Category Archives: Policy

Merit Pay

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As the idea of merit pay sweeps the nation, and the federal government is pushing the idea down the throats of the states using the old carrot/stick approach, I have been thinking much about this topic. Florida is about to vote on such a bill, tying teacher pay to test scores.

Merit pay is popular in part because on the surface it has such a ring of fairness. Shouldn’t better teachers get rewarded for it? However, in reality, it is fraught with many complications and difficulties.

The issue also gets further confused as there are really two issues. One is teacher evaluation and the other is teacher compensation. Without a fair way to evaluate teachers, merit pay cannot be fair.

Some people complain that current teacher evaluation systems are poor. Usually a principal announces they will come in and observe. The principal makes notes and bases the teacher’s evaluation to a large part on this single observation. Often this happens only once every other year for experienced teachers. I would agree that this method is lacking—but that makes the idea of merit pay more, not less problematic. People also complain that bad teachers are allowed to keep teaching and impossible to fire. That is mostly a gross exaggeration. The problem is that in part it is based on that few are “fired” in the technical sense of the word that would show up on public records. That is because at least 9 out of 10 times, the teacher resigns before being fired. That is typical in any field. Certainly in any professional field I have ever heard of, the employee in danger of being fired is generally encouraged to resign, sparing the employer of the legal steps of actually firing the person, and sparing the employee of having it on their record. All the principals that I admire tell me that they can and do get rid of the teachers they think are not serving the students. While it is not easy, why should it be? If a principal could easily fire any teacher, it would make teaching a risky profession, especially for those with interesting ideas. Fear is never a good long term motivator. Teacher “tenure” (it is not actually technically “tenure”) just means that due process must be observed. Is due process a good thing or not?

But back to merit pay. Shouldn’t teachers get paid more for being better? First off, who get to decide who is better and how? Test scores seem to be the idea in vogue. That is what they are proposing in Florida, and already using in various places. However, our current testing system tests only a tiny fraction of what is important for children to know (and does so in such a poor way). In elementary schools it is rote math and reading skills. That is it. Basing pay on just that would encourage teachers even more than they already are to only focus on what is likely to be on the test, at the expense of everything else (many elementary school, due to NCLB have already reduced the curriculum to almost only these two areas). There is an axiom in the social sciences known as Campbell’s Law that says that the higher the stakes on a particular social indicator (e.g. a single test score), the more the use of that indicator corrupts the original intent, as it encourages people to manipulate the system to look good on that indicator regardless of other effects. We see that happening already—retaining students so they take the easier test; pushing kids to disappear from the system. There is the focus on the kids that show the most promise of moving from one category to the next, while ignoring others. Not to mention the examples of out and out cheating—changing test answers and such. Teachers start to resent the “low” students” the “slow” students, as they put their pay or job in danger, rather than being seen as a challenge, as the place to make a real difference.

There is also the issue of motivation. Merit pay is seen as a way to motivate teachers to work harder. When most of us think of motivation, we often think of rewards. However, the most effective motivation is actually not extrinsic rewards. The most effective motivation is the enjoyment or intrinsic reward of the activity itself. Virtually all teachers go into teaching because they want to make a difference in their students lives, to be successful teachers—not for the great pay! What psychological theory has demonstrated again and again is that the more you externally reward someone for what they find intrinsically motivating, the less motivated they become for the thing itself, as the reward replaces their intrinsic motivation. They no longer care if the results are real, as long as they get the reward. Recent studies have demonstrated that bonuses in business are actually likely to make workers less, not more productive. Extrinsic rewards actually lead to less intrinsic interest in a job well done, not more.

School reform research has shown that the most effective school are those where teachers work together closely and have a shared vision. But merit pay is likely to increase competition among teachers, discouraging collaboration. In today’s climate of limited resources, if one teacher gets a bonus, it comes from the pool that everyone gets paid from, pitting teachers against each other for these limited resources. It becomes in my self interest to sabotage the other teachers to increase my chances of getting that money, or at least not to help them.

It is a truism that teachers are underpaid. Despite that, there is no compelling evidence that teachers leave the field over issues of pay, or that more pay gets them to work harder. It is possible we might attract a higher quality pool of candidates if teacher pay was significantly higher. However, in studies of what makes teachers satisfied or dissatisfied with their job, other working conditions are much higher on the list. How they are treated, what types of autonomy they have, what types of support they receive, resources, class sizes, and leadership all rate higher than issues of pay.

Mostly, merit pay is a side show, a distraction to any real answer to solving the difficult problems of educational reform. It is another quick fix solution that can be used to undermine teachers and the unions that represent them in the move to privatize schooling.

Duncan’s Three-Pronged Attack on Education

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One of the interesting things about recent educational policy is that the political battles over the direction of education do not fall along traditional political lines. In both the state of California (where I live), from Wilson (R) to Davis (D) to Schwarzenegger (R), and at the national level, from Bush, Sr. (R) to Clinton (D) to Bush, Jr. (R), to Obama (D), the move toward standardized curriculum and the high stakes use of standardized tests has been consistent, as has the message that our schools are deteriorating and destroying the national economy. (The Obama administration’s current position is particularly disheartening considering that he campaigned on a platform advocating the opposite).

In this essay, I will be addressing the three-pronged agenda of the present Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, that continues these policies and is based on these same assumptions. I will leave off for this essay addressing the two myths I mentioned above, that somehow the quality of our school directly effects our economy (no evidence exits for such a cause-effect link—in fact the cause-effect is probably reversed), nor the myth that our schools have gone downhill (Richard Rothstein’s book The Way We Were does a great job of myth busting on that score).

Duncan’s three-prong strategy consists of nationalizing educational standards (and the high stakes tests that go with them), implementing merit pay based on student achievement, and the increased use of charter schools. I will argue here that not only are none of these proven to be effective, but actually much evidence exists demonstrating their lack of effectiveness.

I will start with National Standards. Duncan has already started convening state governors to discuss these standards (leaving educational organizations out of the discussion). Having national standards assumes that there is a national consensus on the purposes, goals and means for effective education. Throughout the history of this nation, we have resisted such nationalization precisely because it was felt that such goals and means should be left up to local communities. Does such a consensus now exist? I say not. One little piece of evidence: Every semester for the past 5 years I have taught a class on learning theory. At the beginning of the course, which is during their first semester in the program (before they have been influenced by our beliefs and ideas), I have them do an exercise asking them to come up with their priorities for public education. I have them discuss these and try to come to a consensus. Then I have them compare their goals with what they see as the goals of the schools in which they observe. Not only do they disagree somewhat with each other, but I have found every time that there is very little overlap with their goals and the goals they observe in the public schools. It is possible that the students in this non-selective public university are somehow very different from the average citizen, but I somehow doubt it. In other polls of teachers, their views do not tend to vary dramatically from the general public.

