The Key to Fixing the U.S. K-12 Education System

Written by John Droz, jr. on May 16, 2023. Posted in Current News

We’ve been told by multple partes, that trying to fix the US Educaton system is a fool’s errand, and only indicates that the aspirants are glutons for punishment.

Maybe so, but there is simply too much at stake to let things continue on their current trajectory.

A major part of the challenge here is that there are so many serious problems with the educaton system bureaucracy, that it’s hard to appreciate what are the most important issues and which ones need to be tackled first.

It’s a dauntng challenge. FYI, the primary audience for this Report, are state Boards of Education and Depts. of Education. My top two candidates are not what have been commonly chosen. This is one reason that we are not making sufficient progress.

The number one educaton issue is: We are not producing graduates who have the ability to do Cri7cal Thinking, and have an interest in it.

Why is teaching Critcal Thinking a Big Deal?

An academic graduate going into the business world with Critcal Thinking skills, has an extraordinarily powerful tool at their disposal. For example, it gives them the ability to adapt to
a wide variety of employment opportuni/es and careers. Flexibility is a keyword for succeeding in today’s fast-moving job market.

Additonally, the ability to Think Cri/cally is extremely beneficial in almost every aspect of life, like choosing a spouse, managing finances, deciding on whom to vote for, etc., etc…

This article just appeared. The clear message is that with the incessant promo/on of computer models and ar/ficial intelligence, anyone who is not a Cri/cal Thinker will be leR behind and is
likely to be frequently victmized.

Critcal Thinking recognizes no racial boundaries or economic limitatons. As such, it is a major asset for minorites and financially disadvantaged students and citzens to make their life be?er. Much beter. Martn Luther King, jr. fully appreciated this and insighWully said:

“The functon of educa.on is to teach one to think intensively, and to think critcally.”

Also important, Cri/cal Thinking gives citzens the ability to see through the innumerable ruses being perpetuated on our society today by bad actors. Without the ability to do Critcal Thinking, educaton graduates will repeatedly become easy marks of those who are cleverly packaging a wide assortment of self-serving agendas

Lastly, due to the Internet, Critcal Thinking is especially important today. It’s good — and bad — that there’s more informaton available to us than ever before. When we ask for a glass of water we get fire-hosed. Critical thinking skills are needed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

What exactly is Critical Thinking?

A school’s objec/ve should be to teach children HOW to think, not WHAT to think…

A layperson’s defini7on is that Cri/cal Thinking is looking at things wider and deeper. Let’s take the example where a developer has proposed an industrial wind facility for a community. The developer says that in this community’s decision-making process, the only consequental consideratons are that: a) their project will be a financial windfall for thecommunity, and b) it will be helpful in saving the planet.

Looking at this more broadly we find out that there are other major considera/ons not mentoned by the developer: c) health impact on nearby citzens, d) environmental impact, e) impact on a nearby military base, etc.

Looking deeper into the developer’s claims we find that their calcula/on of a local financial windfall does not take into account any negatves — like home devaluatons, agricultural losses (due to bat deaths), tourism drop, etc. An objec.ve and comprehensive net economic calcula7on turns out to be nega7ve!

Further, their asserton about wind energy saving the planet is not scientfically proven — it’s just marketng talk. In this case, Critcal Thinking is necessary to make a more informed decision!

The academic defini7on of Cri7cal Thinking (substantally condensed from here) is that it is the intellectually disciplined process of skillfully synthesizing, conceptualizing, and evalua/ng informaton, as a guide to belief and act on.

Critcal thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of informaton processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of contnually using those skills (grounded in fair-mindedness and intellectual integrity) to guide behavior.

Despite good training and best intentons, no one is a critcal thinker 100 percent of the time, as everyone is subject to episodes of undisciplined or irratonal thought.

One’s level of critcal thinking quality is a matter of degree, and dependent on factors like aw?enveness, commitment, interest in objectvity, etc. concerning partcular issues.

For this reason, the development of Critcal Thinking skills and dispositons is a life-long endeavor.

Unfortunately, there are those who claim to be teaching Cri/cal Thinking but are not. Interestngly (see here), to be a good Critcal Thinker, it is necessary to have a firm grasp of fundamentals and “lower-order thinking.”

However, that idea is out of vogue, as Common Core proponents dismissed these skills as mindless busywork that needed to go. Big mistake…

For more detail, read this thorough report: Critical Thinking: What Is Is and Why It Counts.

Chapter 2: What’s the #2 Education Problem?

We need to ask ourselves that aRer decades of pouring money and manpower into trying to improve the US educa/on product: are we happy with the results? For example, the fact is that out of some 70 OECD countries, the US ranks about 25th in Science. …

Two ques/ons: a) is this acceptable? and b) how did that happen? Hopefully, we are in full agreement on the response to the first queston: NO… Regarding the 2nd, IMHO a major reason for our middling results is that too oRen the system is being unduly influenced by people with good intentons, but for a variety of reasons, they are unable (or unwilling) to see the Big Picture of what is going on.

Anyone with that deficiency, will not likely be able to come up with meaningful solutons. Hopefully, a silver lining of the dark COVID cloud is that the educaton system was shaken up enough that insighWul educaton leaders will finally say: let’s go about fixing this differently!

In applying Critcal Thinking, the answer is to take a rifle approach vs a shotgun strategy. Then we need to pick what is the most impacWul target to aim at. I’m boiling down the educaton system to just the K-12 part and all of that to only the curriculum.

