The Kernel

At a time when Colorado is in the process of updating academic standards on several subjects; math, literature, etc. and the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have both undertaken an effort to propose national standards it is important for the public to be concerned and involved. The national groups have deemed their deliberations to date as confidential so that there is no transparency to the process.

Why, you might ask, feeling that the educators are the experts and should be left to do the right thing. The crux of the matter is that the education insiders are not the experts and have failed miserably over and over to produce high quality standards. How could that happen? There are many reasons but most of all the educators are strongly opposed to any change in the status quo that might require real change on their parts or threaten their cushy status. While the problem that our nation’s children are being poorly prepared for the massive global competition that has arisen due to the proliferation of cheap and easy communication via the worldwide web is widely recognized (and has been for decades), the educators have refused to allow the needed change to happen.

The kernel referred to in the title is a hollow one in education for the most part. That is, the subject knowledge competence of the educators is “hollow.” You could call it a knowledge vacuum. They just don’t get the subject knowledge in their education school training that is required to successfully teach the children at the high level that our best foreign competitors are providing their kids. Every time that initiatives are proposed to fix this problem such as testing of teachers in subjects taught periodically during their career, the ed power groups especially the teachers unions have successfully bought enough political clout to block the changes. This is particularly a problem in math and science but also in grammar, social studies and other subjects.

These efforts to “upgrade” standards occur infrequently and since they never really improve things it is imperative that the public join together to demand a quality effort this time. What sorts of “tricks” are used to foist the poor “rewrites” off on the children?

• Prevent any substantive input from any outside education sources, but pretend to solicit input. This is similar to the schools universal assertion that they want parents’ involvement in their children’s education which really means “only if you are compliant and supportive of the educators.” They go through the motions, meeting with business people, etc. taking input which is conveniently ignored.

• Structure their communications to address public concerns positively even though there is no substance behind their assertions. This includes, for example, including reviews (always positive) by consultants who are presented as subject experts (math, science, etc.) but are only ed school degreed people with a paucity of subject knowledge.

• The standards, because the educators don’t understand the subject matter, are all designed to support processes they have been taught “catechism style” as E.D. Hirsch says in “The Knowledge Deficit.” Hirsch also points out that much of the process mantra taught in the ed schools doesn’t stand scientific scrutiny.

• Use target implementation dates for the “new” standards to shorten the time for public input after the proposed standards are written. This rush to the wrong answer is not acceptable. Doing nothing is preferable to putting in place a new set of standards that are poor but succeed in casting things in concrete until the next cycle (years) for updating standards. Delaying new standards until they are truly a substantial improvement is the only sensible thing to do.

This list is not meant to be complete but to give a sense of the game being played with our kids’ futures. Without strong public involvement there is no hope of overcoming the anti-change inertia so strongly in place. So, please, learn what is going on and demand real change this time from our political and bureaucratic representatives.