Think of the debates you hear around you, talk to your friends, neighbors. Do you all agree on what should be taught in the schools and how it should be taught? In a pluralistic, multicultural, rapidly evolving society such ours, such a consensus seems unlikely. National Standards and standardized tests force such a consensus upon the public, and upon the education of every public school student. This does not seem to me to be the proper role for a democratic government to play in education. In human civilization, just as in nature, variety and differences are healthy and help create a more vibrant thriving sustainable society.

The expansion of charter schools is another of Duncan’s strategies. This is despite extensive research on charter schools that over and over have shown that such schools, as a strategy, have not shown themselves to be any more effective at raising achievement levels or closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students than traditional public schools. There is a fair amount of research that, as a whole, they are less likely to be serving the most needy students, especially students with special needs.

In some ways, the charter school strategy could seem to be in contradiction with the first strategy of standardization. One of the original purposes of charter schools was to allow schools to break away from the standardization of the traditional pubic school system (charter schools are public school, however, in that they receive public money, may not charge tuition, and are supposed to be non-selective in their enrollment). That charter schools could set their own goals and methods, based on the desires of the parents, students and teachers that made up that school was seen by many as their advantage. There are many such charter schools that are dear to my heart, and appear to be having tremendous success with their students.

The seeming contradiction is explained by what Duncan’s idea of support for charter schools is: Standardization. He wants to fund a few charter school chains that he sees as effective at raising test scores, and make such models standard. These are not charters that are created by local groups of parents, teachers or local communities and answerable to them. These are chains with their own pre-set agendas, methods and goals. It is really an attempt to give organizations that are outside of public control, control of public schools, on the assumption that “the public” is the problem with public schools. This is a dangerously anti-democratic belief system (reminds me of the anti-National health care debate where people are afraid of the “government” making health decisions, while not seeming to be afraid of corporate CEO’s making those same decisions for them).

His third agenda item is Merit Pay. This is based on the intuitive assumption that offering rewards for success will motivate teachers to work harder and more effectively. It is based on the assumption that the problem with schools (a commonly held belief) is lazy teachers. While some lazy teachers may exist, I know of no evidence to support this as a workable theory for the problem with schools as a whole. While the public seems to accept this theory for other schools, they do not believe it about the one’s where they send their children, the one’s where they can see the evidence of hard working caring teachers with their own eyes (see the Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll in the September issue of Phi Delta Kappan on the public’s opinion about public schooling).

Bonuses do not work even in the private sector, as recent studies have shown. They may, in fact, be counterproductive. Such schemes are no more likely to be effective in education. One explanation for their lack of success is to look at research on motivation. When we offer extrinsic (external) rewards for activities that people are already motivated to do, we actually make them less motivated. Find me the teacher that did not go into education because they truly wanted to make a difference in the lives of children. There may be some, but they are the exception that proves the rule. External rewards tend to lead us to do only what we need to do to get the reward, and attempt to game the system to “look good.” It might work for the worst teachers, but it is likely to have the opposite effect on the rest of the teachers. Most teachers teach because they find teaching rewarding. They find being unsuccessful at it unrewarding. What they need is help in being more successful, not prizes for beating out their colleagues.

Merit pay is also likely to lead to teachers resenting the difficult and hard to reach students, as they will bring the test scores down, and lower the teacher’s pay. These are the students who need the most attention and care. In addition, it can lead to teachers working against each other in pursuit of limited resources, rather than collaborating and supporting each other. In general external rewards sends a message that teaching and learning are not worth doing well for their own reward, but only when bribes are offered (or the other side of the same coin—punishments threatened). Is that the message we want to send to teachers and students?

All three of the approaches promoted by the present administration continue to follow the same failed policies of the last several administrations. With all of the insistence of teachers using “evidence based” strategies in their classrooms, none of the policies promoted by Arne Duncan are evidence based, and in fact contrary to the most compelling evidence that we presently have. Interestingly, one policy they have not considered is equaling the resources between those with the most (who actually have always done quite well in national and international comparison), and those with the least. In fact, we are the only developed nation that funds in such an unequal fashion, where the most advantaged and privileged, get significantly more resources in their schools than the disadvantaged students (for an extensive expose of this read Jonathan Kozol’s book Savage Inequalities).

What is the alternative? Providing strong support for good teaching and teachers. Providing adequate resources with which to teach. Trusting the people closest to the kids to make the important decisions about the best way to educate them, especially those who have the training and experience to do so, and who also know and care about those particular children, in close collaboration with their families. Yes, they need to be answerable, answerable not to standardized curriculum and tests, but answerable to the parents of the children and to the local community by demonstrating meaningful results. This is the meaning of true democracy, with a small “d”: Trusting people to govern themselves, including their schools. Are there risks in doing so? Of course. Will they always make the “right” decisions? Of course not. But, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst possible form of government until you consider the alternatives.

Same Sex Marriage

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Marriage has both a religious and a secular purpose. The California Court’s decision to allow same sex marriages would affect the secular aspect, not the religious aspect. Yet, almost every argument I have heard against same sex marriages has been based on religious grounds. This is despite the fact that our Constitution has a clear injunction against promoting particular religious beliefs (colloquially known as the separation of church and state). During the campaign, those who favor denying same sex marriage talk of that this is going beyond tolerance and forcing them to recognize such marriages. They are correct there. This is the same argument racist Southerners used in opposing civil right laws of the 1960s when they were forced to recognize African-Americans as full citizens, with the same rights as everyone else. On the other hand, there is nothing in the legal recognition of such marriages that would force their church to recognize or perform such marriages. Allowing the State to recognize same sex marriages maintains the separation of church and state. Disallowing it does not.

Does the State have an interest in allowing such marriages, beyond the argument of civil right and fairness? It does. For instance, often gay couples raise children together. Without the right to marry, if the “official” parent dies, the “unofficial” parent has no legal right to continue to raise the child. This means that a child in such circumstances often not only goes through the trauma of losing the parent who dies, but also being taken away from the person best in a position to offer support, and a normal continuation of their life. This further traumatizes such children. Another purpose is for care of the sick and elderly. With no legal status, it is difficult for gay and lesbian partners to help in the care of their sick or elderly partners, which can put the burden on the State.

Our Declaration of Independence states, “All men are created equal.” It took us over 150 years to extend that to include women and almost 200 years to include African-Americans in the promise, if not the reality, of that equality. Now when the California Supreme court has said that such an idea should also apply to the Gay and Lesbian members of our society, others want to continue to deny such equality. They argue that a majority should have the right to tell a minority how to live their lives. This is a mistaken belief that democracy is majority rule. That type of majority rule can also be known as tyranny of the majority. A Constitutional democracy protects the rights of the minority against the persecution by the majority. It is on exactly those grounds that our State Supreme Court ruled.

