Changed mission requires more funding Accelerated Learning Resources

Changed mission requires more funding

Do we–educators, parents, community members, policy makers–truly believe that all students can learn at high levels? Do we believe that this is the mission of education?

I do not believe that all of us share this belief.

Our historical mission of education was to filter citizens into the various segments of our socio-economic system. The purpose of education was to rank students based on achievement. The amount of time for students in class was fixed—which caused the amount learned by students to vary. This supported the notion of having winners and losers as a result of our education system.

Say what you will about No Child Left Behind: that it imposes punitive consequences on schools, that it uses the dreaded standardized assessments, that it was an unfunded mandate on states. It did all of that, but it also codified a major shift in the mission of schools. It made all of these requirements based on the notion that all students were required and could meet rigorous academic standards and that failure is not an option.

The passage of NCLB was a legal call to arms, a de jure response that has not changed the traditional or de facto approach to education. If we are to truly reform education, we need to realize that our practices in education, that our funding of education, that our attitudes towards education will not change until we embrace the notion that all students can learn. That failure is not an option!

We still fund education based on a fixed amount of resources. The federal, state, and local governments still fund education with fixed amounts attached to students. There are some exceptions, especially regarding Title I funds, but for the most part governments dedicate a fixed amount of resources to students regardless of the student’s academic ability. This approach worked under the old paradigm. When you rank and sort students and use a bell curve to establish winners and losers, the resources needed to do accomplish this can remain fixed without much impact. (One area that we do see a change to the new mission of education is the fact that we have, for the most part, moved from norm-referenced assessments to criterion-referenced assessments.)

But if we are to support each and every learner to achieve rigorous standards, realizing that students learn at different rates and with different techniques, we would recognize that we need to adjust our funding structures. I am tired of the cry that we have increased education funding over time, some due to inflation, and some I’ll admit due to non-education factors, without seeing a change in results.

We changed the target. We need to fund education like we mean it when we say that all students can learn and achieve high standards; when we say that failure is not an option!

That’s a big picture example of how we have not embraced our new mission. It requires a great deal of political courage to implement and understand our new mission. It will mean an increase in funding. It means an increase in taxes. There, I said it. But it also means we need to fundamentally change how we allocate these funds. It means we change how schools utilize funds to address the needs of all students, from the under achieving to the over achieving.

In upcoming posts I will try to relate how our lack of implementing our new mission impacts students at the micro or teacher level. This will include how teacher dispositions, based on the “old” mission of ranking and sorting students, still persist in the classroom and why it is harmful.

In the meantime, it is time for a break from scoring, grading, and other teacher duties. It is time to reflect on how my students did first semester. It is time to reflect on my performance first semester. It is time to just be.

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