PRAISE FOR FAILURE

When I was young and innocent- not so many years ago it seems- I thought if you failed at something you would lose your job or people would shun your program or you would be required to do a redo or SOMETHING. It certainly never occurred to me that failure would bring PRAISE upon you, or that you would PRAISE YOURSELF AND PAT YOURSELF ON THE BACK, or that you would get to double down on what you were doing even while admitting you were a failure !

Back in the days of my innocence and naivete, when the federal government grabbed control of the schools under the guise of "school reform" and called their program "Goals 2000", I was very distraught, but I thought, well, this can't succeed, and twenty years from now I will be proved right and all of this will go away because it will FAIL. Wrong again my dear. I sat, almost gaping in astonishment, through an education interim committee on Common Core as the SAME EXACT PEOPLE who had advocated for Goals 2000, praised themselves over and over in their testimony (27 years in the field of education, teacher of the year- yada yada yada- you get the idea), advocated for Common Core BECAUSE OUR STUDENTS ARE AT A SIXTY PERCENT REMEDIATION RATE WHEN THEY REACH COLLEGE!! That's right, because of their failed programs our Montana schools are now sending students to college who NEED TO BE REMEDIATED at a SIXTY PERCENT RATE!!

Do these people get chastised for bringing our Montana schools to this disastrous state? Why no, they are praised as experts and given the floor to advocate for another top down program with the same goals!!

I knew dancing through math (this is a real program-not made up) and gardening and whiling away our days with artists in residency would bring us to this disastrous state, BUT I NEVER DREAMED THEY WOULD JUST KEEP ON DOING IT!! The only thing that has saved our schools even a little bit is the dreaded NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT. At least the schools have to do SOME actual teaching and be accountable on tests. BUT WAIT A MINUTE- THE NEW COMMON CORE TESTS WILL LET KIDS WORK IN GROUPS TO PASS TESTS, AND HAVE FORTY PERCENT OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS. Good bye to accountability, and much more tragically, David Coleman ( the Common Core "architect") has gotten himself appointed president of the SAT board with the express purpose of changing college entrance exams to the Common Core way of doing things.

I don't know what the end of this tragedy will be. Kids are sucking on water bottles in class and eating snacks all day, twenty-five percent of them are not graduating, schools are being turned into mental health centers, day care centers and restaurants, as mentioned above colleges are having to remediate the kids that do graduate. How can the federal government expect success when they are doing the same things that continue to cause failure? I knew when they moved the home for unwed mothers next to the high school so all the pregnant girls could go to high school that we were on a real down hill slide- but how can these people PRAISE THEMSELVES AND KEEP RIGHT ON GOING DOWN THE SAME PATH? When will the American public stand up and take back our schools? REMEMBER THE TENTH AMENDMENT TO OUR CONSTITUTION? SCHOOLS ARE A STATES RIGHT!!!