When Barak Obama was elected President almost 2 years ago he promised to overhaul President's Bush's NCLB education program. The department of education handed the hopes and dreams of the public education community to Arne Duncan. Late last year Mr. Duncan made something very clear. Nothing of substance will change in the near future. We will still equate reform to standardized tests that do nothing more than take teaching time away from our teachers. These tests have not or will ever equate how well our students learn or how well they understand what is being taught to them. Schools that teach to the test will do well on the test while not insuring their students understand what will be important to their future. In other words, the test has become more important than the student.

Now the federal government is making school improvement grants for up to three years provided the schools agree to pursue an aggressive plan to reform the school. The school would have to agree to redesign or replace the school staff, convert the school to a charter school, transform the school through comprehensive reforms, or close the school and transfer students to higher performing schools in the district. Needless to say many low-performing schools have refused the money.

I don't understand the concept of replacing an entire school staff. When the 3rd grade tests are administered is it the fault of the 3rd grade teacher that their students do not do well. If an 11th grade math teacher has his students do well in the algebra based part of the exam but do poorly on the geometry based part of the exam is it the teacher's fault? How can anyone lump an entire administration and teaching staff as a cause of poor performance on a state based exam? Since New Hampshire and Maine are known for their independence I can't believe they would give all their control over their schools to an outside source that will do anything to improve test scores. What happens when a district has only one school or that school is located a long distance away from any other school? How can this system work in this type of environment?

For the past few weeks I've been talking with many educators over how we can improve our schools without having to rely on state testing and the federal government. One means was having poorly performing students take remedial courses with their regular English and mathematics courses. This would of course eliminate their elective courses that include music, art, physical education, industrial arts, or even a foreign language. I argued against this because there are some low performing students who only stay in school because of their love for music, art, or language. If you took these away I believe our drop-out rate would increase dramatically.

Another means to improve our schools would be to adopt the systems technical schools use. Many of these schools do not grade their students in the form of percentages or letters. These schools use a cut point system to evaluate their students. If a student earns a '0' they would receive a comment of not meeting the standards. If a student earns a 2.0 or 2.5 he or she partially meets the standards. If a student earns a 3.0 or 3.5 it would show they meet the standard. Finally if a student earns a 4.0 or 4.5, that would designate an honors option, they would exceed the standard. Using this system is said to promote individual student ability and progress.

This program goes on to explain that if a student does not meet the standard they would have to go back to the subject at hand in order to earn a 3.0. I are not talking about an end of year grading system. I am talking about different sections of a particular subject. I am a chemistry teacher so I will describe what I know. If one of my students does not achieve a 3.0 in atomic structure he or she would have to go back to achieve proficiency in this section before he or she would be allowed to continue with the rest of the class. Now lets say many of my students do well in certain sections but have trouble in others. I would literally have to section off my classes into different subject areas all going on at the same time. Being human, this would exhaust me and force me to designate more of my students into the context of meeting the standard. The amount of time I would have to motivate all of my students would be dramatically shortened.

The tech schools argue that the standards reinforce the changing roles of the schools. They state the A-F system sorts students while the 0-4 system educates all students. They explain that the A-F system emphasizes what is taught instead of what is learned. They finally argue that school success should not predict life-long learning by using the A-F system but would accomplish this goal by converting to the 0-4 system.

After a few moments of ingesting their argument I could not understand the difference between giving a student a 4 instead of an A or an F instead of a 0. I was then told I was too old to understand of which I agreed, for after-all I am a dinosaur of education. There was one concept very clear in my mind after discussing different reform systems for our schools. Parents of students of Maine and New Hampshire had better become involved in reform because what their schools looked like in their high school years will not be the same for their children. I just pray it will be for the better.

Jim Fabiano is a teacher and writer living in York, Maine
Maine Publisher's Association Best weekly column award for 2004
Theodore William Richards Award for Excellence in Teaching Secondary School Chemistry 2007
Email Jim: james.fabiano60@gmail.com