While navigating through the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php), I saw more and more why technology integration is a vital element in our preparing students for today’s society. As their mission statement suggests, we need to bridge the gap between the expectations and standards presented in the school environment with those our students will encounter in the modern workplace and within daily life necessities. The more exposure to technology and critical thinking experience presented in school, the more prepared they will be to enter a society built on global initiatives and collaboration.
I was surprised to see how few states are actually a part of the Partnership, however, I am not certain as to how many states know about this resource. I also am not completely sure of the requirements set upon states that desire to be a part of this mission. The site offers guides to adapting state standards to 21st century skill sets which would probably prove usual to districts or teachers in need of ideas. The resources are even grouped by support system, skill (technology, innovation, life/career), and knowledge (subject and theme) for easy navigation. The business members of the Partnership are an impressive list of today’s most influential and recognizable businesses.
One stance mentioned on the website that I strongly disagree with deals with raising expectations and accountability. Their vision inaccurately, in my opinion, relates these ideals with strengthening student motivation. Such systems of measure mentioned on the site include graduation tests and higher enrollment qualifications into college. I’m not suggesting we need to “dummy-down” curriculums to allow people to graduate or enter a college institution; however, in my experience, standardized testing raises anxiety and lowers a student’s love of school. It seems like we are making it harder to achieve success with threats and unreasonable expectations. This is especially true if you consider that states don’t assess their students’ skills with the same tests. Some are much easier than others. For instance, in Virginia, the tests are multiple choice and given in May. In Pennsylvania, the tests are multiple-choice mixed with open-ended responses given in March. Therefore, this sentiment of raising expectations by increasing accountability is ridiculous. Raising expectations is fine, but accountability should be levied consistently across the nation before I support this notion completely.
All these thoughts imply that a contemporary educator’s job is about to become more difficult than the pay would suggest. These skills have always been necessary, but time and focus on state testing always gets in the way. Most teachers are not trained to integrate all this technology, but the expectations will still be set. School districts will need to dig deep in their pockets to create workshops and training sessions for full technology integration at its highest potential. Critical thinking skills and problem solving will always, and has always been, part of every school’s curriculum.
This is my blog, so I feel obligated to react to another thought mentioned throughout the website. I would greatly appreciate feedback and opinions. A thought I hear mentioned consistently in the media and in schools is that we are far behind other countries. This is a half-truth; a somewhat-illusion. Other countries, such as China where my close friend teaches today, does not allow all school age students to attend school past a certain level. Only a percentage of school age students in many countries are given the opportunities we afford all of our children in the United States. I hear stories from my friend that students with disabilities are put to work in the real world or sent directly to a trade school faster than those that show a gift for learning. The United States is gracious enough to give these children full educations, but we are compared to other countries as if we are all held to the same standard. Yes, we have some catching up to do because their strongest are far beyond our average student. However, when standards of learning are the same across the world, then we can be fairly judged. Please give me your thoughts on what I have said.
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I like the way you described the website and ideas of the 21st century skills’ website. I too think that the mission statement makes sense and shows us how much different the school settings and job settings are. I did not realize that they had a section to show what states and what businesses are involved until reading your blog, and I too find it very interesting how many major companies are involved yet there are few states involved. To me it seems to follow the same system education does where locally there is much invested in a school yet at the state level they seem to forget about schools. I know in Illinois they are talking about cutting teacher pension to cover what they are losing yet they still owe the school system hundreds of millions of dollars because they use all of the lottery money for other things than what it is intended for, education. Sorry about the rant, but I just found it interesting how these 21st century skills are what educators have been looking for to bridge the gap between school and the work place, but states do not seem to care about what schools and business what.
ReplyDeleteAs for your comment about raising expectations and accountability, I took that idea differently than you did. I believe that by holding students accountable for their learning through exploration and critical thinking us as educators are actually raising expectations and helping out companies. Right now many students just memorize or remember something long enough to take a test on it, and then they promptly forget it. I am with you on the fact that a test is not the way to go, but by making students learn something instead of just memorize or remember it for a short period of time we are raising the expectations on students from what has been previously expected of them.
