The event was structured as follows: representatives from five different organizations spoke about their organization and how Mayoral Control has impacted their work, then the floor was open to questions from the audience.
The five organizations that contributed were the Independent Commission on Public Education and Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence represented by Sam Anderson, Time Out From Testing represented by Martha Foote, New York Collective of Radical Educators represented by Edwin Mayorga (WOOOO!), and the Center for Immigrant Families represented by Perla Placencia (and some other lady who's name was unfortunately not on the program and whose I didn't catch during the event).
Basically each of these organizations find problems, BIG problems, with Mayoral control. Martha Foote noted how the amount of testing being pushed upon the classroom from the governement is ridiculous and inhibiting true learning from occurring. Perla Placencia and her colleague were outraged by the "mechanisms of exclusion" that occur under this current educational system preventing certain populations from the full benefits and rights of public education. Edwin Mayora put forth the injustices of the current system posing the questions "What is the City? What is the purpose of school? & Who are we accountable to?". Sam Anderson observed how Black educators are disappearing from the classroom and that, through many systems, the rich history and knowledge of the Black community is being shunned from the classroom while the number of Black students is increasing.
All of these presentations took a look at Mayoral Control through many different lenses. But any way you cut it, one thing was perfectly clear: MAYORAL CONTROL MUST END!
As a future teacher, I couldn't help but start to envision what a classroom would look like when not under Mayoral Control. One of Edwin's questions resounded in me. Who are we accountable to? Clearly the students in our room, their parents and the larger community. Hopefully we all have come to that realization by this point in our education. However, does this mean that there will be no accountability on a federal level? Ideally, yes it would mean that. We would teach to our students and their particular needs, parents would be involved and pleased with the work we are doing and we would set forth our students to better their community.
But in a world where corruption seems rampant, is this realistic? I couldn't help but think of the current economic crisis. In this case, the government let the capitalists loose in a free market. No government oversight, no accountability. And look where we are. The privileged few got themselves ahead and made millions at the expense of the American public and now we're paying for it. What if the same thing happened in education? What if the government held us up to no standard, that we as teachers should know our students and do what's best for them and that is that. Well, we may end up in the same crisis we find ourselves in economically.
This is all speculation and questions from someone who clearly doesn't have as much experience in the field, but it seems to me that we do need to be held to some sort of standard across the nation ensuring that ALL populations are receiving the education they deserve. While standardized tests are clearly not the answer, I think we need to devise a system that is much more inclusive and thought provoking than administering standardized tests.
4 comments:
Kathlyn,
I love your reflection on this event! I think it is so important for teachers to take the surrounding community's struggles and issues into account while thinking about its students. Thinking about the economy and what the students an their families are going through is so fabulous and necessary in order to understand them.
I also like that you talked about accountability and who we are accountable to. Unfortunately, it looks like for some time, we will be overseen by the federal government, and the only thing we can do about it is do such an awesome job that they have absolutely nothing to complain about. I think we can achieve this with well-designed curriculum and a passion for what we do.
Kathlyn,
I'm so glad you posted about this event because it was one I wanted to attend but didn't have the chance to. Mayoral control of the public school system is something that's been on my mind recently. While I've never been an advocate of standardized testing, I've always been under the impression that it's the easiest way for the federal government to ensure that students are learning some sort of universal knowledge all across the nation. I was also under the impression that it was possible to simply take the standardized tests as a curriculum, and still be creative and teach constructively, while still "teaching to the test." I've seen this done in one of my student teaching classrooms, but this was a school that had always performed well on standardized tests, and therefore the principal allowed the teachers to have this freedom in planning their own curriculum. I've recently discovered, however, that most schools in the city don't allow this.
I definitely agree with you that teachers and schools need to be held accountable by more than just their students and the parents- I'm sure we've all seen our share of horrible teachers. However, I've also seen that the current system of standardized testing is NOT benefiting the students, and it also puts a huge amount of extra unnecessary stress on teachers and the school administration. Did the speakers at the event offer any suggestions on specific things we could do to counter mayoral control?
thanks katrina and jenn for your thoughtful comments!
jenn in regards to your question as to if they mentioned any specifics - they talked about who we are accountable to and that the government needs to stay out of our classrooms, however i don't recall any SPECIFIC plans on what this new system would look like. that was actually a question i really wanted to ask but didn't have the time cause i had to run and catch a train (story of my life) lol.
I also agree that we need accountability. I would have liked to attend an event that was more of a debate on this issue where we could see the point of both sides before deciding to be for or against the issue.
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