Reflections on CPRE Policy Briefs

Introduction

Reform???? As long as I have been teaching we have been reforming. I sometimes wonder what we are reforming. To reform something implies there is a form to begin with, but what is it. None of the articles I have read give me a clear baseline on what the standard form of teaching or education is, so I get confused when they talk about reform. Being a science teacher I like to have a clear focus on the baseline, a standard to compare to, and established controls on the variables. If I invented a new paint I would want to compare it to the market standard to see how and where it showed improvement.

Article analysis

Having vented my frustration in the introduction I did find several things is this article noteworthy. The overall premise of the article that reform may hold promise for improving education, but pose challenges to teachers and how they teach is evident in my school district.

I appreciated the explicit and clear outline on the five streams of reform and felt that the author had a clear grasp of what is going on at school level in this area. The author states that “the five streams of reform cannot be done well piecemeal, nor can they succeed if attempted only in isolated classrooms.” Yet over the past 9 years that is exactly what I have experienced. Evidence of subject matter reform, assessment reform and professionalization reform are especially evident in Illinois public schools. In 1992 or 1993 as a new teacher I bought into the state goals and standards (Goals 2000) reform and volunteered to serve on my schools committee. The older teachers laughed at me and said in five years it will all be a bad dream as we move on to “new ideas.” Well a lot of what I did was a bad dream, but at least we now have state goals. When I started teaching they gave me a classroom and a book and told me to teach science. When I asked what exactly our science curriculum was, I was told it was whatever I wanted to teach.

Now that it is evident that state goals are not going away and that tests like the Praire state test are going to effect everyone in the public school system from student to teacher to board member, the policy dilemma as this brief describes it becomes a central issue for schools. In my opinion we are not going to reform any schools without reforming the teachers. I agree with the author that packaged programs and passive teacher training will not fit this new performance based state curriculum. Let’s face it teachers like to teach how they learned. This usually means a very clear organized package of information that is memorized. The only real creative teachers that I can find in my district were not always teachers. They came into teaching from another career and this experience has enriched their teaching. This is why alternatives to traditional models are needed in education today.

Of the alternatives mention in this article I thought that Subject matter associations and School-University collaborations are the most promising. Personally, I depend a great deal on the National Science Teacher Association and the Illinois Science Teacher Association. Without their influence I would have been very lost as a new science teacher. The journals I subscribe to not only keep me up to date on knowledge-based issues, but also on current practices and reforms. Since I have returned to the University to work on my masters I again realize what a rich and stimulating environment a University has to offer teachers. I know there are many teachers who have had no contact with a University since they graduated so many years ago.

Conclusion:

Although I wish this article would more clearly define what the so called standard is for teaching and how we will know when we have reformed it, I did find it stimulating. I think it shows a clear link between current streams of reform and how policy and professional development will all have to be in line before systemic educational reform can be achieved.