Education Reform Public Education

Education: Education Reform Education Reform: Public Education Education reformers have proposed a number of strategies to help increase teacher effectiveness and overall student performance in public schools. Proposals include, among other things, reducing the level of teacher autonomy, use of testing and standards to evaluate performance, and introduction of charter schools as a way of encouraging public schools to improve their performance. This text examines the arguments put forth by the proponents and critics in each of these three areas.

School Reform School reform is the name given to the various efforts geared at changing public education in the country to focus on outputs (student achievement) as opposed to input. School reformers acknowledge public education as the primary source of K-12 education for the country's young generation. As such, they desire to transform public education to be able o work like a market, that is, an input-output system where accountability creates high stakes for performance standards.

A lot of debate still surrounds this issue, particularly in regard to the issues of teacher autonomy, use of tests and standards, and school choice. This text reviews the conflicting arguments put forth by both sides of the debate in these three issues, and presents the author's expectations on the same as they enter the profession.

Teacher Autonomy The concept of teacher autonomy refers to the independence of teachers in the school setting, particularly in regard to choosing what to teach to particular groups of students and how to teach it. The conflicting groups differ as to whether or not teachers should be allowed to make such decisions autonomously using their professional skills.

Critics of such autonomy argue that the low graduation rates inherent in public schools, and the wide achievement gap between students in public schools and their counterparts in private institutions indicate that there is a need to improve the effectiveness of teachers in public schools through the enactment of penalties for underperformance, provision of prepackaged curriculum materials, the establishment of demanding evaluation systems, and increased administrative oversight.

Membership-based professional organizations for teachers and teachers unions, however, argue that such actions would undermine the professional status of teachers, as well as their ability to use their professional expertise to make informed decisions about their students' education. Moreover, it would stifle innovation and creativity among teachers, which would eventually result in high job dissatisfaction, low student performance, and high attrition rates within the teaching fraternity.

Providing teachers with a standard way to follow when teaching their students undermines the perception that teachers are skilled professionals, with the requisite training to make decisions that maximize their learners' academic outcomes. I agree that there is need to reform public education in the country and to increase the efficiency of teachers in such schools; however, I do not believe that infringing on teachers; autonomy in the classroom is the way to go. P.

Freire (2000) points out in his book that without freedom, people are unable to exist authentically and to be fully themselves. Similarly, teachers, if denied the autonomy they need to make their own decisions in the classroom, are likely not to give their all towards the learning outcomes of their students. Better outcomes, Freire (2010) posits, would be realized through the reflective participation of teachers in the process of developing measures for improved efficiency.

I hope that schools will take the initiative to engage their teachers in developing strategies that would help increase overall efficiency without impeding on teacher autonomy. Teachers can be equated to the 'oppressed group' in Frere's analysis -- they are likely to be more committed if they feel like a part of the reform process, and not if they believe that reforms are just being imposed upon them. Testing and Standards Education reformers argue that tests and standards could actually help to increase the efficiency of teachers in public schools.

They argue such standardized tests would increase accountability on the part of teachers because the scores would become public record and states will be able to compare the performance of different schools on a standard scale (Goldstein, 2014). This way, underperforming teachers would be identified and placed under intense scrutiny. Critics of the idea of using standardized tests and standards, however, argue that such a move would drive teachers to teach to the test, and students' performance will only be hindered in the long-term (Ravitch, 2013).

Such tests would result in a lack of creativity on the part of teachers, who will be under pressure to prepare students for these exams, thereby neglecting the need to teach crucial skills that go beyond the test (Ravitch, 2013). Moreover, such tests evaluate a student's performance on one particular day, and do not take into account the context within which a student sits for the same.

For instance, a student who argues with their parent on the morning of the test is likely to be less focused during the test, and should they underperform, such performance cannot be attributed to the teacher's ineffectiveness. I subscribe to the critics' side of view for the simple reason that the overriding goal of the current reforms is to improve the learning outcomes of children in public schools; yet standardized tests and standards derail these outcomes in the long-term.

There is no doubt that tests would be an effective way to assess the effectiveness and performance of teachers; however, a more effective approach for schools would be to evaluate growth in teacher and student performance over the course of the year rather than on the basis of one single test performance.

Evaluating performance based on a single test does a disservice to the teacher, as well as the student who worked extremely hard throughout the year but failed to score proficient in the test because of external factors such as test anxiety or unforeseen personal problems. School Choice Education reformists argue that the introduction of for-profit charter schools would create a competitive dynamic that would prompt underperforming public schools to improve their practice so as to avoid losing students and revenues to charter schools.

Teachers in public schools would be forced to improve their performance and overall effectiveness so that their schools continue to appeal to parents and students. In other words, the introduction of charter school would give families a broader range of school choices to choose from; and in order to be preferred over chartered institutions, public.