What Does Education Mean Today?

Education in the 21st Century: What Does Education Mean Today?

Nathan L. Tamborello

The University of Houston

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Reflecting on challenges in the 21st century classroom, I realise that it would be much

easier to list how educators aren’t challenged in the classroom rather than how they are

challenged. Teachers, administration, and parents today face an onslaught of rising challenges in

the classroom that are becoming increasingly exacerbated by political interference and

presidential grandstanding, and at the middle of all of this, students face the brunt of adult

policy-making. The current presidential administration’s focus on expansion of the private

education sector and the charter-ization of public schooling, the attacks by the federal

government on public sector workers’ pensions, common core standards that narrow the

curriculum and enforce memorization rather than learning, and a data culture that reduces

students, educators, and schools to numbers in a list are some of the more serious issues I foresee

facing this country. As Baker, et. al state from our reading this week, Many policy makers have

recently come to believe that this failure can be remedied by calculating the improvement

in students’ scores on standardized tests in mathematics and reading, and then relying heavily on

these calculations to evaluate, reward, and remove the teachers of these tested students.” (2010)

While it would be impossible to discuss them all in a single paper, this essay seeks to focus on

the major ways in which these challenges coalesce and work their way into the system, forcing

students into assessment-based criteria rather than learning-based.

The TAAS test began my 10 -year career of standardized state test taking, which soon

morphed into the TAKS test, and has now transformed yet again into the STAAR test. 42 out of

50 states currently face Common Core standards that have been adopted and mandated for them

by the Federal government, incentivizing schools based on student test score-merit rather than

learning merit. The crux of public education lies within its very foundation: allowing the Federal

government to regulate common core standards and use test scores for funding distribution
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contradicts the entire institution of learning. Common core itself is a farce: how can a diverse

nation, with fields from STEM to the Arts, force every student, disabled or not, to take the same

exam and judge their entire academic performance on that one single test? A report by the ACT

National Curriculum Survey found that “[t]here are gaps between some Core standards and what

college instructors consider important for students to succeed,” and that “many workplace

supervisors and employees believe [some] skills necessary for success are not part of the Core.

Specifically, they say that the no. 1 skill that ensures success is ‘conscientiousness.’”. (2016)

The privatization of public schooling is cause for considerable concern in 21st century

education. Students and their families increasingly face corporate, for- profit schools with

unproven credentials as their only alternative to currently existing public schools. Teachers face

a weakening of their labor rights when for-profit schools hire non-union teachers in order to keep

their expenses to a minimum and social integrity and personal freedom are in jeopardy as

corporations increasingly exert their influence on the curriculum and the discourse of schooling.

“Considering that the only choice that matters is choosing a better school over a struggling

school, the underlying problem with the ‘choice’ movement is clear. There shouldn’t be any bad

schools in the first place. The fact that the bad schools are concentrated in our communities

should move us to fight the entire system--not search for a better place within it.” (Themba-

Nixon, 2001) Charter schools are touted by many as the answer to the academic failures in public

schools and educational management organizations are seen as offering the solution to school

management problems and funding inadequacies. This political agenda fosters privatization by

cutting funding to public schools and enacting legislation favorable to private sector ventures,

which encourages the production of charter schools and allowing educational management

organizations to run public schools. Adopting a school choice program does not necessarily
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guarantee academic improvement, however. In fact, examining the voucher programs that have

led to privatization reveals that they are fraught with their own series of problems. Privatization

schemes are by no means being embraced by the communities, students, administrators, and

teachers that are confronted with them.

Especially in today’s politically charged climate, this series of issues facing 21st

century learners and educators creates an atmosphere of learning that isn’t always positive. As

educators, the most we can hope to achieve is teaching the best ways that we know how, and

making sure our students have every opportunity to apply themselves to the instruction and learn

as much as they can from their time with us. Although things like Common Core and the

STAAR test have proven to hinder education more than they help it, for now teachers must work

within the system to achieve high academic standards for themselves, their students, and their

community.
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REFERENCES

ACT National Curriculum Survey 2016 (Rep.). (2016). Iowa City, IA: ACT, Inc.

Baker, E. L., Barton, P. E., Darling-Hammon, L., Haertel, E., Ladd, H. F., Linn, R. L., . . .

Shephard, L. A. (2005). Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to

Evaluate Teachers (p. 3, Issue brief No. 278). Washington, DC: Economic Policy

Institute.

Themba, M. (2001, June 04). School "Choice" and Other White Lies. Retrieved March 29, 2017,

from http://www.alternet.org/story/10971/school_%22choice%22_and_other_white_lies.

Accessed 28 March 2017.