The Twitter chat on 10/30 under #LIVedchat on the topic of “Core vs Non-Core, What’s a Balanced Education?” was a lively one with many debates. But as it is Twitter, only so much can be said. I wanted to take a moment to write a few more thoughts on the matter. My first post can be found here and an archive of the chat along with the original post by Mr. Ryan Horne can be found here . Your follow-up thoughts are welcome!

National Education

National education is tricky. Grades, standardization, etc. are all an attempt to ensure that the populous is getting a generally similar education — and this is a worthwhile, but difficult goal to achieve. A side effect to this is that variance in learning is disregarded and we end up focusing on “average” (in so many ways). We forget that some students don’t understand how \(27 – 8\) is equal to \(19\) by using place value arithmetic (borrowing). Whereas, other students respond equally poorly to \(27 – 8 = (27 – 7) – 1 = 20 – 1 = 19\). We also forget that people in general don’t understand things by a given time table.

We look at how long it will take the average person to understand something and then make that a mandate for the population. The tails of the distribution are not well-represented and we end up with students who are neglected on both ends. When this is repeated for twelve years almost every student gets left behind in some subject somewhere along their education path. Again, I wish I had the data to make this claim a bit more rigorously; all I have are a lot of similar stories from all walks of life over several decades.

I chose the name mathmisery.com for a reason!

Measuring things like “growth” is tricky because it ends up becoming highly subjective or will end up becoming something that’s rigorously but arbitrarily defined. With defined numerical grades, the subjectivity is supposedly gone. Of course, with this comes inconsistency in how grades are assigned from school to school, grade inflation, etc.

Enter Standardized Exams

With standardized tests comes a remedy to inconsistent local evaluations. But, standardized tests also bring a different unintended consequence — hyperfocus on passing those tests since what questions will be asked, what type of answer choices will be present, etc. are well-known. This leads some (maybe many) teachers and administrators down a path of no longer teaching, but “test prep”. Ultimately what has to get pushed aside are things that don’t lend themselves to standardized evaluation. No school district can justify, indefinitely, the untestable “non-core” because there’s no data (or not enough good data) to back up its effectiveness. All we have are feel-good stories from well-meaning individuals who say “but the arts promote creativity!”, “without non-core there’s no passion!”, etc. The truth in those statements is either untestable or not well-tested or not reproducible. Also, statements like that are divisive as they imply that there is no passion in “core” subjects or that the “core” subjects are devoid of creativity.

I can make an argument for all four sides of the debate. I can argue that the arts don’t promote creativity, that they do promote creativity, that core doesn’t promote creativity, and that it does promote creativity. People forget that people have different affinities and different interests. And where there is interest there is creativity. It’s that simple and there is no reason to make it an “us vs them” conversation when we (educators) are all on the same side.

What To Do?

Ultimately, macroscopic initiatives (national education) break down at the microscopic level (individual school districts) because in order to make things look smooth and orderly from 50000 feet above, we end up having to flatten everything locally. I don’t know how to “fix it” other than to continue to teach well and, to some extent, ignore the outside pressure to get the scores up; if that means I lose my teaching position, then so be it. The scores will go up if I teach well and encourage my students, but the students have to make an effort to learn as well. I can’t take the exams for them and we don’t yet have a technological solution to transfer knowledge directly from one brain to another. Right now what we have is teaching and learning.