The Ohio State Board of Education has been at the center of controversy and conversation in recent days due to changes it has proposed to Ohio’s 5 of 8 requirement. Some people are asking, “What’s the big deal?” “Why the outrage and uproar about the proposed changes to 5 of 8?” “Isn’t this just overblown and misunderstood by those speaking out?” “Isn’t it good to let the districts decide what they need themselves?” “Shouldn’t we have more local autonomy in education?”
Intuitively it’s easy to oversimplify the issue and quickly provide the obvious, but incorrect, answer to these questions as “yes, of course those are good things.” But, as one who was taught the skill of critical thinking as part of my education in the State of Ohio, I’ll do my best to explain why I believe this policy change is not in the best interest of Ohio and its children.
It’s as simple as this. If local school districts are given flexibility in specific unmeasured, undervalued areas of educational systems, while mandating resources, curriculum, and evaluation to other parts of the system in an environment where funding is uncertain and power is unchecked, undoubtedly schools will be forced to allocate the minimum amount to the flexible, unmeasured resources and the maximum amount to the resources that are used to evaluate their effectiveness.
Thus, eliminating 5 of 8 with the current proposed language further establishes an already existing educational hierarchy in schools with extremely negative consequences for those who deviate. School districts that focus on educating the whole child, those with exceptional humanities programs, great counselors, mentoring coaches, will be compelled to divert those resources to a limited set of disciplines, disenfranchising many of our students and limiting the perspectives, creativity, and critical thinking ability of all of them. Why? So that they can be given the standardized rating of Excellent across a limited scope of educational subjects.
Logically it follows that given the choice of devoting maximum resources to scoring well on the standardized tests by which the quality of a district is currently measured versus enriching the lives and minds of the students, for which there is no evaluative metric, that the final choice will be inevitable in many districts. There will be no choice at all For example:
- Make a difference in a kid’s life by teaching discipline and hard work through physical education – This will not be on the test. Your evaluation as an effective district will not include this as a metric. You have the flexibility to cut without consequence, and may want to consider reallocating resources to what we measure on standardized tests so we can know if you are truly effective.
- Prevent health issues later in life by instilling an understanding of the importance and fun of regular exercise – This will not be on the test. Your evaluation as an effective district will not include this as a metric. You have the flexibility to cut without consequence, and may want to consider reallocating resources to what we measure on standardized tests so we can know if you are truly effective.
- Present mathematics and science in another light by teaching music theory – This will not be on the test. Your evaluation as an effective district will not include this as a metric. You have the flexibility to cut without consequence, and may want to consider reallocating resources to what we measure on standardized tests so we can know if you are truly effective.
- Develop skills of communication and motivation through music appreciation – This will not be on the test. Your evaluation as an effective district will not include this as a metric. You have the flexibility to cut without consequence, and may want to consider reallocating resources to what we measure on standardized tests so we can know if you are truly effective.
- Build cultural understanding of our world past and present through art history – This will not be on the test. Your evaluation as an effective district will not include this as a metric. You have the flexibility to cut without consequence, and may want to consider reallocating resources to what we measure on standardized tests so we can know if you are truly effective.
- Instill a sense of innovation, invention, and play through sculpture, drawing, and painting – This will not be on the test. Your evaluation as an effective district will not include this as a metric. You have the flexibility to cut without consequence, and may want to consider reallocating resources to what we measure on standardized tests so we can know if you are truly effective.
- Guide children to engage with the knowledge of the world in books, movies, websites and resources through librarians –This will not be on the test. Your evaluation as an effective district will not include this as a metric. You have the flexibility to cut without consequence, and may want to consider reallocating resources to what we measure on standardized tests so we can know if you are truly effective.
- Differentiate educational approaches to uncover passion, overcome developmental issues, and provide individual learning strategies through specialists and coordinators at both ends of the educational spectrum – This will not be on the test. Your evaluation as an effective district will not include this as a metric. You have the flexibility to cut without consequence, and may want to consider reallocating resources to what we measure on standardized tests so we can know if you are truly effective.
- Guard the safety of thousands of children with adequate medical professionals on site to evaluate and treat injury and illness as quickly as possible. – This will not be on the test. Your evaluation as an effective district will not include this as a metric. You have the flexibility to cut without consequence, and may want to consider reallocating resources to what we measure on standardized tests so we can know if you are truly effective.
The big deal is this: Flexibility without limitation, measurement, emphasis and funding only ensures that our schools will amble further down the wrong path of teaching to the all mighty standardized test – the be all and end all for which districts, teachers, and children are evaluated. The proposed change does not offer flexibility or autonomy at all. It merely makes it easier to justify cutting that which can’t be measured on a standardized, multiple choice test.
Life’s challenges are not given to us on scan-tron sheets. Innovation can not come without creativity, fueled by an understanding of the humanities. Ignoring massive domains of human intelligence does not better prepare our children for life and does not better prepare our society for success. Yet, eliminating 5 of 8 requirements and replacing them with unregulated local flexibility in our current system would be just the latest misstep down the long since irrelevant path of 20th century factory style education.
If the Ohio State Board of Education is serious about flexibility and solving the problem of an unfunded educational mandate, then it should extend flexibility to the entire system of education. Standardized testing can play a part of that system, but should not be the system. Emphasize the humanities. Mandate support services. Make education, more specifically the comprehensive education of our children, a real priority. Fund it. Support it. Help it succeed. Raise the bar of expectation in conjunction with the resources necessary to clear it.
Our appointed and elected officials should mandate fair, reasonable, comprehensive and strong minimum quality standards for all of our schools, across all disciplines, and then provide them ample funding and flexibility so that our students can far exceed the minimum. We shouldn’t be focusing on 5 of 8, but on how we deliver 8 of 10, or 15 of 20, or whatever we can do within our power to prepare the next generation of Ohioans for success. If education is an investment in our future, we should not be opening the door to divesting from it at a time when it matters more than ever.
I’m all for autonomy, decentralization, and local accountability, but you can’t have it both ways. Ohio can’t continue to cut education funding and resources, devalue professional educators, funnel unaccounted tax money to for profit charter schools, worship standardized tests, and restrict public school curriculum and then pretend to give local districts real and viable choices. Our local districts are measured in limited ways, are stretched to beyond their limits, lack checks and balances at the school board level, and have limited choices in curriculum, particularly at the classroom level. If you mandate standardization and tie funding and performance data to it, flexibility in other areas is a thinly veiled myth. All that can be cut from humanities and support services will be cut from humanities and support services because in the eyes of the state they don’t matter. Conversely all that can be devoted to passing the standardized test will be devoted to passing the standardized test because increasingly that is all that matters – a sad but true reality.
Is what I’m talking about in this post bigger than 5 of 8? Bigger than the Ohio State Board of Education? Yes. That’s precisely the point. The people of Ohio expect that our leaders’ conversations about improving education should be bigger too.
I expect more from our elected officials and you should too. Contact them and ask them to think bigger, demonstrate creativity and critical thinking, and implement helpful changes to our education system. It’s time to speak up for education.
This post was inspired in part by this TED talk from Sir Ken Robinson, whom I had the pleasure of seeing speak at The University of Dayton last year. He does a far better job of making this point that I can. I encourage you to watch it and think about what real educational flexibility might mean for our kids and our future.
