Hey Dummy, the Target is Over Here!

One of the greatest problems with both former President Bush’s No Child Left Behind and President Obama’s Race to the Top is the manner in which they both attempt to determine and measure the success of schools, teachers, and students.  In an attempt to gain a clear understanding of what is taking place in our nation’s public schools and to quantify the productivity of the overall system, these policies focus solely on one factor alone as opposed to the multifaceted and dynamic system that is public education.  Granted, test scores are important, and teachers should be held accountable for their performance in the classroom, and it is vital to have a device in place by which to measure these factors; however, test scores are not the only indicator of success in terms of schools, teachers, and students and therefore should not be the only measure used in determining teacher productivity in the classroom, student success in terms of learning, and ultimately individual school success.

For many years educators assumed that all students learn the same, but new research by Harvard’s Howard Gardner suggest that not only do students learn differently, but they demonstrate their learning in different ways as well.  Gardner’s research challenges many long held beliefs by educators, on the one hand, the use of one dimensional classroom testing being the best means by which to measure student learning, and on the other, the one size fits all teaching method.  When we match what Gardner’s research has found in terms of individual learning and the demonstration of that learning by students to the current means of both teaching and testing, there is an obvious contrast.  Ultimately what we see is that the current system of both teaching and testing is at best aiming at the wrong target, and if that is the case, both President Bush’s No Child Left Behind and President Obama’s Race to the Top are missing the mark in their attempt to right the education ship.  Not only does this off target attempt put our teachers, schools, and students at a disadvantage as it relates to funding for school districts, more importantly, it doesn’t address the greater problem: there is a good chance that we have overlooked some of the brightest students.