New education programs?

To the Editor:

Will we never run out of new programs to “drag the U.S. education system out of the 19th century and deliver a classroom experience that makes students excited to learn,” as your reporter phrased it?

When I learned last fall that RSU 10 (Buckfield Jr/Sr. High School in the Oxford Hills area) had, along with four other Maine School Districts, applied for a $20-30 million federal Race to the Top grant to implement a new teaching program, the very name of the program gave me pause: “Mass Customized Learning,” a genuine oxymoron, seemed like an enormous undertaking.

I was relieved when we failed to receive the grant, not that federal money would not have been useful to RSU 10 and other chronically underfunded school districts, but because I realized that even with about $5 million, a four-year long endeavor would require retraining teachers, rearranging school facilities, engaging parents, and most of all enabling students basically to teach themselves – with computers and the intermittent help of a teacher.

Now I read that RSU will go it alone. No money needed, just uncritical expectations that RSU 10 can implement this costly and complex program by itself.

The 20th century was hardly a dead zone for innovation in educational methods. Where did all the new methods go: the precepts of John Dewey, the Conant Report, cuisenaire rods, the Ford Foundation's Comprehensive School Improvement Program, violins in each classroom to teach the Suzuki method, the open classroom, new math, rapid advance classes, Maine's Learning Results, and the much decried No Child Left Behind, to name a few.

I also learned from 1938 Buckfield Town Report, that included a report from the Superintendent of Schools, that even then Buckfield was trying new programs in an effort to improve education.

In that year it adopted three new textbooks: the “New Triangle Arithmetics;” “Elementary English in Action,” “The Music Hour and The Music Education Series." The Superintendent enthusiastically embraced the new programs.

And so I ask, by embarking on Mass Customized Learning, do we really believe that RSU 10 can make a measurable improvement in education, or sadly have we convinced ourselves to try on yet a new suit of clothes, only to find that there's nothing there?

A study sponsored by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently restated a verity of education: the knowledgeable and skilled teacher is the indispensable ingredient in educating students of all levels of ability.

Judith Berg

Buckfield