Reply #59: Key problem.

[Seifer]

We need to give the consumers of education...

That small statement right there summed up most of everything wrong with how education is viewed in the U.S.

Education IS NOT like buying an ice cream cone, nor is it like making something in a factory. You are not paying for a service for the teacher to deliver. This train of thought gives birth to the idea that if a student doesn't understand something, it's the school's fault since they are viewed as a producer of a defective product.

First off, learning isn't something you consume, and teachers don't produce learned students. Likewise, you cannot run a school like a factory where their job is to pump out successful students. Second, that model drastically oversimplifies how complex environmental, social, cultural, behavioral and cognitive processes that make up education. It would be nice if education boiled down to one variable, but rarely are things actually that nice and simple, and although teacher efficacy is a large portion of student success, it is not the largest. That honor goes to family income. Actually, if you look at the studies behind student success, you'll find the majority of what makes a student successful is completely beyond the control of the school itself. The second most influential factor in student success is student behavior (which is shaped primarily by parental influence, home environment, and intrinsic motivation). Letting students and parents act like consumers of education takes the focus off of them, where the majority of student success comes from, and puts on teachers. It reinforces an external locus of control towards education, where they see their learning as primarily in the hands of the teacher. Sadly, they create some pipe-dream, where the students create a narrative don't do the work themselves, and instead attribute their lack of success to the teacher, and think that if only they change schools then suddenly they will start to learn. When they do transfer schools, the cycle repeats itself. I myself am a teacher, and I have seen it happen several times.