A New Education Model

I asked a high school counselor if anyone was tracking the students after they graduated to see how well they were doing. She told me no. I realize Texas education has these check-off requirements for a high school diploma, primarily a student's record showing evidence of a certain number of credits of required core and elective courses completed, and especially passing the exit level of the latest acronym for education mastery. Historically, that includes TEAMS, TABS, TAAS, TAKS, & now STARR, which completely fouls up the alliteration. But is anybody concerned if all these educational efforts and requirements are working?

Students receive a diploma, but has it prepared them for life? I've observed that many are well-trained in making a grade, but are retaining little learning. I've seen students-- even the supposed "good students" lie and cheat and plagiarize. I used to see a group of students in the public library where one student did the homework and every else copied off of him. I regularly saw students come in the school library the day before or day of a big assignment due and whip out something sloppy at the last minute, counting on the teacher's overwhelming number of students to mean as little time as possible is taken to grade it. I overheard a high school government teacher tell a guest speaker, "Assume they know nothing," to give him direction on what to talk about. I laughed, thinking he was joking, but then the students couldn't even answer the simplest questions about our leadership or highly publicized current events happening in the world. All of that was related to school. How are those things preparing an ethical, informed, and well-trained workforce?

Last year I visited with an outstanding teacher from a foreign country who told me he saw his first multiple choice test when he was nineteen-- that most all of his tests up to that point were taken in a composition book requiring essay answers. His teachers had no doubt of his knowledge about a subject or lack thereof when he had to write comprehensively about it. But that type of assessment takes a tremendous amount of time to grade, and when public school teachers have 150-200 students to teach, test, and evaluate, along with all of the record-keeping and behavioral issues they have to deal with, the day literally hasn't enough hours for them to do that adequately. They're just trying to survive. Thank you, Texas legislators. That's the same mentality as fixing a traffic jam problem by adding lanes to a highway by painting more stripes on the same size pavement.

But back to post HS graduates. I keep hearing about students getting into financial trouble immediately, especially with the over-use of credit cards (it's free money, I've heard some students say) or over-extending themselves with vehicle loans and/or living above their means in housing, shopping, and recreational activities. I see young adults in fast food and retail businesses that can't seem to handle money or recognize when a bill is incorrect. I've learned from employers that some of their young employees would simply not show up for work if they decided to quit, leaving the business in a lurch to fill empty shifts. I was talking to a man whose son graduated 16th in his class from the highly-rated Round Rock ISD, and he told me his son was not prepared for college-- that he really struggled his first year. If all of these students received a high school diploma, then according to the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills), they were exposed to knowledge and skills that should've prepared them for some level of the workforce or college. Why didn't that knowledge and those skills stick?

I wrote a fable about learning for life after observing so many students who seemed to be clueless that school was supposed to be preparing them for life. Too many couldn't make the connection between classroom learning and real life, and we as educators are not doing nearly enough to change that. Everything in the classroom needs to have real life application, otherwise, why are we wasting time teaching them stuff that they will never use, much less remember until it's applicable or meaningful to them? How can we make it applicable and meaningful to them now?

We need a new education model. We need to shift more of the responsibility of the learning on the student's shoulders-- make them clock in like a real job. School is their job at this time of their lives. Maybe instead of a grade, they should be given a paycheck showing their earning capability based on the effort they made in school. Some wouldn't be bringing home a paycheck, and they need to know that is their future unless they start applying themselves. But too many are counting on the government check each month-- low-performing students have actually told me that.  With the way our government is borrowing in order to keep spending more and more money with little or nothing in return, the coffers are empty, but nobody's addressing that. A crash is inevitable since our leaders can't seem to work together to solve this massive problem. We've set ourselves up for chaos when folks who've never learned through home OR school to take responsibility for themselves and their families... suddenly have to.

We need a new education model when it comes to college, too. The debt for student loans is staggering, and too many students aren't getting a good return for the money invested when it comes to the kind of jobs they're getting, if any. I hear that industries are saying they have to go out of the country to find highly skilled workers. What's wrong with that picture? Are our colleges not preparing students to be highly skilled workers?

Let's really think outside the box here. Is college even necessary to fill these positions? Most companies have to train their new employees anyway, why not go a step further and invest in training non-degreed people for these highly skilled jobs with the agreement that they commit to a certain time frame of working for them in exchange for the training. The military services and medical schools already do that. Hands-on training is the best type of training. Those efforts warrant creating new types of diplomas or certificates that would open doors for them in other jobs. A 'college' diploma shouldn't be the end-all in determining the consideration of a good employee on a resume.

I know this is over-simplifying a very complex matter, but something needs to change. Part of the problem is that we get in a traditional mindset of doing something a certain way because it's always been done that way-- whether it's working or not. I've been guilty of that, too, usually in education situations so over-whelming it was all I could do to keep my head above water. I didn't have the time or energy to stop and even question whether things could be done in a better way-- especially when it came to preparing children for life. That's where many of our educators are at this point. Worse, that's where many of the mandates are, too, and local administrators and teachers have little power to change that when they do figure out how to improve something.

One place to start is to look beyond that diploma at the end to see if all those years of investment of time and money and teaching efforts actually paid off in our students' lives. I think if we talked to former students, we'd be surprised to hear what they had to say, and we could definitely learn something from it. Then maybe we don't want to see the results of our efforts because we feel powerless or just too tired to change it.