A Nation at Risk and The Silent Epidemic

I have recently read the reports "A Nation at Risk" and "The Silent Epidemic" and I wanted to share my thoughts about them. I have seen students that are the pride of the school in test taking not able to do simple things in my shop classes. There is a difference between book smart and street smart. If we only focus on scores we will lose sight of why we are teaching. I think that the Nation at Risk Report had it right when it stated "Some worry that schools may emphasize such rudiments as reading and computation at the expense of other essential skills such as comprehension, analysis, solving problems, and drawing conclusions." (The National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1993)

What surprised you?

It is surprising that we knew that we had this problem so long ago and still haven’t done all of the recommendations that were mentioned. They have yet to increase time in school or teachers wages enough to be professionally competitive, market-sensitive, and performance-based.

I think that this is like the tortoise and the hare. We are the hare, we got ahead of everyone else and then decided that we were good enough. While we were asleep the tortoise went on by. We woke up and saw what was happening. Now we are trying to catch up, but we are tripping over our own feet.

What policies have you observed in local school?

I have seen books and books full of standards that teachers are supposed to know and teach. I have seen increased requirements for graduation. I think that we have more evaluations of teachers and more requirements of new teachers.

There are many new programs and incentives to help teachers, students, and parents. The problem is some don’t care and others don’t know about them. In my district there is a technical center where students can get a head start on a career. They can take medical assisting classes for free while in high school. They might spend about $50 to take a certification test and get a job as a medical assistant while they attend college to become a doctor or something else. My wife spent almost $10,000 to take the same classes and get the exact same job. Educational PBS TV programs are also available to help get kids a head start in education.

How have these policies had an impact on teachers and students?

Teachers are so overwhelmed by the number of standards that they have to teach that they can’t spend enough time to cover each one effectively. Many of these standards are not tested and not seen as useful to the real world. Students are not seeing the relevance of why they need education until it is too late. I think that you can’t force innovation with standards. You need to change the culture. We may need to fall down even more before we get the desire to stand up.

Apparently we were able to accomplish a small comeback during the space race. The reason that I think it worked is that everyone had the same goal in mind.

Even though we do have some problems I think that our students have the most creativity and testing cannot measure creativity. Other Nations do not have some of the problems that we have to overcome such as diverse cultures with different languages and expectations. Our challenge is to turn this weakness into strength.

Civic Enterprises, LLC. (2006, March). The silent epidemic: perspectives of high school dropouts. Washington, DC: Bridgeland, J. M., DiIulio, J. J., Jr., & Morison, K. B.

The National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1993, April). A nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.