15 Things Parents, Community Members, and Taxpayers Want the Nation to Know About Education

Lisa Nielsen attended the recent Education Nation conference and reported on the last panel, consisting of students. She reported on the students' perspective in the blog 20 Things Students Want the Nation to Know About Education. In response, a teacher and blogger wrote 20 Things A Teacher Wants the Nation to Know About Education.

So I decided I'd better write one to reflect the important part of the whole discussion - parents, community members and taxpayers. I listed 15 things leaving the last five for input from readers. Here's my list:

1. End the expensive, ineffective, and punitive high stakes assessment.
2. End classrooms environments that have been converted into test prep and testing centers.
3. Use the savings from #1 and 2 to return interesting and valuable electives - drama, art, home economics, computer skills, physical education, and vocational education courses.
4. Use the savings from #1 and 2 to maintain manageable class sizes so that teachers are able to meet individual needs.
5. Stop sending large sums of dollars to Pearson, McGraw-Hill and other companies for the purpose of implementing unfunded and unfundable compliance and data-driven mandates.
6. Use the savings in #5, to restore reasonable class size for core classes, vocational education, and electives.
7. Hold Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and these other companies accountable to the same degree as schools are being held accountable.
8. Apply greater transparency regarding deals and paid for "junkets" made with Pearson, McGraw-Hill and other companies jumping into the profitable education sector. Unsure on the "junkets"? Read about 10 state commissioners of education who traveled around the world on Pearson's tab, "When Free Trips Overlap With Commercial Purposes."
9.Ensure meaningful school-based accountability that meets the NUT principle (No Unnecessary Testing).
10. Use existing measures, such as NAEP, to give a snapshot of student achievement and to report on sub-group accountability.
11. Support local control via publicly elected School Board members.
12. Ditch the preschool through college longitudinal database and maintain parent rights guaranteed under FERPA, requiring consent for sharing of student data.
13. Ensure parent rights to opt out of any and all assessments, punitive-free.
14. Leave it to local control to implement teacher evaluation systems that are not dependent on students taking high stakes assessment.
15. Support communities and families so that all students are fed, housed, and receive medical care versus supporting runaway testing initiatives.
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What did I miss?

UPDATE: Responding to a private comment on the importance of these views. Ed reformers, who share Chester Finn's view on local control, will no doubt find any list and input from parents, community members, and taxpayers disruptive to their plans. If parents and the public are excluded from decision-making in their communities and over the lives of their children, what is it that we have exactly?

20 Things Students Want the Nation to Know About Education

NBC sponsored Education Nation is billed as a national summit on education. Panel after panel discussed and debated a wide variety of topics. Perhaps I am one more in the pool of parents, community members, or taxpayers who never heard of it. Could it be this important pool remains at the fringes of the national discussion?

Thanks to Lisa of the Innovative Educator blog, I learned that there was at least a student panel. This insightful blog is reposted below.

20 Things Students Want the Nation to Know About Education

It's rare for education reformers, policymakers, and funders to listen to those at the heart of education reform work: The students. In fact Ann Curry who hosted Education Nation's first student panel admitted folks at NBC were a little nervous about putting kids on stage. In their "Voices of a Nation" discussion, young people provided insight into their own experiences with education and what they think needs to be done to ensure that every student receives a world-class education. After the discussion Curry knew these students didn't disappoint. She told viewers, "Students wanted to say something that made a difference to you (adults) and they did. Now adults need to listen."

Below are the sentiments shared by these current and former students during the segment.

1. I have to critically think in college, but your tests don't teach me that.
   
2. We learn in different ways at different rates.
   
3. I can't learn from you if you are not willing to connect with me.
   
4. Teaching by the book is not teaching. It's just talking.
   
5. Caring about each student is more important than teaching the class.
   
6. Every young person has a dream. Your job is to help bring us closer to our dreams.
   
7. We need more than teachers. We need life coaches.
   
8. The community should become more involved in schools.
   
9. Even if you don't want to be a teacher, you can offer a student an apprenticeship.
   
10. Us youth love all the new technologies that come out. When you acknowledge this and use technology in your teaching it makes learning much more interesting.
    
11. You should be trained not just in teaching but also in counseling.
    
12. Tell me something good that I'm doing so that I can keep growing in that.
    
13. When you can feel like a family member it helps so much.
    
14. We appreciate when you connect with us in our worlds such as the teacher who provided us with extra help using Xbox and Skype
    
15. Our teachers have too many students to enable them to connect with us in they way we need them to.
    
16. Bring the electives that we are actually interested in back to school. Things like drama, art, cooking, music.
    
17. Education leaders, teachers, funders, and policy makers need to start listening to student voice in all areas including teacher evaluations.
    
18. You need to use tools in the classroom that we use in the real world like Facebook, email, and other tools we use to connect and communicate.
    
19. You need to love a student before you can teach a student.
    
20. We do tests to make teachers look good and the school look good, but we know they don't help us to learn what's important to us.

The students are ready to talk to us. How are we going to make time to listen and incorporate their voices into the policies and decisions that affect them?

*Panelists:
Nnamdi Asomugha, Cornerback - Philadelphia Eagles
Shadrack Boayke - Brentwook, NY
Colton Bradford - Mobile, AL
Ron Daldine - Auburn Hills, MI
Rayla Gaddy - Detroit, MI
Katie Oliveria - Las Vegas, NV