Why do the schools in other industrialized countries produce a much greater percentage of students who are able to write competent essays and letters, read complex and sophisticated materials and solve twostep math problems? There are a number of differences between these school systems and ours, but one of the most obvious is that all the other systems engage in earlier and more systematic tracking of students than we do.
Tracking students - sorting them according to apparent ability - works for student success because of the factory structure of most schools here and abroad. In these factory schools, students are the raw materials that are moved along an assembly line and processed by specialized workers, their teachers. The assembly line may take students first to their math class, where for 45 or 50 minutes the teacher will try to drill math into them. They they'll all be moved to the next station, English, and so on. This structure required that all students move on at the end of the "period" ( and at the end of the semester and the end of the year), students must learn at exactly the same pace. Such a system can work efficiently only if the materials fed into it are relatively uniform - if all the kids in a given class are at more or less the same level of achievement - and tracking kids achieves this relative uniformity.
In U.S. schools, there is some tracking - more than we like to admit - but it is much less widespread and systematic than in other countries. And although the kids in an untracked classroom may all be the same chronological age, they're likely to vary tremendously in their reading, writing and math performance. As a result, it's not possible for teachers to reach most of the kids through the same kind of lesson or method. Our teachers know this; they know they should be giving their very different kids different work to do and allowing them to work at their own pace. But teachers are just as caught in the structure of the factory schools as their students. Some teachers try to move away from the one-lesson-for-all approach. Most don't even try because they already have more to do than they can manage. The few who do, who buck the system and put in the enormous amounts of time and energy to prepare assignments that reflect the varying needs of their students, are often held up as examples. No one mentions how soon these teachers burn out.
But now, for the first time in history, it is going to be possible for teachers to customize educaiton for different kids and groups of kids. The reason? Technology. Teachers will no longer have to deliver all the content of a course through traditional lessons because we now have thousands of videotapes, audiotapes, simulation games and models and computer programs, as well as copies of various kinds, that will allow students' lessons to be tailored to their needs. Skeptics will say that we've had technology before and it didn't transform education. This time it's different.
When I started teaching in the early 1950s, movies were the available technology. But using a film meant ordering it from a catalog weeks or months in advance. Often the movie you wanted was already booked, but even when you could get it, you couldn't be sure it would be right for your class. Or that the movie New York Times -December 24, 1989 Page 1 of2 projector would be available - and in working order. And after you'd cleared these hurdles, the class would all watch the movie together, just the way they'd all sit and listen to a lesson.
Today's technology is far more flexible. Schools can stockpile videotapes, audiotapes and computer programs. Kids will be able to watch them individually or in small groups, and they'll even be able to take tapes home. What is now true for videotapes and audiocassettes will soon be true for computers. So technology can make it possible to offer kids the materials they need in the forms that are appropriate for their needs. And they can take the time they need to learn, too.
But doesn't this still put a tremendous burden on teachers? With so many different materials available, how will teachers know what is outstanding and what is junk? How will they know what is good for a particular group of kids? And will they still be faced with spending an enormous amount of time to prepare each set of lessons? If anything, technology could make the problem worse because it offers a greater variety of things to review than the print media. So teachers might be left with a bad choice: continue giving everyone the same lesson even though they know that most of the kids won't get it or use the modern technologies without previewing the materials.
Fortunately, technology can give us the answer to this problem, too. National data bases are available in almost every other field of endeavor. Why not one for teachers? Such a data base could list the materials and the technology available to help kids learn about the Declaration of Independence or interest rates or how thermometers work. And besides videotapes and computer programs, the data base could also list charts, chapters of books, games and models that could be made by teachers or students. The materials would be vouched for by brief reviews from peer-review panels of outstanding teachers in each field.
The creation of such a database would be a great force for educational improvement. But we are still left with one final, and enormous, problem - making this technology and the training necessary to use it available to teachers. The things we can do in schools are now many years ahead of what we are doing. Technology can allow us, for the first time, to put the factory school behind us and develop education programs to suit the various needs of our various students. But in many classrooms, the most advanced technology is the chalkboard; and in many schools, the few computers that are available are clustered in a computer room. Putting this technology into every classroom so teachers can use it to solve one of the enduring problems of our education system must be a top priority for the new decade.