Gary Holmes: Blog

Water fell from the sky over the course of 17 miles of running today.  I ran 2 miles worth of High Intensity Intervals to train myself, and 15 miles to train the group I help prepare for the LA Marathon. Locked into  the rigid pace of 5 minutes running and 1 minute walking, my mind wanders. It wandered onto the question of what ever happened to intellectual freedom for teachers?  Does such a thing even exist?   Sure, under the beautiful sky we have our State Standards, benchmark dates, and testing percentiles. (Oh yes, lots and lots of testing)  As marathons have the timing clock, schools have their standardized test scores and average yearly progress, (known to teachers as "AYP").  By the way, sunny California developed its own themometer to measure "AYP", and it's called "API", (Academic Proficiency Index).

"AYP"  and "API" for schools reminds me of credit scores for people. If you score "800" and higher, you are in very cool financial shape. Academically strong schools, and fiscally fit  people  have scores in the "800" range. The "700" range is still fine, but dipping into the "600" levels is akin swimming in rough water.  The school ocean becomes shark infested with private charter companies, wishing to devour the control of schools bleeding with scores less than "600".  So how does this information connect with my first  thought,  "What ever happened to intellectual freedom for teachers? Also, "What does this have to do with marathons?".  

Here is my comparison: Many marathons shut down and clear the finish line off the street after 6 hours have passed. The runners may finish, but there will be no finisher medals available for them. I think the LA Marathon does this at 8 hours.  Likewise, schools unable to reach an "AYP" of 600 start getting wiped out of existence, reconstituted, or taken over by private companies.  So this must be what happened to intellectual freedom for teachers.  Not that I am totally against tests and pacing standards for what we teach,  but it does appear that this system makes us train students like products in factory assembly, and not as the individuals and thinkers that they are. It reduces  teachers and school administrators  to robotic control by State and Federal governments who are out of touch with our local communities. In graduate school (yes, teachers do hold advanced educational levels), I recall hearing that teaching is an artform as well as a science. As an artist, I write song lyrics.  There has to be a certain amount of rhyme and rhythm, but it would drive me bats to have my creative work subject to criteria  and scores to give it a standardized  sound. Would this mean that my music has to sound like everybody else? What would the world be like if every musician sounded the same, or "standardized"? Why do teachers all need to teach the same, when every student is a different person? Teachers need a good deal of intellect to meet the demands of their positions. So what ever happened to the freedom that naturally goes with that intellect? We are people with working minds, and I think we should get more creative consideration and respect for the tasks we accomplish.