Nation at Risk

  In 1983, president Reagan asked then secretary Bell to look into the education system, and make recommendations that districts could adopt. The resulting report was called "A Nation at Risk." It highlighted the problems in the education system of the time, and really looked hard at what we were doing for education and what we could do to make it better. The recommendations from this report were controversial at the time, but they operated within the current system. This is contrary to other methods that basically scrapped our entire education system. I will do my best to try and explain a few of these recommendations that we could implement in the coming years to make sure that our kids are getting the education that they need.

  I am really looking forward to summer break. Most teachers really enjoy the time that we get off in the summer. Some decide that they will work in summer school, and others like me use the time to sit back and relax a little before we work on our curriculum for the next year. That is the nice thing about summer. The bad part is that kids are not receiving any instruction, and study after study shows that there is a loss of knowledge that happens when a kid leaves for the summer. That is why the next year math teachers bang their heads against the wall wondering how the students forgot how to factor, or lost the ability to divide. The report gives some very specific guidelines on what should happen with time spent in school. The most successful schools are those that have a longer school day with a larger number of days spend in the classroom. The NAR report suggests that there should be "7-hour school days, as well as a 200- to 220-day school year." This recommendation calls for a movement to a year round schooling pattern. A true 7 hour day of instruction, and the report is fairly insistent that the time does not include class changes. If you took that into account, we would need to lengthen our current school day by 1 hour. Districts would have to increase the number of days in the classroom by about 20. Research has shown that this pattern for schools is the way to go. Breaks are still there, but instead spread out through the school year in smaller chunks. This would minimize the knowledge lost, and would maximize the time spent for students to prepare them for their further studies.

  I do not want anyone to think that I would be happy about giving up my two months of bliss. Especially now when I am tired and ready for a break. I think that we have to look a little beyond ourselves. This may mean that we have to make sacrifices. I believe that if you give people the option and begin to work together to fix the problem, that people will come to take that challenge. Will we loose some teachers in the transition process? The answer is yes. But this loss would be met with people that legitimately want to be in the classroom and help students succeed. The future of our school system rests with law makers. Secretary Bell was a forward thinking man. His recommendations were made for 1983, but they still resonate today.

Until Tomorrow,
"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
-- Perelman