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I read a blog entry elsewhere today that became a diatribe about American schools and teachers.� Essentially, the argument went, the problem is teachers who arenapos;t well trained and donapos;t work, hard, and�schools that are inefficiently run.� Thatapos;s why other countries have better test scores for their kids.� According to this post, the entire public school system should be scrapped.�

Argh

I donapos;t think American teachers are any less educated than their foreign counterparts, or less dedicated or less passionate, nor do they know less about how to teach.� If I wanted an explanation for lower test scores, I wouldnapos;t lay it at the feet of our methodologies either.� Indeed, some of our students soar, become the movers and shakers of our time, and are the inventors and creators of new technology.�

So, whatapos;s the problem?� One is how we measure student achievement, particularly at the middle and high school level.� Many of the other countries donapos;t test all their kids.� They test the ones in their academic tracked schools.� We test them all, so our overall scores donapos;t compare well.

But I think arguing about the testing begs the question.� Regardless of what other countries are doing, why donapos;t our kids do better?� Why are so many of them below "proficient" for what they should achieve at their grade level?

I think you have to go back to the fact that many of our kids do excel.� If the system was no good, no one would succeed, but many do.� If you have two kids of�basically the same ability and potential�in the same class with the same teacher, doing the same work, and one does really well while the other one sinks, it canapos;t be the school or teacherapos;s fault.� The problem has to be in the behavior of the kids themselves.� Itapos;s clear to me that many of our kids have no inner drive and they are not being pushed from home to do better.

If that is the case, the problem with our schools is cultural.� Teachers can do a lot, and they do do a lot, but they canapos;t make�kids who do not value learning, or do not see work as beneficial, or do not have a fundamental sense of responsibility, or take no pride in doing the best that they can,�become responsible, hard working, caring students.

Also, studies show that what happens to a child in the first year of life is way more important than we once thought.� Some children are exposed to thousands of more words a day, and they have more enriching exchanges with their parents than others.� The parents whose only interactions with their child are "Donapos;t touch that."� "Pick that up,"� "Stop being noisy," etc., donapos;t do the same developmental work as a parent who is playing eye spy, asking questions, playing word games, talking to the child, etc.� Some researchers suggest that what happens in a childapos;s first year may shape the rest of their ability to learn for the rest of their lives.

My wife has been the Gifted and Talented teacher in elementary schools.� She said that they run into two kinds of gifted kids at that level.� The first are the students who just seemed to be born with better equipment.� They donapos;t need as many repetitions to learn something.� They see relationships and make connections more easily.� They are more curious.� The second type, though, appear to have a more ordinary set of tools to start with, but they are "environmentally gifted."� They had parents who always read to them, who gave them numerous enriching experiences, who always were working with the kids on how to learn.

I think we can only do so much to improve how are kids learn by improving the schools and teaching.� Unless the kids are given the right stimulation and encouragement at home (much more than many of them get now), we will constantly run into a road block for improvement.

The work to improve the schools is admirable.� Thereapos;s always room to improve, but the efforts will be wasted as long as we say the primary entity responsible for a studentapos;s success is the school

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