Compromising in Education: My account of D.C.

Walking around our nation's capital this past weekend made me think about the foundations of our government—compromise. Our education system should be no different.  

From my column in Technician last week you will recall my excursion to Washington D.C.  for a discussion with the Department of Education. This discussion was centered around the "Race to the Top" program, which is meant to encourage school systems to meet a certain criteria in order to receive federal money all with the intent to win the war on education. The document outlining this criterion is called the RESPECT program: Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative Teaching. (Funny how authors of these types of programs come up with such clever titles.)

In a nut shell, the Department of Education is attempting to pose the challenges in education and the vision for fixing them all while trying to alter how the teaching profession is viewed. The key word in this is vision. As with any federal program, the policy makers create loose, interpretative solutions to the issues so states are able to create the details—American bureaucracy at its finest.

This program is designed to give Title I money (the one weapon in the Dept. of Education’s arsenal worth anything, a topic for another blog post) to schools who uphold the key points of the program. While I found this program as the pillar of idealism for educational improvement, the weight it holds falls flat and will merely result in another NCLB. However the program itself was not the impressive part about the Department of Education visit, but the discussion itself was the highlight.

A Federal agency is making an attempt to reach out to those who will be directly impacted by the implementation of such a program. The RESPECT program, unlike its predecessor (NCLB), has been continuously adapted based on input from retired, current and future educators and administrators. Understanding the concerns of those who will be affected by these changes allows for a more accurate representation of them and their concerns.

I admire the Dept. of Education’s attempts to make itself as a resource for educators; however, their implementation of this mission is a bit beyond their purview.

This component aside, the trip overall was a success. I am a firm believer in “What is Past is Prologue,” and “Study the Past,” phrases etched in stone statues guarding the U.S. National Archives Research entrance.  Even as a future math teacher, one of my many other passions is history. And having never to been to D.C. as such a history nerd I was in hog heaven.

Walking the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by such a tremendous historical presence. Seeing memorials for World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars filled me with a sense of patriotism and empowerment.

Throughout my visits to the Capitol, the monuments, Arlington National Cemetery and some interesting encounters on the Metro, I reflected back to our conversation with our good friend Ed.

We all (Federal, State and local governments) acknowledge the problems with education; however, our stubbornness is the wall we hit when trying to solve them. The Federal government wants to prepare our students for the global market, achieving this through comparative results with other countries. Our State governments want our students achieving on grade-level and beyond, to become competitive on the national scale. Local governments are motivated to push the students to success. The Dept. of Ed. demonstrates this “chain of concerns” in a graphic displayed in the front entrance of the building. While RESPECT outlines the problem with education, the solution they pose is only a fraction of the issue. The end-all solution is to compromise. We must “Collaboratively Teach” together.

Some might say this is more idealistic than the RESPECT program however; this solution is motivated by something we all can agree on—improving education for the students’ sakes. After all this is the reason for education.

I may be biased, because I consider myself the Henry Clay of today’s society (another history nerd joke); however, this trip affirmed by beliefs. I was able to see the foundations of our country’s government all around me and formulate a philosophy on education. Yet another teaching moment for my own benefit, which will spill over into my professional life. Education is important, and compromise is our best option to ensure our students succeed.