Last, I agree with you that we cannot really be compared to other countries. I just watched a video in one of my tech trainings, and a comment in the clip really stuck with me, “there are more honors students in India than there are students in America”. I am sorry I cannot remember the source, but it was from one of those educational clips with all of the quotes to music. Anyway, that alone puts a bit behind because we do not even have the amount of people it would take to compete at an educational level with other countries. Your points are well stated and I agree that until there is a worldwide standard we cannot be compared, and even then numbers may even make it impossible to compare different countries.
Standardized testing is always a hot topic. Taking time out of our regular schedule to prepare the students for the test and seeing our students going through all the tests is tough. I know I have students that do not try hard on the test. By the end of the year, I have a pretty good idea where my students are at. There are always students that do not seem to reflect that level. Teachers always want the best for the students, but at the same time, more and more is expected out of teachers. How would you change accountability and expectations so it was not all on standardized testing?
ReplyDeleteMr. Severino, I can understand your point about how to interpret the raised accountability, and I guess that adds a new perspective for how I can look at it. I'm sorry to hear about your state's lack of money control. It seems like we are held to high standard with little monetary assistance to succeed.
ReplyDeleteTechteach, I'm not sure how to change accountability and expectations without standardized testing, however, I know that testing cannot measure actual understanding. It ignores student motivation, test anxiety, unfortunate circumstances in a student's life that distracts from the test, and much more. And I also believe, as I stated above, that we need to adopt a nationwide test if this testing is the future of education. Pennsylvania is much stricter with standards than other states, which to me puts us in an unfair position. Do you have thoughts about how change the system of accountability? Perhaps if standardized testing is the only path to use, then more should be done to assess each individual's growth year to year instead of lumping all students together and saying what is proficient and what is failure.
I do not have the answer either, but if education is changing from drill and practice, the testing should also. What would be better without creating a lot more work for teachers? I do not know, besides somehow taking what we already do in class.
ReplyDeleteJoe,
ReplyDeleteDo you find that your school is offering professional development or inservice training in relation to educational technology? The only tech-related training my school has ever offered was when we received Office 2007 this year, and the teachers needed to learn the new layout. It seems like the higher ups in the schools are not well-informed concerning the new wave of 21st century skills. We receive multiple training courses on how to higher our school's test scores, but nothing technological. It almost seems in order to make any progress or receive any notice in the need for improvements in the area, the topic needs to become part of "THE TEST," because otherwise, there is no accountability. The widely accepted opinion is that if the state is not going to score us on it, then it obviously does not matter that much. It is a sad, but true situation...
I really enjoyed your blog on this subject. Great work on bringing to light that our country's educational system is very different than others. The keynote speaker at the Minnesota TIES convention gave a great speech on all of the magnificent things that he witnessed on his visit to China's schools. He also talked about the extreme pressures and commitments that are put on the students in China and the difficult that they have just getting into the school of their choosing.
ReplyDeleteThere was a visiting teacher from Denmark in the classroom next to mine. She was shocked by how much teachers are asked to do in the American school system. She also talked about how students are set on different tracks in school based on their achievement level. It is hard to compare EVERY student in our school system to a selected bunch from another country.
As I read through the 21st Century Skills page, it really struck me as aimed at higher level learners, which is great. Would this add another "Does not meet proficiency" label to some of our students? And yes, they do know exactly how they scored and they do know how they have been labeled, although it is never discussed in school.
I think that the 21st Century Skills article is great, but No Child Left Behind would either need to be rewritten or adjusted to account for these additional standards.
You did a good job giving an overview of what the 21st Century skills organization was about. I agree with some of your comments about the statement that we need to raise accountability and regor. I think that we as teachers are doing a good job on bringing rigor into our classrooms. I have taught in two different school districts in South Georgia and have seen that the teachers are doing what they can and expect a high level of work from their students. The problem I see is that there is very little support for the students away from school. The students will not do their assignments in or away from school and their parents do not hold them accountable. One thing that the 21 century website might help teachers with is give us more idea to make our teaching relevant to the student's lives which might motivate them to do their work. I disagree with you somewhat about high stakes testing. I think the students do need to be held to a standard and testing is a way to do it. When the student gets out into the workforce they are going to be tested in many ways and will have a lot of pressure on them. I think as a whole the schools systems need to hold the students responcible for their grades and not blame the teachers. You can bring the knowledge to a student but you can't make them learn.
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