EDITORIAL - Editorial - Brief Article

As I write this, gasoline prices are at an all-time high, mortgage rates are up significantly, unemployment is up a bit, and the school reform movement is undergoing a subtle shift. As one who has purchased gasoline for 13 cents a gallon, taken out a mortgage at over 10 percent, watched thousands of colleagues being laid off, and observed school reform for many years, I am convinced of one thing: there will be more changes.

The recent change in education reform is a backlash against standards. Oh, people are still mostly paying lip service to the importance of standards, but it is now politically correct to state that standards must be realistic (i.e.: easy). Of course, anyone reading this journal is probably aware that in test after test, state after state, students are failing in droves to reach the standards. What is the point of having high standards if they cannot be met? Why frustrate students, anger parents, and make teachers feel incompetent?

The only surprise in all of this is that so many people really seemed to believe that establishing standards would lead to huge increases in learning. Standards don't provide learning any more than tests do. Students learn from some sort of structured instructional program. Today, that program is a teacher. Some of those teachers are talented, hard-working people who do everything they can to help all their students achieve everything they possibly can. Others are ill-trained, unmotivated people who lack the ability to help students learn anything. How would tougher standards help either group?

Education can change in one of two ways:

1) Train and employ only bright, skilled, dedicated people as teachers, or

2) Develop a model of instruction that is not teacher dependent.

I've been around long enough to know that gasoline prices, unemployment rates, and mortgage rates will most likely continue to change and that education most likely will stay as it is -- but reformers will continue to develop meaningless models that don't change instruction but are still expected to improve outputs. Right now, the economy is good, and no one really cares how students are doing. But if gasoline prices, mortgage rates, and unemployment rates continue to creep up, and the economy begins to slide enough, the finger pointing will start all over again.

Since reformers have already focused on organization, leadership, management, assessment, schedules, teacher training, and standards, I figure the next movement should focus on innovative materials and practices. Then again, we might just start over with the same list. How about another NDEA or EPDA to use federal money to train teachers? There shouldn't be many folks around who even remember those acronyms, and recycling is good for the environment.

Michael F. Sullivan Executive Director Agency for Instructional Technology Publisher, TECHNOS Quarterly

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