Do we want to follow the example of countries like Iran which impose one set of religious beliefs on all citizens, or do we want to live up to the promise of our Constitution that we are all created equal, deserve equal rights, and no group should be able to impose their religious beliefs on others?

Secretary of Education

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George Orwell coined the term Newspeak. An aspect of Newspeak is Doublespeak in which language is often used to mean its opposite. We have seen this come to play in our times in many ways—missiles called “Peacekeeper,” being one of the most infamous. In education, the recent example is the “No Child Left Behind” Act (NCLB), which is leaving more and more children behind educationally. Now it is being used against Linda Darling-Hammond, a possible pick for Obama’s Secretary of Education. “Reformers” are those who want to keep to the policies of NCLB, and anti-reformers are those who want to break with them in this new twist on language.

Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford, was one of the main educational advisors and spokespeople for Obama during the campaign, and has been leading the transition team. In contrast to Dr. Darling-Hammond, possible picks include several who run large city school districts: Arne Duncan, superintendent of Chicago’s public schools, Joel Klein, Chancellor of New York City’s school system, and Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. school system.

In the press, Dr. Darling-Hammond is being labeled as too “status quo” and the other named possibilities as being the “real” reformers. This to me appears immensely ironic. Dr. Darling-Hammond has spent her career working for improving education for poor and minority students (she is herself African American). This has meant a constant battle with policy makers and school leaders, creating reforms on multiple fronts and multiple levels, ones that went against long standing traditions of education in this country. For much of her career, going back at least to her days in New York City with Teachers College, she worked to support the small schools movement and more autonomy for such schools in a system made up of high schools that often have many thousands of students, and were run (and is still run) in a very top down fashion. The small schools movement in New York City, that she was part of starting, has shown remarkable results with low-income and minority students in study after study. The autonomy and sustainability of these schools to has been enormously undermined by “real” reformer Joel Klein, the chancellors of the New York City public schools. More than one of those schools has ceased to exist despite their success, due to the Klein administration.

In Connecticut, Darling-Hammond created new standards for assessing teachers, based on high levels of performance assessment methods, which again have been shown to be successful there in raising teacher quality. The new “reformers” would rather use standardized test scores to measure teacher competency.

At Stanford University, Darling-Hammond has continued her advocacy for poor minority students. She has been a constant critic of NCLB, while the other “reformers” are willing to accept the premise of this act as a valid way to measure schools teachers and students. As in Connecticut, she was involved in creating a performance-based assessment system for credentialing teachers in California. Among her efforts to support teacher quality through capacity building was her involvement in creating the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Not one to work only at state and national levels, at the local level she founded two charter schools, one high school and one elementary school in East Palo Alto, a very poor community that went 25 years without its own high school. Both of these schools were founded on the small school, democratic and constructivist principles, to serve poor minority children. None of these types of reforms have ever been popular among the status quo for use with poor minority children. (These new reformers push policies that reinforce drill and kill rote learning for the most needy students.) At Stanford, she developed the School Redesign Network to support efforts across the nation of local schools and districts who are trying to create smaller learning communities.

On what do they try to base these attacks? Her being a successful academic makes her seen as suspect in a country that is highly anti-intellectual. Part of this comes from the fact that, as a professor, she believes strongly in accurate research. She is both a researcher herself, and an avid and critical reader of the research. She will not support reforms that research shows to be ineffective or counter effective, which is true of some of the reforms posed by some of the other names.

That she does not favor their “reforms,” in particular is probably the main problem. For instance, she has not been a supporter of Teach for America (TfA), one of Rhee’s pet projects. Darling-Hammond dared to examine and report on the actual research on TfA in a less than favorable light. Teach for America has therefore started an offensive against her appointment.

Her support for teachers themselves and their unions is another main criticism. For many reformers, those teachers who have to carry out these reforms are seen as the enemy. This goes along with the general attack on the working class, akin to blaming the auto workers for the failure of the American auto industry to compete. (Look whom our government bailed out—the Wall Street rich, but the auto workers and homeowners are left on their own.) The three above named so-called reformers are among those who see teachers as the problem, rather than the solution, to our schools’ difficulties.

The alternative reform of these three large school district leaders? All three have fought for authoritarian power. Klein, for instance dismantled the New York City School Board and the local semi-autonomous school districts. In the name of making teachers accountable, he is accountable to no one. The idea of these new “reformers” is more reliance on high stakes test scores to measure both students and teachers. Such tests reinfoce rote learning and drill and kill teaching methods. Despite fifty plus years of using such tests and teaching methods with the poor, they have never shown any lasting positive results. The data from any of these districts is less than promising under the leadership of these three.

Not only are the reforms of these so-called reformers unproven, they are highly anti-democratic. They rely on those at the highest levels making the decisions and then using rewards and punishments to insure compliance. It is likely that if any these reformers have national power, they will advance polices that promote top-down mandates, more testing and anti-teacher measures.

This is again in strong contrast to Linda Darling-Hammond, who has been a strong advocate for democratizing schools. She believes instead in giving teachers and local schools the tools, support and professional development to succeed. This is known as capacity building. It is based on the idea that teachers do want their students to succeed, and that those closest to the children are in the best position to know how to succeed, given that those people have the resources and knowledge to do so.

While believing in high standards, Darling-Hammond argues that the measure of success cannot be found in multiple choice tests, either of teachers or of students, but must be found in assessments that authentically measure the skills, abilities and knowledge that we actually want out teachers and students to have. She has spent a career developing and promoting such assessment tools.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have as Secretary of Education someone who was both one of the most respected researchers in educational reform, knowledgeable about the research on school reform, and experienced at successfully carrying out many of those reforms and both local and state levels? And an African American woman to boot!

Will Computers Free Teachers to Teach More Creatively?

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At a party of a friend recently I got into a discussion with someone about education and the use of computer technology. The person I was conversing with suggested that educational software could and should be developed to relieve teachers of the technical aspects of teaching. Why should each teacher have to figure out how to teach reading or arithmetic when the best minds could solve that problem and create a computer program to teach the children these basic skills? Having software relieve teachers of this technical aspect of teaching, he argued, would free teachers to do the work that needed human interaction—teaching critical and creative thinking. I would like to use this column to explore why this suggestion makes me uncomfortable.

