Brownsburg Community School Corporation has a really cool program called Vision BCSC in which community members are invited to go behind the scenes and learn all about how the school corporation really works. I wanted to know more about our schools, so I signed up this year. It runs for the school year, so we’ve only had a couple of meetings–but they’ve been utterly fascinating. I am so honored to be part of this program, and that the people at BCSC take time out of their days to tell their community about the school system and answer any questions we might have about it.
BCSC Superintendent Dr. Jessup gave the main presentation at the first meeting on curriculum.
I had a few takeaways from that talk. First, the teachers are the ones who decide both what is taught and how it is taught in the schools. Second, BCSC’s curriculum is aligned both horizontally, meaning the same thing is taught for the same amount of time in each classroom of a given grade level across the district, and vertically, meaning the same methods are used throughout a student’s advancement through the schools. Third, the school has to follow the state standards and anything that isn’t in the state standards simply isn’t taught. And lastly, because of these things, Brownsburg has risen to the number one or two school corporation in the state for test scores.
My impression of Dr. Jessup was that she cares deeply about her mission as an educator, about her students, and about her teachers. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what we teach our kids, and how we could do it better at the public school level. Our children are not machines to be manufactured on an assembly line. Each child has unique skills and interests, and learns different things at a different rate. If you try to make a large group of kids–and Brownsburg has 700-900 students in each grade–learn everything at the same pace, you’re going to suppress the interests of some students, bore some students, move on before some students have mastered a skill, and waste the time of other students who mastered it quickly. And while I think the state has an interest in setting minimum standards, they shouldn’t be deciding every single thing that is taught at every school in the state. Students in Gary aren’t going to have the same struggles and triumphs as students in Birdseye or Brownsburg. I’m concerned that the focus on alignment and test scores is ensuring that our students know how to get the right answer on a test, but may or may not be well-rounded, educated, virtuous citizens. The kind of virtuous citizens who are ready to forge strong relationships as adults and to tackle the complex problems in our community, in our nation, and in our world.
To be clear, I think we all need to take some responsibility here. Who doesn’t feel pride upon hearing their school corporation is one of the highest achieving in the state? But I fear we have set our priorities and goals in the wrong place–where our school corporation looks good on paper, but fails to be as amazing as it could be. And unless and until we, the local community members, speak up about what we want our kids to learn, we can’t expect that to change.
So let me say it plainly: I don’t want our kids to be the best test-takers in the state. I want our kids to know how to read, and to read for fun, because they enjoy stories. I want our kids to be able to do math, because it’s fun to solve problems and because they need math in the real world. I want our kids to love learning and to continue learning their entire lives. I want them to be able to succeed no matter what job they have as adults–paid and unpaid–because they know how to learn what they need when they need it. I want the next generation of decision-makers to be virtuous citizens, who love their neighbors near and far and want to make their corner of the world a better place. If that means we fall far from our place in the number one spot, then good–because I agree that there’s just not enough time in the day to teach our kids to be perfect test-takers as well as all the things that don’t fit neatly into a multiple choice question.
