Cathryn Neracher (R) Northville

Livonia School Board Candidates

Liz Jarvis does have a site inadvertently left off:   https://sites.google.com/view/electlizjarvis/home

IGNORE SCHOOL REFORMERS

As we move closer to the absentee ballots being mailed FridayMusings will be sharing thoughts on our Livonia Board of Education election with an endorsement coming this Monday.

This article was submitted by livonia resident Al Churchill. His salient points are important and need to be shared.

This typewriter agrees that we have some great Livonia schools and that we should elect Trustees who have our district, a great district, in mind; Not candidates who would have you believe that our system is failing. 

For a considerable while we have been told that America’s schools are not doing well. We need charter schools, vouchers, standardized tests. Punish educators and unions. Create online courses. Grade our schools A-F. Unfortunately, for those making that case, our schools are, largely, not failing. They are doing pretty darn good as a matter of fact. Schools that are not doing well, generally, exist in the midst of poverty.

Commissioned by the U.S. Office of Education, James Coleman of Johns Hopkins University studied 600,000 students and teachers. The gist of the Coleman Report suggested that one-third of student success is determined by the quality of the school, while two-thirds of student proficiency is to be found in factors outside of the school. Other studies concur.

Parental education, parental involvement in student school activities, neighborhood environment, health care, nutrition, home stability and so on provide the underpinning of student school proficiency.

Indeed, according to former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, “…American schools, in which fewer than 10 percent of the students were poor, outperformed the schools of Finland, Japan and Korea”, top performers in the widely watched Program of International Student Assessment (PISA). 

But you’d never know it when alleged “reformers” savage American schools. Frantically, they howl that we’re losing the race. Our schools are failing. Let’s do something, anything!

That aside, Finland, a perennial top performer on PISA, provides a good example of what can be done to achieve educational merit. The Finns have no charters, no vouchers. They do not have a testing obsession like we do. Finnish children are exposed to high-stakes testing a grand total of one time during the entirety of their school experience. They do not evaluate teachers and schools, based upon one high-stakes test given annually. They do not grade their schools A-F. They have strong unions. In a word, they do absolutely nothing that “reformers” in this country promote.

Finland’s teachers are trusted to do whatever it takes to educate their kids. They spend much more of their school day planning and collaborating with other teachers than we do. Their schools are smaller than ours. They put a premium on recess time. There is much to be learned from Finnish schools.

Can American schools be improved? You bet! For a start, we might refocus on teacher training and development. We might also concentrate more on creativity and problem solving, critical thinking generally, assessing those skills in the classroom and quantifying them on standardized tests.

But, contrary to the assertations of errant critics, American schools have done exceptionally well in meeting their mission of developing productive, responsible citizens in a democratic society. Our schools, including Livonia, have played a huge role in making us the world power we are today.