Want some real education reform? Stop enabling students!

        A former professor of ours, Barry Jahn, sent us a link to a blog written by David Ginsberg titled Education Reform Key: Stop Enabling Students' Self-Defeating Behavior. This short opinionated post really hit home for me as I have been an educational support specialist for the past two years working for multiple teachers who either knowingly or unknowingly enable student’s self-defeating behavior. Ginsberg talked about having high expectations for his students and when those expectations were not met he continued to lower and lower them in order for the students to be successful. I am a firm believer that this is a major issue in some subject areas today.
        I believe it starts at the district and state level where we will refuse to hold a student back a grade for not meeting expectations. Instead, we choose to push them along into the next grade level and into new material where the scaffolding is obviously not present from the previous year, this then becomes a vicious cycle and often dooms students to drudging through classes and material that they do not understand. Ginsberg brings to light another point that adds to this issue, continually lowering his standards and expectations to tailor to the underperforming students. He talks specifically about giving truant students opportunity after opportunity to turn in make-up work, re-teaching lessons to accommodate students who were absent the day before, allowing students to do extra credit to compensate for poor grades on quizzes and tests, and backing off on assigning homework because most students weren't doing it. All of these things are enabling kids to be mediocre students.
       If we want our future to be better than our past we must change what we are presently doing. Hold kids to higher standards, hold true to due dates, have set standards and guidelines for truancy and extra credit and stick to them. Don't change your curriculum and expectations to make sure that your students LOOK successful, make them successful by requiring things to be done correctly. The sad part about this is that it is not all that difficult and could make for a huge change but it must be done all across the board from all educators at all levels.