Teach Effectively!

In an editorial about a publically supported voucher program, the St. Petersburg Times (FL; US) gets a lot right. The editorialist notes that few students (and families) who are eligible for vouchers have actually used them to seek better educational opportunity. The writer argues that public schools need resources rather than the threat of losing students to private schools and that many public schools face daunting challenges, regardless of whether there is a voucher program.

The obstacles facing some of the schools deemed as chronically failing are not simple ones. At Miami Edison Senior High School, for example, three-fourths of the students are poor, one in five speak another language at home, and one in seven are diagnosed with a learning disability. That’s one reason the Department of Education’s “Assistance-Plus” plan, which provides more sanctions than resources, has so far fallen short.

There are myriad other problems with the voucher program, as Liz Ditz has reported repeatedly, but this editorial writer catches this particular problem accurately: “If public schools are failing to teach reading, then give them the tools and resources to do better. Handing out as many as 170,000 new vouchers does nothing to improve the instruction.”

Motivation is over-rated. Only those students who know how to perform a task will be affected by motivation; those who do not know how will show no improvement when motivation—positive or negative—is applied. Similarly, schools are unlikely to change simply under the threat of losing students (including the tiny amount of funding that accompanies each student); we have to show them how to teach effectively.

Link to the editorial and a link for a Google search for “vouchers” on Liz’s I Speak of Dreams.