In some ways I agree with this fellow. The main problem in education is not the difficulty of teaching children to read or do arithmetic. Despite claims to the contrary, virtually no student leaves school illiterate. Our students may not be as literate as we would like, but students who truly cannot decode text and do accurate arithmetic are rare outside of classes for the severely disabled. And such failures have only gotten rarer over each decade (1). I agree with him as well that an inordinate amount of time and professional development is spent on the training of the technical aspects of how to teach reading and arithmetic skills more effectively and at an earlier age. The main point we agree upon is that helping students to learn to use their minds well, in critical and creative ways, is given far too little attention in the large majority of classrooms. This is especially true in classrooms serving low-income and minority students. Due to the fact that these students generally do less well on standardized tests, the schools that serve them are pressured to focus on raising those test scores. Most of these schools rely on teacher-centered direct instruction focused on discrete skills to achieve this.

His solution of using computerized instruction of basic skills to free the teacher to do the work of teaching critical and creative thinking is based on a couple of assumptions. One assumption is that if this software actually did efficiently teach these skills, teachers would engage in the critical and creative teaching we both believe is necessary. Is that what would happen? There is certainly no guarantee that teachers would be allowed, much less encouraged to use their time that way. It assumes that those who decide how teachers may use their time want teachers to do those other things. What could happen instead is that teachers, as professionals, are seen as superfluous. Since the computers are doing the “real” teaching, teachers become monitors whose job is to ensure that the students are sitting at the computer doing what they are supposed to be doing. I have actually seen after-school programs that run this way, using adults who are not trained or certified as teachers to oversee the students as they engage in such computer reading or math programs.

To counter this, I argue that we do not need to focus on developing or advocating for such software (and in any case, such software is rapidly being developed by the multi-billion dollar educational publishing industry which spares no expense in advocating for its usefulness). What we need to do is advocate for the second half—the focus on creative and critical thinking for the purpose of developing democratic citizens. There is a real lack of movement in that direction in the public schools. According to the mainstream media the purpose of education is about raising test scores to create a competitive workforce for the global economy. (And what does competitive mean? Best skilled? Or willing to work for the lowest wages?). Even if this first assumption is true, that software could be more efficient in the technical aspect of teaching, the second part is unlikely to become true until we change the perception of the purpose of schooling. That won’t happen without some strong grassroots advocacy since it challenges the status quo.

Another assumption of the software solution is that one can divorce the technical aspects of learning from the emotional, motivational, critical and creative aspects. This is a more fundamental difference in learning theory. What is known as Critical Learning Theory, as developed by Paolo Freire and others, argues that the technical aspects cannot be separated from these other factors (2). This theory claims that the context of our learning, the content of the curriculum, and the power relationships over who decides what and how we learn, are part of the learning itself. When we learn to read by being put in front of a computer, we are learning about what the purpose of reading is. The content of the material teaches us what and who is considered important. If the ideas and content of what is read or learned about are not discussed, the child has no guidance and help in making meaning of it. Constructivist learning theory (as developed by Dewey, Piaget and Vygotsky) shows us that learning is a process of making sense of the world based on one’s actions and interactions with the environment. This theory tells us that we learn skills best in the context of meaningful and purposeful activities. We learned to speak and walk, not by being explicitly taught to do so. Rather, we learned to talk because we had something we wanted to communicate and were surrounded by people who were doing so, and who helped us to do so, in a non-coercive environment. We learned to walk because we wanted to get somewhere—to have more freedom to explore our environment, again in the company of others who already knew how to walk, and were willing to offer assistance when we wanted it. Maybe this is true of all learning—that it is most efficient to learn to read, write and do arithmetic, as well as to learn to have strong democratic habits of mind, by having reasons that are meaningful and purposeful to the student in the company of others who can model and assist them as they learn. Am I talking pie in the sky? Let us examine the evidence.

What is the evidence for the efficacy of using software to teach basic skills? There is currently mixed evidence with some research showing no gains, and other research showing some short term gains, in reading and math scores for some students (3). There is no long term evidence as of yet.

In contrast, progressive schools based on constructivist principals of learning have a track record. The famous Eight Year Study (4) demonstrated its effectiveness at the high school level as far back as the 1930s. Contemporary examples such as Central Park East in New York City (5), Mission Hill in Boston (6), the Shutesbury Elementary School in Massachusetts (7) and many others have been extremely successful with children of all walks of life, over the long term. These schools avoid scripted curriculum and use a minimum of teacher-centered—or software-centered—instruction. They maximize the time students are engaged in projects that have a purpose beyond getting a grade from the teacher. They allow students to be the active agents in the learning process, in charge of much of the “what and how” of the learning. It is creating more of such schools and classrooms that I believe needs our advocacy and support. A focus on technological solutions may distract of from this larger purpose.

Endnotes:

  1. Richard Rothstein, The Way We Were? The Myths and Realities of America’s Student Achievement (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 1998).
  2. Joan Wink, Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, Third Edition (Longman, 2005).
  3. Andrew Trotter, “Major Study on Software Stirs Debate,” Education Week, April 11, 2007, pp. 1, 18.
  4. Wilford M. Aiken, The Story of the Eight-Year Study (New York: Harper and Row, 1942).
  5. David Bensman, Central Park East and Its Graduates: Learning By Heart (New York: Teachers College Press, 2000).
  6. Deborah Meier, In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002).
  7. Ron Berger, An Ethic of Excellence (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003).

Educational Research

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There are a variety of important issues in regards to educational research these days. One hot topic right now is that our current federal administration has restricted the definition of exceptable research to only one type of research design. This design is known as the experimental design. Qualitative research, which allows us to look at what actually goes on in classrooms and schools, and with children, as well as at the process of how education is working, is not deemed acceptable. Neither are other designs of quantitative research, which might examine a particular school or setting or situation, without having a matched control group. This decision to only allow this type of research does not come from any consensus within the scientific or educational research community as to what counts as research(1). It is a political decision by the current federal administration. This policy has important implications for our schools. One implication is that it highly influences what research gets done. It does so directly by the fact the government sponsors research. Federal dollars will only sponsor research that fits the administration’s definition. It affects schools secondarily by what research they cite and use for their policy decisions. Researchers who want their research to influence these policies are likely to adhere to those protocols. Third, outside researchers and universities may decide to only fund research that follows that research paradigm, again restricting what research gets done. It also affects in some cases what practices schools may use, as the federal government insists that it only fund “scientifically proven” methods. Federal monies for curriculum and instruction are therefore funneled to areas that are supported by this one particular type of research.

I raise the above issue of what counts as research to make a point about educational research in general. This point is about the limitations of much of the research that is done and has been done in education even before the current policies. The above policies will only exacerbate the one’s I will address below.

Two difficulties that I will address here in regards to interpreting educational research are, one: what was used to measure the effects; and two: over what period were the effects measured.

