Change advocates are, once again, attempting to make teaching a predictable science. Research-based instruction, being touted by neobehaviorists as the “cat’s meow,” would succeed if teachers were robots and students were industrial “widgets.” Yet, educational research is replete with contradictions, cannot always be replicated in another setting with different variables, is often misinterpreted and frequently misapplied.
Teaching is more an art than a science. Constricting our curriculum in order to spike test scores may be scientific, but it’s a mistake. Teachers will be spending too much time musing over graphs and too little time preparing for their next class.
Differential pay will reward those who prefer to teach to the test, yet can be unfair to others who develop their own materials and like to devise a more comprehensive approach. Non-stop empirical appraisals, necessary for new pay schemes, are allied to old ideas of programmed instruction. This approach will skew content, kill collateral relevancies and flush some subjects from the curriculum.
More government intrusion, regimentation and paperwork causes the same problems in education that it does in the business community; it stifles innovation and creativity. Expecting more piles of data sheets to resolve problems in education inadvertently promotes a cure that bears a striking resemblance to the disease.
Ottis Knippers Jr.