 |
 |
Dr. David Hopson |
||||||||||||
September 10, 2007 As the district moves forward to determine what it should be in the future, it may be instructive to look at education in general. While most individuals believe education is important in some way to future success, we rarely put specific parameters around those beliefs. There are a number of ways to look at success, but one of the easiest to define relates to income. According to the United States Census Bureau’s 2003 report, the median household income (the point at which ½ the households make more and ½ make less) in the United States is $45,016. However, this number varies greatly by educational attainment. For example, the median income for those not completing high school is $22,718; for those with a high school diploma it is $36,855; for those with a Bachelor’s Degree it is $68,728; and for those with a doctorate it is $96,830. Why is this so? In The New Division of Labor (2004), authors Frank Levy and Richard Murnane argue that the nature of work today is changing. “Brain-power” is in; “brawn-power” is out. Computers and modern technology now perform routine and simple tasks, leaving humans to deal with more complex decisions in which greater thought is involved. Thus more jobs, especially the better-paying ones, require analysis, thinking, interpretation and communication. And for almost all individuals, acquiring these skills requires more education. Success in education is measured many ways and is arrived at through various venues. What was interesting in this summer’s parent surveys was the consistent response of needing more time for ‘kids to be kids’. As I mentioned in my opening day remarks to staff, Gateway must be the Lake Woebegone of education because evidently our students do not take after the average student in the United States in terms of homework and leisure time. According to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average American child between 8 and 18 years old spends more than 3 hours per day watching TV and more than an additional 3 hours per day with other electronic media such as video players, computers, etc. Even two-thirds of the very young (under 2 years of age) in America watch more than 2 hours of TV/Video daily. According to the University of Maryland, children spend more time watching TV than in any other activity other than sleeping, including time spent in education up to high school graduation. The University of Maryland also found that preschoolers spend more time in front of the TV than it takes to get a college degree. One of the results of this is that average reading time for children is less than 49 minutes per day—including homework. The amount of homework that Gateway students get must also be more than the average American student, given the number of written survey responses concerning the obsessive amount of homework assigned in the district. National research doesn’t support this observation for the average American student. According to one study by the Brookings Institute and the Rand Corporation, the average American student has less than 1 hour per day of homework with less than a third of high school students reporting over an hour of homework per day. American students tied for next to last in a survey of 20 industrialized countries for the amount of homework per day in the Third International Mathematics and Science survey. The National Association of Educational Progress found that 40% of 17 year-old students did no homework at all and that only one in 10 parents thought students had too much homework. This same survey also may have found the difference between success and failure in education when they determined that 71% of middle and high school students surveyed agreed that they “did the bare minimum to get by in school”. Are Gateway students really that different from the national average for students? My guess would be that they are not. As we look towards what we desire from the Gateway educational system, we may want to remember to use facts rather than let perceptions become our reality in guiding change. ### |
||||||||||||