Most educational research uses standardized tests to measure the success or failure of a particular program, or method or other variable of interest(2). However, the validity and reliability of these tests as actual measures of what they purport to measure is highly controversial(3). I will use the example of reading. I recently went to a talk about the research on learning to read. The presenter argued that the research showed that phonemic awareness was required to learn to read. However, the research cited actually showed that the explicit teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics helped students to score higher on tests of phonemes and phonics! This has been part of the trouble with the debate between whole language versus phonics and “phonemic awareness” advocates. Whole language theorists tend to use measures such as comprehension, reading for pleasure, and quantity of reading as their measures of success. Phonics and phonemic awareness advocates tend to use standardized tests that focus on phonics and phonemic awareness skills as their measures of success. How they define “reading” and how they measure reading end up predicting the outcomes they are looking for! According to Elaine Garan(4), a member of the National Reading Panel, the panel made this error in its recommendations—in limiting its analysis to studies using the experimental design, and focusing on experiments that looked at reading sub-skills, it biased its own conclusions.

Similar scenarios occur across many areas of educational research. It is not that research can say anything, but that one must be careful to examine how the researcher defined and measured success of the variable they claim to be examining. The reader and user of the research must be able to decide if they agree with the researcher’s definition, and whether the tool used to measure it is valid according to that definition.

The second problem is with the short-term aspect of most educational research. Most research is done over a one school year or shorter duration. There is an assumption that if gains are shown, they will persist over time. However, much of what we know from experience and other research contradicts that assumption. I refer us here to the “Three Little Pigs” analogy. Let us say we decide to study what materials are best for building houses. We have three identical pigs, all building houses. We notice one is building his house from straw, another from sticks, and a third from bricks. First, what is our measure of success? It is going to be how far has each pig gotten in building his house. After day one, we look to see how far each has gotten, and we notice the pig who is building his house from straw is already done. The one using sticks has his walls mostly up. The pig building with bricks is just getting his foundation done. We conclude straws much be the best material for house building, and mandate straw—based on research!

As most of us are aware, we often forget what we learned in a class or course soon after the class is over, or even during the class, right after the test! Short terms gains often do not correlate to long-term gains. Sometimes it is just do to lack of use—the knowledge or skills learned are not used again, and therefore we don’t remember them. Sometimes it may be that a strong foundation was not built, and so, like the straw house, our understanding collapses easily when it needs to support more complex use or understanding. Researchers Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier(5) have shown evidence of this particularly in language learning, where English-only methods show slight gains in early language learning for English language learners, but students in bilingual classes overtake them in later years, due to, according to language theory, a stronger foundation in their primary language. Research on developmental versus skills based approaches to early childhood education have shown similar patterns. Early academic advantages for skills based approaches are lost over the years to longer-term advantages for the developmental approaches(6).

A main reason for this problem is summed up in an old joke I will repeat here:

 It is late evening and a woman sees a man on the street by a lamppost who looks like he is searching for something. She asks him if she can help.

He responds, “Yes, I dropped my keys.” Together they continue to look for a while. Finally, as they are having no luck, she asks him if he can remember, when and where he last had them, so they might narrow their search.

He tells her, “Oh, yes,” points across the street, and says, “I dropped them over there somewhere.”

“Then why are we looking here?”

“The light is better”

Short term designs and standardized test measurement is the lamppost. It is very difficult to carry out long-term research. It is expensive, so funding is difficult. The researcher must commit to the long haul. They may need a team who can also commit this time. The “subjects” are hard to keep track of as years go by. And the variables get more complex as time passes. At the end of a school term, or of our test of the method, we can be fairly sure that the large majority of our subjects will be right there in the same place for us to administer our tests.

Standardized tests are given to virtually all students, can easily be compared across students, classes, schools, even districts or possibly states. Even if the standardized tests are particular to the study, they tend to be quicker, easier and less expensive to administer than other measures. They are also easier to run statistical analyses on.

However, what good does it do for me to know that “such and such” a reading series or teaching method led to higher test scores for these second graders, if there is no evidence that these higher test scores actually lead to an adult who reads, understands what they reads, and knows how to use what they read to better their life and their society?

As they say “Garbage in, garbage out.” All of the advantages of time and money and statistical reliability do not matter if they will not really answer the questions we want answers to. If what I want to know is: will what am studying lead to a better educated citizen?, then I better make sure that the tools I use to measure that really do measure it.

Now I come back to my original discussion of what counts as research by the government. The federal government defines research only as the experimental design. This design lends itself well to short-term research using quantifiable scores, such as those of standardized tests. The second issue—what counts as evidence—is also more restricted. It is especially difficult to get long term research to fit the experimental design, as following exactly matched groups over years becomes more and more difficult as time passes. Many questions cannot be studied using matched samples, as in many instances it would be unethical to randomly assign students to different groups. Should we randomly retain some students and not others to see the effects of this policy? In other cases, it is impossible. For instance we cannot clone a school or district and recreate the exact same situation if we want to understand policy or curriculum decisions made on that scale. What makes for an educated and successful citizen is not always easily quantifiable, and definitions vary. Therefore, the narrow type of research the government allows also restricts what types of questions even get asked by the research.

It is my contention that although the experimental design in research is commendable and valuable where practical, it can never be the only model of research to answer the complex questions about human learning and behavior. To answer such questions we must use the broader definition of research that virtually all scientific disciplines understand.

If we want to answer important questions in education we are going to have to find a way to fund long term research, and use more complex measures of success that are more closely aligned with the actual skills and knowledge that successful members of society need and use.

Endtnotes:

1. Debra Viadero, “AERA Stresses Value of Alternatives to ‘Gold Standard’,” Education Week, April 18 2007.

2. Deborah W Meier, “Needed: Thoughtful Research for Thoughtful Schools,” in Issues in Education Research, ed. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann and Lee Shulman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999).

3. Alfie Kohn, The Case against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000), Deborah W Meier, In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), Susan Ohanian, One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999).

4. Elaine M. Garan, “What Does the Report of the National Reading Panel Really Tell Us About Teaching Phonics,” Language Arts 79, no. 1 (2001).

5. Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier, “School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students,”  (Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education, 1997), Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier, “A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students’ Long-Term Academic Achievement: Executive Summary,”  (Washington, DC: Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence, 2002).

6. Rebecca A. Marcon, “Moving up the Grades: Relationship between Preschool Model and Later School Success,” Early Childhood Research & Practice 4, no. 1 (2002), Jeanne E. Montie, Zongping Xiang, and Lawrence J. Schweinhart, “Preschool Experience in 10 Countries: Cognitive and Language Performance at Age 7.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 21, no. 3 (2006): 313-31.

