HOW LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND'S VISION OF EQUITABLE EDUCATION WOULD CHANGE EDUCATION POLICIES IN THE FUTURE
Darling-Hammond includes five key elements of her policy changing ideas for reform for a Eutopic Revolution in Education: 1. Meaningful learning goals. Linda has a variety of plans for diverse learning approaches that will enable innovative learning that will prepare students with 21st Century Skills. It would really take an educational revolution to revamp the current program with all of the various states Federally to have a well thought out program that the educational community could get behind. I agree that starting in a state by state approach would be a better start and more like minded communities could support something that is researched based in their own state and share the learning as to what worked well for each state and share that learning knowledge. Education does need to be meaningful to all students for the buy-in to want to be at school and learning from other states and leading countries is a great start to this kind of reform. 2. Intelligent, reciprocal accountability systems When Linda talks about accountability of good instruction and learning systems I know there is so much to be done in this area to enable improvement. From city to city and state to state their are so many inequalities as to income level, safety concerns, access to educational curriculum and teacher experience or desirability to certain areas or districts. There are so many areas that need support for teachers that are not getting it, even in the more affluent areas all student populations are not getting their needs met and nor are the teachers with options to be taught with the best of the latest technology or furthering education for continual learning. 3. Equitable and adequate resources There are communities with quality teachers and high performing students, but their are also new teachers with less experience in and high volume areas where students that are coming in with little or no preschool, learning a second language or no support at home. Being treated all as one reminds me of the CPR analogy. If a student falls on the ground no longer breathing, does the teacher stop and give everyone CPR? No! Every student does not need the same thing all of the time. Being equal and fair to all students is not equitable and not what all of them need at that moment in time. Achieving equitable will require many rule changes and, of course, money! 4. Strong professional standards and support for all educators When it comes to peer teacher support, principal mentorship, and support for new teachers, I feel that NVUSD has taken some great strides to improvement. I am piloting a new teacher evaluation with peer observations. Our principal frequently has her mentor at school and supported with a veteran/retired principal. We have had a BTSA program in place for many years that supports new teachers for the first couple of years in their teaching career. One thing that I think we could stand to use some improvement in that area is Teacher Training's and time for collaboration with our grade alike teachers to plan and create innovative lessons and projects. 5. Schools organized for student and teacher learning. Again, teachers need time to develop and plan organized schools that can make curriculum fun and focused and share norms and habits of mind. Assessments are a tool, but the data that comes from it is not used to go back and reteach or help others to inform instruction for the following year. To be able to tailor the lessons into small learning groups that requires more preps to address individual or small group needs. Teachers need time to create excellence. I chose to report back on the Dr. James Paul Gee video regarding Digital Literacy and Learning in the Digital Age. I would love video games to be a resource like Teachers Pay Teachers to really tackle higher level content in a video game format.
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Author: Monica D KnechtI am a teacher in NVUSD. It is my 12th year teaching and currently working as a TOSA as a Reading Specialist. Archives
November 2018
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Photo used under Creative Commons from HeinzDS