No one right answer in education

By DOROTHY RICH
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
Let's start with a hard truth. When it comes to education, there is no one panacea, no magic answer for the many different teachers and students in our many different classrooms.
I attended a high level international conference on education with respected researchers reporting on their findings. What I heard is that based on the measurements they had, there is little relationship between education reform (usually considered the magic answer) and student achievement results.
I was disappointed because I would like to have a magic bullet, but I was not really surprised.
In any classroom, there are 30 different learners. The teacher is teaching a single lesson, yet it is learned in 30 different ways.
The same goes for families. Children in families, even linked by many genes, have such different experiences in the same house. Brothers and sisters are convinced they were raised by different parents.
What are some possible solutions? In school, we are told that with a master plan, with standards, goals and objectives, and a foolproof curriculum, then we'd all achieve in the same way.
All of us, including students, are different and we are different learners -- some slower, some faster; some more creative, endowed with talents; some encumbered with needs that one-size-fits-all school remedies just can't handle ... or even help.
Teachers are under the gun to produce strong test results. Children as young as first grade are being given homework that third graders used to get. For what? Are we making our kids smarter, wiser, able to enjoy reading, enjoy learning? I wish it were so.
We have new education laws, no doubt meant to do good, that have students in every class tested and tested and tested. In education, we have retreated to the one right answer.
Test-takers
Einstein, who famously said that imagination is more important than knowledge, would not be proud of us. We are raising a bunch of test-takers from a very early age who get labeled, often stigmatized and discouraged. Learning to read used to take almost the full year of first grade. It was a slow, gentle process with time along the way for art and music.
Tests can be helpful when they are used to diagnose and then treat children's learning problems. But, when they are used as the prime source for student grades for report cards, they tend to override teacher judgment and yes, compassion.
What our youngest learners need is hope and optimism, and we just can't afford to crush these out of them.
Because children learn in different ways, let's find out how they do learn: Are they pen and pencil learners? Or can they learn reading and math on the sports fields or in activities at home. Not every body has to do, or can do, everything the same way. It looks more efficient, but it doesn't work.
Because teachers teach in different ways, let's give them the chance to come up with creative ways to teach reading and math and science -- so that they don't all have to follow the same curriculum day after day. This numbs teacher brains as well as students.
We are smarter today about what helps children learn well and teachers teach well. Let's use these smarts.
Dorothy Rich is founder and president of the nonprofit Home and School Institute, MegaSkills Education Center in Washington. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.