School Reform: Where is the Evidence?

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Under the Bush administration, the rhetoric is that the decisions we make in schools should be based on “scientific” evidence. Not only must it be “scientific,” according to the administration, but it must be based on the controlled experimental design, which is actually just one acceptable form of evidence within the scientific paradigm. No actual scientific field relies exclusively on this one form. However, putting that aside, even accepting a broader range of scientific evidence, the basic tenets mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) are not based on any empirical evidence, controlled experiment or not(1), and many, as I will outline, are in contradiction to accepted educational and organizational theory.

What are some of these mandates that I am referring to? High stakes testing, external tutoring programs, state takeover or charter school reform for “failing schools,” are the ones I will discuss in this column.

High Stakes testing has been around for a long time, and each time it is used it tends to show gains in test scores in the early years which quickly flatten out. Long term educational improvement of any sort has never been demonstrated. NCLB is different in that the stakes are quite higher than in previous reforms, so many argue that previous evidence(2) is not valid. However, the best that that leaves us with is an untested experiment on a massive scale, affecting nearly every public school child in the nation. I won’t even discuss here the massive amounts of monies going to the corporations the make these tests. They get money for developing the test, then selling the tests to the schools, and then for scoring the tests. Then they develop curriculum to help students prepare for these very tests that they design so schools can boost their test scores.

Another major feature of NCLB is that schools that do not reach the required test score goals must offer children tutoring that is done by an outside agency. The theory is that if the school failed the children, they are obviously not qualified to help these children. There is some logic to that theory. However, again, there is no evidence that outside agencies, as a generic category, are better equipped to help failing students than the public schools themselves(3). The administration did not first pilot this approach in some places, and test it against in-house support to demonstrate that it was more effective. Therefore, this mandate is another massive untested experiment, moving enormous Federal dollars from the public to the private sector.

If schools continue to fail to reach mandated test score goals (with rising moving targets—every year a larger percentage of students are required to “pass” the test), then they can be taken over by the state or turned over to private charter agencies. What is the record on this? School districts have been taken over by city or state governments in the past. In California, Compton, and recently Oakland have been the targets of such take-overs. In neither case have there been any significant changes in the education students receive. State governments, not surprisingly, have shown no more capability for creating positive educational changes than the local bodies they replaced. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a theory to support why one would expect them to(4).

Charter schools, which began as an experiment in the early 1990s, and quickly spread across states and cities nationwide, were based on a theory that more freedom from state regulations and forcing local public schools to compete for students would create educational innovations and improvements. This is based on the market theory. This is a reasonable theory, especially in a country whose economy is based on such a theory. In fact many charter schools are exciting places, with innovative pedagogy showing successful results. However, after extensive research, charter schools as a class, have shown no higher test scores than their public school counterparts(5).

Another possibility in some states is the use of vouchers to send children to private schools. However, again, if you hold demographic variables constant, even private schools show no better results on standardized test scores than do public schools(6). If we are supposedly doing this reform in the name of accountability, private schools have no accountability either to state governments nor their local constituencies. There are no public school boards nor open meetings laws required of private schools, nor are their financial records open to public or government scrutiny. Once more, this aspect of NCLB is based on a theory which current evidence does not support. In most states private schools do not have to administer the same standardized tests that NCLB holds public schools accountable to. While public schools, who are answerable to the public directly, are not trusted without such tests, for some reason, private schools do not need to demonstrate any such accountability.

Is there evidence for other ideas? There is something that schools that have made a significant and dramatic difference for students have in common—local control. Some of the most effective schools are those where the people closest to the kids—the teachers, parents, and community—are actively involved in deciding the mission and curriculum of the school. It appears to matter less what that curriculum and vision is than that it was made by those closest to the kids. Virtually all of the reforms being called for at the sate and national level are based on a profound mistrust of those very people. Yet it should be obvious that when people feel coerced they are less likely to work efficiently. When people feel empowered, they are most effective. The evidence bears this out. Find a school that has significantly beaten the odds with low-income and minority students, and I’ll bet it did not happen based on external mandates! Progressive examples such as the Central Park East schools in New York, as well as models based on more conservative ideas, such as the KIPP academy and Core Knowledge demonstrate this. Not only that, but it honors our democratic ideals. Democracy is based on  the absurd idea that all citizens are capable of making the important decisions in the public sphere and should do so an equal basis. While it is absurd, no one yet has devised a better alternative.

In terms of a particular approach to learning, there have been a number of longitudinal studies showing the success of progressive and developmental approaches to teaching and learning. These are forms of teaching and learning that are the opposite of the scripted teacher-centered approaches mandated in schools that fail to meet the standardized test score targets required under NCLB. The famous Eight-year study, started in the 1930s, which followed students from their freshmen year in high school to four years after graduation found that those in the progressive schools did better on all significant measures, both in high school and in college, than their matched counterparts(7). The more extensive the reforms, the more impressive the results. Despite these dramatic findings, the public mood had shifted away from such innovations, and the results were ignored after they were published. Another more recent example is the Central Park East schools (both elementary and secondary schools) in New York City, and their resounding success of working with poor minority students in East Harlem, with 80 to 90% of the graduates getting into and being successful in four year colleges. Yet these schools are under constant attack to discontinue their innovative approaches(8). A couple of recent studies of preschool practices, comparing developmental child-centered approaches against academic skills based approaches have shown better academic and social outcomes in later elementary grades for those in the child-centered developmental programs. One of these was done in Florida(9), and the other an international study covering over 5,000 students in 1,800 preschool setting in 10 different countries(10).

The reforms of NCLB are based on a premise that those closest to the children should not be trusted to make the important decision about their education. The teachers should not be trusted to make the important decisions about how to teach the children, and the parents should not be trusted to govern the schools locally. It is based on a theory that unless coerced, these parties will not act in the best interest of their own children. It is based on a theory that unless coerced, children are not interested in learning. This is in direct contradiction to the basis of democracy. Democracy is based on the theory that no one is better positioned nor has more of a right to make decisions over their own lives than those most directly effected.

As children spend twelve or more years incarcerated in these institutions called schools, which are becoming more and more anti-democratic, our children are losing the one public place where they might learn what it means to be citizens in a democracy, where they might experience democracy in practice.

If you believe as I do that NCLB is counter to the educational needs of our children and the democratic needs of our society, at a minimum let your state and federal representatives know, as NCLB is up for reauthorization very soon. Unless they hear otherwise, these legislatures will take the politically safe course and not make any significant changes. If you would like to be more involved see my links page for some organizations that are working actively on this issue, such as The Forum for Education and Democracy, and FairTest.

