do a better job to make all parties accountable (parents, teachers, administrators and students). Educators and politicians need to be reasonable when making decisions about programs that give the promise that they will fix achievement. And, government educational systems need to make sure that there are enough resources, enough schools and room for children and their families to be accommodated. There have to be other avenues to success in order to be a productive part of society and accept that learning and intelligence is much more than a philosophy and much bigger than a score.

Sorry for the rant and thanks for reading!

“I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review.”