Journal Article

What I read in the journal Voices from the Middle was very heartening and disturbing at the same time. One article, "Good Talk about Good Teaching", noted that the most valuble and practical data came from teachers sharing among themselves rather than from the many academic projects. Too often university researchers "lamented the state of teaching" while "seldom mentioning their own" [teaching experience]. Is this "mismatch between research and practice" the reason that in the many decades of American teaching we continue to see the same problems over and over?

One can say that academia should open up their collective minds and come down from the clouds to examine the environment and the children in the real world. I do believe that academia needs to follow both purely theoretical and data-based research and practical "on the ground" research to explore all the possibilities. Still, teachers do have the ability to read and follow or disregard studies and there is a wealth of information from sources both inside and outside academia. Teachers can choose how to teach.

That is, unless they are given orders by the government on how or what to teach. The heart of the issue is why American teachers continue to have children that are not receiving the education that they need and deserve rather than what they are entitled to receive. I believe that it is the government itself that needs to get out of the way of the teachers and the schools. Charter schools are one example of competition in the marketplace creating a better product. Imagine if more schools were freed from the restrictions of testing in order to keep funding and following other tedious fand wasteful laws. Imagine what a bright and eager teacher could do for all of our diverse children with the many resources that we have available today.

We as Americans lack the political will to tell our government that their government run schools just aren't cutting it. The teachers are there (well-trained and devoted teachers), the resources (both federal and state funding are set aside for schools) are their the knowledge of how to use the resources is there (we have decades of data and first-hand accounts) but, (and this is the crux of the problem) the welfare of the children and function of the schools are left up to bureaucracies and out-dated laws that no matter their intentions cannot be dynamic enough to support such a delicate and vital system.

When the power over schools is given back to the communities where the children live, then will we see what American children can truly do!