Endnotes

1. Gerald W. Bracy, “Things Fall Apart: NCLB Self-Destructs,” Phi Delta Kappan, February 2007.

2. A.L. Armrein and David C. Berliner, “High-Stakes Testing, Uncertainty, and Student Learning,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 10, no. 18 (2002).

3. Bracy, “Things Fall Apart: NCLB Self-Destructs.”

4. Kenneth K. Wong and Francis X. Shen, “Measuring the Effectiveness of City and State Takeover as a School Reform Strategy,” Peabody Journal of Education 78, no. 4 (2003).

5. Katrina Bulkley and Jennifer Fisler, “A Decade of Charter Schools: From Theory to Practice,” Educational Policy 17, no. 3 (2003).

6. Sarah Theule Lubienski and Christopher Lubienski, “A New Look at Public and Private Schools: Student Background and Mathematics Achievement,” Phi Delta Kappan, May 2005.

7. Wilford M. Aiken, The Story of the Eight-Year Study (New York: Harper and Row, 1942).

8. David Bensman, Central Park East and Its Graduates: Learning by Heart (New York: Teachers College Press, 2000).

9. Rebecca A. Marcon, “Moving up the Grades: Relationship between Preschool Model and Later School Success,” Early Childhood Research & Practice 4, no. 1 (2002).

10. Jeanne E. Montie, Zongping Xiang, and Lawrence J. Schweinhart, “Preschool Experience in 10 Countries: Cognitive and Language Performance at Age 7,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 21, no. 3 (2006).

What is Education For?

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Our nation is preoccupied with the issue of improving our schools. Claims of falling standards and achievement abound (these claims are dubious if one actually examines the data. Richard Rothstein’s book The Way We Were is an excellent refutation to that claim). Even if one accepts that the educational quality of our schools is lacking (which I accept, even if not the claim that it is declining), an important point is often left out of this issue: What are we educating for?

There appear to be two main goals that drive current educational reforms. Implicit in current reforms is that higher test scores equal better educated citizens. I come to this conclusion since it is only such test scores that are used to rate states, districts, and schools, and even nations as to their educational success. And at that, it is often only test scores in Language Arts and Mathematics that are examined. By relying exclusively on standardized test scores, it is implicitly saying that those are the only important goals. We see the effect of this when other subjects receive little or no attention, as is true in many elementary schools. Subjects such as arts, music, and even social studies and science are often ignored in elementary schools. This is especially true of schools serving the poor and students of color. It has gotten to the point that some schools are doing away with recess, and even being built without play areas (while we regularly read about the obesity epidemic sweeping our country)! It is not only the subjects that are taught, but how they are taught that this goal affects. The ability to think deeply, critically and creatively, to put the knowledge to use, is often ignored, as those skills are not directly tested, and teaching to such abilities is seen as taking away time that could be used to prepare students for the tests. Again, this is especially true for those not from the dominant culture, or those who are poor—those who are more likely to fail the tests.

The second goal is the rhetoric we hear from government, corporate, private think-tanks and media sources. These groups almost exclusively connect educational attainment to the national economy and to personal economic gain. However, even if we agreed with those aims, the claims as to the cause-effect relationship between education and the economy are somewhat questionable. The claim that increased schooling in a developed country improves the economy is not an excepted theory among educational economists. In fact, it is likely to be the reverse. Schooling responds to needs in the economy, and not the the other way around. When the computer industry boomed, lots of students went into the computer sciences. When the bust years came, they didn’t, and those that had often found themselves unemployed. Training more highly qualified engineers will not help them compete with engineers in India who will work for $7,500 a year, at a time when even highly technical jobs can be outsourced.

Will more schooling at least help one individually? There is strong evidence that years of schooling and degree attainment is highly correlated to income. There is some evidence that at least part of that correlation is not causal—that is, it may be that those who come form higher socioeconomic backgrounds are likely to have both more schooling and higher incomes, and it is their background that is the cause. However, even if we accept the premise that it is causal, at least to some degree, it is not clear that it is the content or quality of schooling that matters. Schooling may simply be a sorting mechanism for employers to screen applicants. This is the meritocracy argument. The best will rise to the station in life that they deserve. It is not clear if the actual knowledge and skills learned in school directly relate to the knowledge and skills needed in the workplace. Ask your doctor how much of medical school was useful? Or a lawyer about law school. Or a teacher about their education courses. Most will tell you that very little was useful, and the real skills were learned on the job. More schooling may be needed in our economy due to the fact that as more people graduate from high school, employers need to up the ante, and require a B.A. to differentiate candidates and reduce the pool. As more people have B.A’s, the same employers start asking for at least an M.A. to apply.

There is considerable debate whether schools do this sorting fairly. There is considerable evidence that again, students of color and the poor suffer discrimination in this system. Even if they don’t, should it be the job of a public institution to sort children for the sake of private employers? Is it the right of the government to force all citizens to take part in this sorting mechanism? Does it serve a compelling public (rather than private) purpose? None come easily to my mind.

Let us now examine the purpose of schooling as giving students the knowledge and skills for employment. Even if schools did do this, should it even be the job of public schools to train workers for private industry? What gives the government the right to compel 13 years of attendance in school during such a precious period in one’s life, if it is solely to meet the needs of the private sector? Why shouldn’t this be an individual choice, paid for either by the families who valued such training or the companies who wanted such workers?

Having read up until now you might think I am questioning the usefulness of public school. You would be wrong. I am questioning the current implied and stated goals. If we look back historically, the arguments for public schooling were made in large part based on two other goals. Going back to Thomas Jefferson, many argued that a democracy required an educated populace that could weigh evidence and make informed decisions. As Dewey said, if we are all the ruling class (which is the assumption of a true democracy) then we all need an education worthy of the ruling class. Anything less would be anti-democratic. Another argument was that in a country made up of people from so many different cultures and backgrounds, we needed a place where they would all become citizens of the United States and learn to accept each other’s differences. As an advocate for democracy, it is these latter goals that I find more convincing.

Such goals imply a different kind of learning and teaching than is common in many public schools. It requires focusing not on the rote learning of basic skills and the memorization of historical and scientific facts, but rather the ability to use those skills and facts to weigh evidence, come to conclusions, better understand one’s world, and even to take action, action that both fulfills one individually but also helps the nation or world improve upon our democratic ideals. We don’t know exactly what knowledge and skills will be needed either for the economy of the future nor to solve the problems that our society will face. We do know it will take the ability to work with others, find the necessary information, and to think both critically and creatively. It will also require tackling consciously and overtly issues of difference; of being able to take on different perspectives, understand other points of view, and to have empathy for those different than oneself. This type of education needs to go beyond the idea that we all should respect each other despite our difference, but to understanding the roots, causes and costs of prejudice and discrimination. It needs to get at not just the past wrongs that have been overcome, but the ongoing problems in our society and the world at large.

