What Change Do We Need?

One of the activities in my "Back to School Kick Off Meeting" this morning was to look at data from spring testing.  It painted a dismal picture. I am new to this school, but in the short few weeks I have spent setting up my classroom and slowly meeting other teachers, I can tell that overall this is a committed, passionate group of professionals who love kids and want to see them learn and achieve. Why are they not?  So much time, debate, conversation, frustration, etc. is spent by many people asking this question. This post certainly contains no answers, but perhaps some things to consider.

I just read a blog post by a classmate who discussed what it was like to live and teach in South Korea, an extremely competitive and high performing country as measured by international test scores. Perhaps it is cultural, but I have to wonder, is the pressure and the stress that students go through worth the test results that they achieve?

I dug a little deeper into another country who consistently performs at or near the top on international tests, Singapore. Looking at this video and the following article one thing REALLY stuck out to me. One major difference between the US and other high preforming countries is the time, money, and overall investment they make in their teachers.



Singapore's Lessons About Education

It does seem to me as a part of the education system that we are trying all kinds of strategies to boost our student achievement, but investing heavily in our teachers is not one of them.