Changing the Status Quo : Courage to Challenge the Education System

Assessment, technology, and racial discrimination are three status quos that negatively impact the way educators teach and how students learn. The education system must change and courage is required to speak out against ideas and practices that do not work so we can improve learning for all students.

Have you ever wondered where the ever expanding layers of bureaucracy are taking us in the field of education? This book challenges us to think carefully about this question. The status quo in education consists of policies, practices, and power structures impacting the way we teach, and prevent students from learning in meaningful and significant ways. Assessment techniques drive our teaching practices resulting in a learning process that students strongly dislike. Technology like PowerPoint presentations and clickers force students to pay attention to lectures, but the end result is the same-memorizing information for exams. It is causing students to become less focused on comprehending what they read. It is also physically changing the way students read focusing on small sound bites on what they believe is necessary to remember for tests. Discriminating against students of color continues to be a prevalent problem as well. Data show that white educators consist of a huge majority often lacking cultural awareness in our classrooms. Reading this book will inspire you to become a courageous educator and implement meaningful changes in your classroom on how to asses your students, what kind and how much technology to use, and how to sensitively treat educators and students of color.