By Madison McCann, Editor-in-Chief
Picture an English classroom. See the students focus on the whiteboard at the front of the class, chromebooks open in front of them to take notes, while the teacher speaks into a microphone around their neck. Times certainly have changed, and schools have followed.
For example, public schools have gotten much more progressive. Before the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka “Separate but Equal” doctrine allowed schools to be segregated based on race.
“When I started teaching, [I] was an all white school district,” retired teacher Marilyn Smith said. “I was a teacher for almost 30 years, and it was just in the very last that we really saw any different colors.”
Schools are also more progressive in terms of accepting students’ life choices and circumstances.
“When I was in school, if a girl got pregnant she got shoved off to the continuation school,” Kevin Ormsby, VHS graduate of 1983, said. “And anyone who was seen to be [different] in any way, if they were gay … they couldn’t tell us that in high school; they would have gotten picked on even more.”
The adoption of the Common Core State Standards Initiative has also brought some drastic changes to the education system. The Common Core Initiative essentially dictates what students should be versed in by the end of each grade. This is enforced by the use of tests such as the Smarter Balanced assessment, or End of Course Exams (EOC). Unfortunately, the Common Core Initiative can lead to some teachers feeling stifled in their ability to create an engaging and informative curriculum.
“My every day is paced out,” Cascade Middle School LRC teacher, Jen Olson said. “And God forbid you get off pace.”
Olson is not the only one feeling this way.
“It doesn’t really give you time,” Shorewood Elementary School Paraeducator Debbie Gard said. “If you have a majority of the class struggling in a certain area, you don’t have time to spend an extra day on something.”
Schools have shifted their focus from preparing students to work in factories to preparing students to get into college. This is both a positive change because it encourages growth rather than obedience, and a negative change because it can disclude students not planning to attend college.
“Students, really in the last 15 years, have increasingly entered into a college and post-college environment that is harder and harder to be successful in,” VHS Principal Danny Rock said. “The stress level has continued to increase steadily. Students who are intending to go to a four-year college now have more difficulty getting into college: it’s more expensive, and it’s less clear how it will connect them to a career. It just feels like there’s more at stake.”
Another major change occurred when Washington State public schools ended corporal punishment, or the use of physical force as means of punishment.
Corporal punishment in schools was upheld in the 1977 Supreme Court case Ingraham v. Wright. The decision found that the Eighth Amendment clause banning cruel or unusual punishment does not apply to punishment inflicted in schools.
“In second grade I got in a fight with Jamie Jefferson, and Mr. Cook dragged us down to the office by our hair,” Ormsby said. “He coulda cared less whether we could keep up.”
However, although the Supreme Court case still stands, many states, including Washington, have passed laws banning corporal punishment in schools.
Public schools have been taking up efforts to come up with better means of discipline for students, such as suspension and letters to parents; however, this new leniency brings its own unforetold consequences.
“They are trying to do restorative justice, and it’s not working very well,” Olson said. “The teachers are pushing for [in-school suspension] to go back to more of a punishment with no chromebooks, and no cell phones. [Right now,] it’s too fun.”
Thanks to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, public schools receive resources from the federal government that help give students the support they need to succeed in the classroom.
“I started in a one room schoolhouse with one teacher for all eight grades,” Roger Baird, who graduated high school in 1947, said. “I was in the first grade, my sister was in the sixth grade, and my brother was in the eighth grade — all with the same teacher.”