The entire curriculum is then further dis/lled to just the Science curriculum — i.e., Science standards.

My vote for the number two educaton issue is:

The corrupton of the curriculum — par7cularly in Science. The LeR knows that the curriculum is paramount, which is why they have taken over the Science standards of almost all the states. Our children are now graduatng from K-12 with a sub-par Science educaton, plus superior indoctrinaton of Progressive ideology.

This is almost entrely atributable to A Framework for K-12 Science Education in combinaton with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). {See Appendices for more details.)
FYI, the well-known Fordham Ins.tute rated each state’s Science Standards, and gave the NGSS a “C”.

Why would any state adopt a “C” rated set of Science standards? Worse, the Fordham rating is very generous, and when all factors are considered the NGSS should get an “F”.

Some may claim that the Framework and NGSS were needed to improve the Science educaton of K-12 students. However, the data say otherwise. When analyzing the U.S.’s results over the last decade, it’s clear that there aren’t any genuine signs of real improvement…

In fact, there’s been no detectable change in U.S. students’ Science scores since 2006. (The Framework came out in 2012, and NGSS in 2014.) Neither has improved K-12 Science scores!!!

Let’s be clear: there are some good elements to the NAS/NGSS. However, there are also mul/ple major embedded liabilites. So what did a cursory examinaton of the NAS Framework/NGSS reveal? Eight serious deficiencies. Here is an outline of each:

1-It does not teach Cri/cal Thinking. Worse, it promotes the opposite of Cri/cal Thinking: conformity with current politcal fads. (Here is a basic explanation of Cri.cal Thinking. Read this good Report, plus a website dedicated to Cri.cal Thinking. Also, see Appendix E)

2-It fails to delineate the difference between Real Science and poli/cal science. (See the explana/on in Appendix B, including ten examples that need to be discussed.)

3-It eliminates the Scien.fic Method, and fails to explain how the Scientfic Method handles complex ma?ers. (Read this one-page discussion of the Scien.fic Method.)

4-It inappropriately lumps scientsts and engineers together. (In an aWempt to fill the void created by their unwarranted scrapping of the Scientfic Method, the authors fabricate a newfangled “Science and Engineering Practices”

Note that there were no public discussions of the pros and cons of this concocted alterna.ve in the Science community. As caveats, read these two insighYul explanatons of some of the major differences between Science and Engineering: here and here)

5-It gives an unwarranted endorsement of computer models. (See this good commentary)

6-It disparages linear thinking. (For good discussions about this see: here, here, and here)

7-It has an undue emphasis on equity. (No such emphasis was given to Cri.cal Thinking or the difference between linear and lateral thinking, etc. Appendix K is our overview discussion of Equity vs Equality.)

8-It has some of the major deficiencies that afflicted Common Core (see Appendix M).

Yes, ma?ers like DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), CRT (Cri/cal Race Theory), and Wokism, etc are very threatening to the US educa/on system. Although these appear more boldly in
subjects like History, the roots for these are in the Framework and NGSS — i.e., the Science standards of some 45 states…

Regretfully:

1) almost no parents, teachers, scientsts, or conservatve organizatons have publicly gone against these poor Science standards, and

2) some three million propagandized new citzens are injected into our society each year.

Both of these have emboldened the LeR to expand their Woke, DEI, CRT, etc. efforts.

See this powerful talk about just how pervasive this threat is.

Do we really want Marxism to infest the minds of our youth?

Chapter 3: What’s the Solution?

We are already making great progress in this Report, as we have quickly zeroed in on the top two US Education system problems. Most educa/on reformers don’t get that far — or they identfy other problems (like school choice) that are not the top priority (see here).

The soluton to both of these major K-12 problems is straighWorward: Properly fix the state’s Science standards.

If your state is one of 45± that has basically adopted the NGSS, the two likely best optons are:

a) Make multiple changes to the NGSS, or
b) Modify another state’s good Science standards.

Regarding “b”, the best other state candidates to consider would be those that received the highest ratngs in the Fordham Institute’s report.

The simplest way to know what needs to be done for either op/on is to closely study the eight failings of the NGSS (Chapter 2), and make sure that each is properly fixed.

If this is done right, the Cri7cal Thinking problem will also be addressed.

Considering how important that is, it would be advisable for the State Department of Educaton to also:

— Publicly iden/fy that Cri/cal Thinking is the state educa/on program’s #1 goal.
— Specifically, instruct Science teachers that this is a top priority for them to impart.
— Mandate Science teacher in-service training so that they know how to properly teach Cri/cal Thinking.

It would be a wise strategy to give a good descrip/ve name to the state’s upgraded Science standards — like NGISS (Next Genera.on Improved Science Standards).

Note: I am not saying that this major change will fix ALL educa/on problems! Other issues (e.g., school choice) stll need to be addressed. However making this one change will fix something like 60 percent of the educa/on system — a profoundly important improvement.

Here is a must-watch one-minute video. It sums it up nicely, and it applies countrywide.

PS: I have great respect for teachers. However, in the educaton bureaucracy, they are oRen pawns of pawns promotng politcal agendas. Science teachers are victms startng with the Science miseducaton they get to obtain their teaching degree.

The LeR knows full well that teachers are an important link in this chain, so they have made sure that teaching schools are on board (especially in Science and History).

This educaton component also needs to be addressed, but fixing state Science standards takes priority.

This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here c19science.info

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