Race to the Top? This is Sink or Swim

In the wake of this education whirl-pool we’ve been swimming around in over the past few months, it really brought to surface issues I feel are so important and am so passionate about.  If these issues don’t get addressed, I feel like they can drown and disappear into the abyss.

The latest craze is the “importance of standardized testing” - this new “education reform.”  Using a standardized test to evaluate teachers and hand out diplomas to worthy graduates.  I can’t tell you how relieved I am not to be a high school student in this day and age.  I probably would have never graduated!

  The whole "teacher evaluation" piece is a topic for a different discussion.  It’s not what this blog is about.  For the record, in my seventeen years of teaching I have been evaluated and assessed every year.  This new implementation of evaluation is the third type of tool that has been put into effect since I have started my career.  So for anyone who thinks teachers are being defiant or rebellious because they “don’t want” to be evaluated are 100% mistaken. Teachers must be, and always have been, evaluated; we don’t have a choice.  Evaluations give us feedback and help us become better educators.  

  What I want to discuss is how this impacts our kids, the students.  This really hits home for me personally.  I look back at my schooling and really think, what would have happened to me if these “standards” were put into practice when I was in school?  If you talk about sink or swim, I would probably have been at the bottom of the barrel.

  I was never a good student academically.  I struggled with math like you wouldn’t believe.  Frankly, I was lost and overwhelmed and I faced a lot of pressures because of it.  I had an older sister who always made honors or high honors in high school, made National Honor Society and was in the top twenty of her class.  One of my oldest and dearest childhood friends who was and still is like a brother to me was valedictorian of our class, and I went to the Prom with the salutatorian.  In fact, all my friends were in the top ten or twenty of our class.  Out of 300+ kids, I was probably ranked 498.  

I don’t even remember what I scored on my SAT’s.  I probably blocked the number from my memory due to embarrassment.  I still get butterflies in my stomach, agita and the sweats when I think of filling in a bubble with a number 2 pencil.    

Believe you me, I’m not bragging about any of this.  Why would I even write this down and “put myself out there” anyway?  The reason is this: I had music.

(No, this isn’t a music advocacy blog either.  That’s for a different discussion as well!)  

I started playing the violin when I was five years old with Aurora Curran.  I will never forget my beloved first violin teacher.  Her smiling, caring, beautiful face is burned into my memory and I will be forever indebted to her for convincing my mom to play the violin like my older sister instead of “only” piano.  

Middle school and High School brought me opportunities to audition for and play in the Rhode Island Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (RIPYO) and Rhode Island Music Educator’s (RIMEA) All-State Orchestras.  I did both for six years, fortunately because my parents supported my musical endeavors.  Unfortunately there was no string program in the school system I was in so I had to go outside of school in order to be a part of an ensemble.  

While my friends were “making the grade” in school, I struggled.  But at the same time, I was playing Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite in RIPYO.  While my friends were making honors and placing in the top of our class, I was receiving medals for my performance on Seitz, Accolay and Vivaldi Violin Concertos at the RIMEA Solo and Ensemble Festivals and achieving fourth chair in the All-State Orchestra.   

Am I bragging about this?  Umm… okay, a little.

My point is this.  Not everyone is inclined to be at the “top” academically.  I certainly wasn’t.  Children are not machines and they can’t be programmed by even the best teachers out there to reach top marks and a certain score on a standardized test.  But I do believe everyone has a potential to succeed at SOMETHING whether its academics, music and the arts, sports, culinary arts, trades and vocational careers,– the list goes on and on.  I think “education reform” is doing a disservice to our children by putting all its focus and monies towards a one “Standardized Test” and practically ignoring the fact that there are other opportunities out there that would allow students to succeed and achieve in OTHER ways.  

Academics are important.  That’s an obvious statement.  And even the laziest of students will never be able to argue against that point.  Standardized testing is ONE way of assessing students, but shouldn’t be the ONLY way, especially when it comes to graduating high school.   

Because of my music achievements in high school, I was awarded a scholarship to the University of Rhode Island’s music education program.  This opened so many doors for me.  I have since earned my masters’ degree in Music Education, had a successful private studio of violin students, conducted the Preparatory Orchestra for RIPYO from 1996 - 2000, conducted the Junior All-State Orchestra in 2007, ran several state-wide “Stringfest” Orchestra’s for the Rhode Island American String Teacher’s Association, and have had a successful teaching career for seventeen years.  There I go bragging again…

Is it okay that we raise the bar educationally and expect our children to succeed? Absolutely.  But lets do so by also investing in programs that can provide our kids with a whole, well-balanced, well-rounded education.  Not spend it all on filling in bubbles with a number 2 pencil.

If I have to make a cheesy analogy to end this blog, let me put it this way.  The Titanic was built and expected to do one thing and one thing only – not sink.  All focus and money was put into this massive giant without considering the “what-ifs” and look what happened.  We can’t put all of our focus and money into this new type of “educational reform” because then we’ll be left with too many “what-ifs”, and that is unfair to so many students.

This is no “Race to the Top”; this is “Sink or Swim.”