Community of educators

John S. Kendall, a senior research director at McREL, develops, directs, and provides standards-related services for schools, districts, states, and other organizations. He is presently with the PSS’ State level Learning Communities to assist in the understanding and finer refinement of existing standard-based teaching and learning in the CNMI.

In defining what standards and benchmarks are, Kendall’s definition reminded me of a history professor who defined “history as what historians write,” a tautology but a realistic and useful one. Mr. Kendall says inter alia that standards and benchmarks are what a community of educators consense students will learn. Which begs the question of who constitutes the community of educators?

This is not an article about Mr. Kendall’s views of the so-called standards-based movement within the education community. (For an issue brief that Mr. Kendall co-authored, download http://www.mcrel.org/PDF/Standards/5962IR_FallAndRise.pdf. For the hoi polloi account of the history and content of standards-based education, refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards_based_education_reform.) This reflection is on who and how a community of educators is constituted, especially with the current attempt of PSS to organize State level Learning Communities, and the declared intent to soon extend the process to the local school level.

First, the State-level Learning Communities are organized by subject areas and grade levels. Local Principals assign school representatives to the groups. My experience with the members of Social Studies group is that we had regulars and irregulars. The task, however, was clear: review the existing Standards and Benchmarks, assess its clarity and manageability, and recommend changes if needed. Our group may not have been very efficient, but there is no denying of the amount of work inputed.

Earlier, cluster experiment(s) of three schools were gathered as Learning Communities to share locally developed curriculum maps and other outputs, forcing the issue of unpacking the handed-down standards and benchmarks. One may not be clear of the value of the outputs, but there is no denying the volume of effort expended.

These learning communities had been organized by decree, a central office initiative that the cynical quickly dubbed as another rite of compliance to grant mandates, a common practice in a grant-dependent operation. Then there are the hopefuls who view these as viable and necessary conversations on commonality, clarity and coherence on the taught curriculum across the board, with the caveat of looking at what and how students learn in addition to what and how teachers teach.

The community of educators for PSS has its beginnings with the learning communities, but ideologically, it has articulated a broader resolve—a comprehensive coverage in the gathering of all stakeholders in the education process.

In the same vein as Hillary Clinton’s appropriation of the African saying, “It takes a village to raise a child,” PSS has began articulating the involvement of all stakeholders in the education process. Accreditation documents include attempts, or about-to-be-attempted site-management programs to involve community stakeholders, engaging parents participation in all aspects of the curriculum, and even formulating student councils for their input into the process. Some have inventoried the organizations and establishments within their geographical communities for possible operational inclusion, and of course, from formal financial incentives through legislation to active recruitment by teachers, parents and administrator, the business sector has the school classroom doors open to them, for promotions on their activities and their expectations of those intending to join the workforce in the economy. Ditto for constituted public agencies, and civil voluntary organizations.

So, who are the community of educators again?

In a time when we could not let the dust on the COE selection process settle down so that we can go on with the effective administration of PSS, to the BOE naiveté in thinking that it has no moral responsibility, let alone, legal liabilities in downgrading salaries within existing contracts just because someone had not complied with the arbitrary requirements of HQT, or the mindless and insensitive handling of contracts that left a lot of teachers feeling used like discarded condoms in the island’s proliferating massage parlors and karaoke joints, a government that is unanimous in mouthing “education as everyone’s priority” but failing to put the public coffers behind their rhetoric, and finally, a teachers association whose sputtering organizational quakes are measured more by the intensity of the tremors in lodging complaints and launching ego trips than in fostering the need to have a disciplined and dedicated professional body of pedagogues within an dynamic education system—my, this is a long sentence, and I have not included the bewildered students and the lost parents in the tableau, yet—then, we might be forgiven our confusion if we do not understand who exactly it is that Mr. Kendall is referring to when he points to the ‘community of educators’ who will consense on the standards and benchmarks that our students are to learn!

What is clear is that standard-based education as a reform tool within PSS will languish in continuing ineptitude for as long as the movement is a top-down operated and hierarchically maintained process, where teachers have to be induced by extra remuneration to attend meetings and cajoled with door prizes to stay the course. This means that the focus need to shift to the front lines, to the encounter between teacher and student at the classroom and school field level, where the teachers’ experience, wisdom and learning, not their obedience and strict admin adherence, and the students wide-eyed curiosity and bumbling multifaceted but passionate inquiry, not their bungling rebellion and so-called aberrant behavior, become the foci of pedagogical interests and curriculum responses, where the teacher can authentically and ably say, “the buck stops here,” and the school system resounding says, “Yes! Let’s figure together ‘how’ to support you!” while the student can freely say, “the opportunities of human growth beyond marketability of skills are widely open and I can choose,” and the system honors the intents of these resolves, can we possibly have a community of educators who can buckle down and tackle the challenge at hand.

My guru in Tinian dutifully repeats his refrain: Vergara, you are thinking again!