Joe asked me one question that I didn’t completely answer during the half hour of my interview. Acknowledging that in spite of every effort over the past ten years California schools have made little if any progress, I was asked about what plan I would put into finally making our public schools successful for more students.
Now that I have had a couple of weeks to answer this question, I can confidentially say that I would recommend light-footed solutions for California schools. By that I am saying that our present heavy-footed solutions like the No Child Left Behind super structure have created more harm than good.
Here is an example of a light-footed solution to the present malaise in California’s public schools.
Simply cut all the testing in half. The schools that now test and practice-test half the school year can cut it to quarter time instead. The young students need to be taught more and tested less. Something has to be done to escape the present indolent culture that the No Child Left Behind era has wrought, where the teachers are spending testing time surfing the Internet at their desks while the students wrestle with their tests and learn nothing during this wrestling.
As far as I know, no good school has ever devoted half of its hours to giving tests and practice-tests. The Greek academies are acknowledged to have been the most efficacious schools in history, not only teaching the Greeks higher learning but eventually the whole Western world. Yet there is nowhere in a Platonic dialogue where Socrates says, for example, “Aristophanes, do you mind taking tests so I can spend the school day surfing the Internet?”
Any humble plan to cut all the school testing in half would be modeled after Mother Nature’s plan to get rid of any problematic infections. But Nature doesn’t replace infections with new programs. It simply gets rid of infections and allows the body to continue its work. By the same token, getting rid of half the testing now taking place in California’s public schools would give more room in more actual school hours for the students to learn something.
And so, Joe Messina, here is a simple, light-footed solution to help stop the hemorrhaging of value in the disintegrating public schools of our state.
Remove more testing hours and replace them with more learning hours.
Chris Sharp – Commentary
Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. He has recently published a new book titled “Dangerous Learning: The New Schooling in California.” His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
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