I was surprised to learn of the statistics of how the US K – 12 education system is fairing in relation to 21st century readiness as:
“Eighty-four percent of employers say K-12 schools are not doing a good job of preparing students for the workplace; 55 percent say schools are deficient in preparing students with basic employability skills (such as attendance, timeliness and work ethic); 51 percent cite math and science deficiencies; and 38 percent cite reading and comprehension deficiencies.
A very small percentage of 4th and 8th grade students US students (less than 30%) perform at a proficient level in math, while up to 20% lack the competence to perform even basic mathematical computations” (Partnership for 21st Century Skills).
This is frightening in the sense that if this is happening in the US, then my country is a long way off in preparing our children for the 21st century reality. This challenge indicates to me that I have to firstly realize the seriousness of the deficiency and proactively prepare my school and students for the 21st century workplace so that they will be employable and efficient anywhere in the world.
I am particularly intrigued with the fact that a framework for the 21st century learning has been developed by the organization to help educators, administrators and policy makers to know how to overcome this challenge. The framework lays out in details the types of skills, and the knowledge and expertise needed to be mastered by students for success in the workplace.
It is difficult to find anything on this site that I can disagree with except that in order to get involved and subscribe to the P21 newsletter, I have to be in the United States of America and I wish this was different, maybe Walden University can give some sort of leverage in this matter so that we can be identified on this site when we make use of our Walden’s e-mail address.
It is sheer joy for me to learn about this site.
Reference
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). A report and mile guide for 21st century skills. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/images/stories/otherdocs/p21up_Report.pdf
I was also very surprised to learn of the statistics when I was going through the site. Since I am a fourth grade teacher in the U.S. those stats really hit home for me. I know for my state this year we have started to implement new common core stste standards. These standards are supposed to be aligned to what students need to know to be successful in today's society. In respect to math, I know that I showed my fellow colleagues a statistic at the beginning of the year that said that the U.S. teaches over 140 different math concepts to our students. This means that we are teaching too many concepts and not enough concepts or skills to mastery. This is where our new common core standards are coming into play. We are now taking math and putting it on a "diet." This means less overall concepts and more teaching of concepts and skills to mastery. This means now for me instead of teaching a different concepts to my students every day or every other day, I might now spend a week or more on one concept and work to teach it to mastery on multiple levels. We are hoping that this new idea will help to bring that shocking statistic up.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if you know or can find out how many different math concepts or lessons you teach to your students in a given year.
I agree with you Chad, that too many concepts does not give room to mastery. The number of mathematical concepts we teach yearly is about 80. What we do is to teach averagely one concept a week but sometimes we are able to get two through to them in a week. It is important to have the students master each concept so that it will be easy for them to apply the concept especially in real life situations.
ReplyDeleteHi Damilola,
ReplyDeleteI will mention to Walden administrators the issue about international access to the newsletter--that you for sharing that.
As always, a thoughtful, interesting posting. I find that sometimes a minor tweak to a lesson can shift the focus to one that aligns with 21st century objectives. I love projects as a way to get students to think creatively and to problem solve in an authentic context.
Technology can help us as teachers to create more authentic lessons.
Thanks so much for posting to your blog (and I also enjoyed the wiki poem.)
Thank you Susan for your kind comments and for indicating your willingness to mention the issue about international access to the newsletter to Walden administration. That's so thoughtful of you.
ReplyDeleteDamilola, those statistics are alarming for sure, and I see myself in your mirror concerning my country Puerto Rico, where these statistics I believe are worse than in USA territorial and there are not as many technological resources in the classroom as they are available in most places in USA. I also see myself in your mirror about the accessibility in the website being out of USA because I would have the same problem if I was in Puerto Rico. Besides all this, you are right, this site is excellent to add as favorites (which I already did) because of all the resources it provides. We should also add it in our wikis to have it accessible in a more permanent way.
ReplyDeleteHi Naida, I totally agree with you that we need to keep this site in constant view. Every bit of information there is wealthy and we need to apply them to our classrooms.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments.