One of my infrequent rants...

At recess today, some of my coworkers and I were discussing President Obama's proposals regarding merit pay for teachers, our statewide standardized testing coming up next week, and how different our teaching experience is in Del Mar versus more impoverished districts around the nation. One of my wise colleagues said, "Take our beautiful school and all of the amazing teachers and plop it down in the middle of Washington, D.C. I don't know that we'd help those inner-city kids do much better than they're doing right now." And that is the fundamental problem, I believe, with merit pay. It won't help. Study after study has shown a direct correlation between parent income/educational level and student test scores. I don't believe that offering monetary bonuses will help teachers boost their students' achievement. Here's what I do believe:

• Standardized tests do not accurately measure intelligence, learning, or problem-solving skills. They do not tell you how well a student will achieve in life.
• All the teachers I know take very seriously their calling to educate all children. Merit pay could lead to a lot of bickering about who gets troubled kids, special education students, or English-language learners in their class.
• Financial rewards would most likely promote competition among teachers. I don't know where I would be without the help of my colleagues over the years. I can't imagine what would happen if that collaborative spirit went away.
  

However, I also believe the system is broken. Children all over this nation are dropping out or exiting public school with very few of the skills they need to make a decent or honest living. Low-income, mostly minority neighborhoods have been caught cycles of poverty and violence for decades.

And I believe there is a path that will lead to success.

In September I was listening to my beloved "This American Life" weekly podcast, when I heard about a man named Geoffrey Canada, who has been running the Harlem Children's Zone program for the past 20 years. And he is seeing real, documentable results. The Harlem Children's Zone operates under the basic philosophy that every child's success begins before birth. Beginning with the Baby College program, HCZ teaches soon-to-be parents in Harlem how to read to, talk to, and interact with their babies, building the vocabulary and experiental knowledge that is the very foundation of learning. Families who begin in the Baby College can continue receiving services and training from HCZ through the college years. I was blown away by the ambition and successes of this program and am excited to read the book Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough this summer.

If our president could take all of that merit pay money and pour it into the establishment of programs like HCZ in cities all over the county, I believe that in 5-10 years, we'd begin to see some amazing results. Problem is, does any government official have the courage to support a long-term solution such as this? It's much more pleasing to the public to offer up a knee-jerk, short term option such as merit pay, vouchers, bussing, or sanctions. There are people out there who are getting to the root of the problem, and it's working. It would be an understatement to say that the "powers that be" ignorance of this is frustrating.

As I think about entering my doctoral program this summer and my career future after that, I am so inspired by the revolutionary work of the Harlem Children's Zone. Where my studies will lead me, I don't yet know, but stay tuned, as I am unable to get this early education idea out of my head.