It is the goal of educating our youth for their place in a pluralistic democratic society that, for me, is a compelling reason to have a public school system for all of our children.

If you would like to join me in working toward these goals, you might inform yourself about, and join, one or more of the educational reform organizations featured on my Education Links page.

NCLB: Time to Go?

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The so-called No child Left Behind Act is up for renewal in this coming year.

It is time to overturn NCLB. In school districts serving low-income and minority students it is having the effect of turning teachers into automatons who are expected to simply read a script written by text book companies, ignoring their professional knowledge of how to best meet the needs of their students, and even ignoring the responses of this teaching on the students. This is not only ineffective teaching, it is cruel to the students, as it builds a relationship where students feel ignored, and teachers feel frustrated. I see many teachers becoming cynical and angry. The best teachers are, or are considering, leaving the field, as they feel this is not teaching. What is the point of having highly qualified teachers, if they are not allowed to use that knowledge to make meaningful decisions about the teaching of their students?

The effect this curriculum is having on these students is to reduce the fare of learning to out-of-context arithmetic and language arts instruction, geared directly to test testing. Not only has it reduced what it means to be educated solely to these subjects, but even there it is likely to result in a poor understanding of these subjects. As multiple choice tests cannot do a decent job of testing one’s problems solving, critical thinking, or ability to analyze, many of the most important aspects of what it means to be a good reader or mathematician, not to mention just a well-educated adult are lost and ignored. This one-size-fits-all curriculum imposed on children in districts that cannot easily meet the test score bar is demotivating for most students. The are likely to learn that these subjects are boring and meaningless, not too mention difficult, whose sole purpose is to subject them to a test at the end of the year (actually every 6 weeks as well, to use as benchmarks)—a test whose result they often interpret as evidence of their own stupidity.

As much research on learning has shown, the relationship between teachers and students matters as much, if not more than, the curriculum or methods for ensuring student success, especially for low-income and minority students. The scripted curriculum being mandated by many school districts in the name of NCLB has created classrooms that are even more alienating, not just in terms of the relevance of the curriculum but also in terms of how teachers are encouraged to treat students as test scores rather than human being.

While it is important for schools to be held accountable, this is not real accountability. This situation is similar to what happens when corporations focus solely on short term profits. When they only look at profits, they often ignore issues such as the quality of the product itself, the treatment of employees, or the effects on the environment—or even the effects on long term profits!  When we look solely at the test scores from multiple choice standardized tests that measure only the smallest portion of a rich curriculum, we miss and ignore much of what it means to be well-educated, and in fact discourage schools from developing anything else for their students. Just as a corporation’s focus on short term profits harms the long term stability and health of the company (as we saw in the Enron scandal, just to name the most infamous), focusing on short term test results equally harms the long term learning of students. Teaching for deep understanding, which sets the foundation for a long-term understanding of the material, is often sacrificed for a shallow knowledge that allows the teacher to “cover” all the material that will be on the test just well enough so the students can pass it. However, such understanding is often short-lived, and not sufficient for building further understanding of the subject. In the later grades the student pays for this when the material requires a deep and solid understanding of the previous material. And then band-aids, such as remedial classes, a longer day, and summer school—all basically repeating what didn’t work the first time—is offered as the solution.

While our educational system is far from perfect, the solution will not come from simple minded quick fix solutions. It certainly cannot come from those who are far removed from the reality of the schools and from the actual children. Let us bring the decisions of teaching and learning in our school back to where they belong in a democracy—into the hands of the community where the children live and out of the hands of Federal and State politicians.

Below are some places and organizations that are taking action to reform or abolish NCLB:

Both major teacher unions:

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) petition for the reform of NCLB:
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/NCLBletsgetitright/

National Education Association (NEA) has an online petition for fully funding and reforming NCLB. http://capwiz.com/nea/issues/alert/?alertid=7400206

School reform organizations:

Fairtest has an online petition calling for reforming NCLB: http://www.fairtest.org/petition/start.php?id=1

Educator Roundtable petition for the repeal of NCLB
http://www.petitiononline.com/1teacher/petition.html

No Child Left: ” A site advocating a sound approach to school improvement.” Full of information advocating the NCLB be repealed or amended.

Students Against Testing “SAT is a nationwide network of young people who resist high stakes standardized testing and support real-life learning.”

Plus:

This online petition, begun by educator and author Susan Ohanian calls for the dismantling of NCLB
http://www.petitiononline.com/1teacher/petition.html

The Privatization of Public Schooling

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The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was promoted as the savior to a failing public school system. However I am going to make the argument here that those who wrote the actual legislation must have had in mind the dismantling of public education, and to move our country’s educational system into the private sphere. NCLB can be seen as one facet of a movement to privatize as much of our society as possible. It is consistent with a view of people as consumers rather than as citizens. Democracy becomes equated with individual choice of what to “purchase,” be it products, services or elected officials (in contrast to the idea of democracy as people working as a community making decision together). Those of this view see public entities as interfering with the advantages of a competitive system based on monetary profit/loss.

students as money

There are very few public spheres left in our country. Two notable exceptions are libraries (which are rare and often inaccessible in poorer communities) and our schools—places where people of all walks of life have theoretical equal access and a place to interact as equals. While public schools have always been an arena of political controversy and under criticism for not meeting their promise, it is within the last 25 years that a full blown attack has been taking place through the mass media to discredit them completely. The 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” can probably be considered the turning point in moving general public opinion to view our public schools in a negative light. While I will not go into the history here, NCLB can in many ways be traced back to a series of Federal policies that followed from the “Nation at Risk” report.

One way in which NCLB is being used to discredit public schools is through the use of the term “failing school” for schools whose students do not reach the target test scores as mandated by NCLB. The federal government has set arbitrary goals as to what percentage of students must score at the “proficient” level on standardized tests (and what is called proficient is to some degree arbitrarily set by state legislatures, and varies from state to state). Not only must a certain percentage reach that score but that percentage within each subgroup of the school must reach that goal. If even one subgroup fails to reach the goal, the whole school is deemed to be a “failing school.” How much progress the school has made toward reaching the goal is not counted. A school that the previous year was way below the target and made it almost to the cut-off is a failure, while another school that was just a fraction below and moved up to a fraction above is not. A school can even move down and not be considered a failure, as long as a sufficient percentage of students score above the cut-off.

Furthermore, it is a moving target. What is considered successful one year is a failure the next. Each year the percentage of students needing to meet the “proficient” level is raised until by the year 2014 every student in every category must score at the proficient level – be they second language learners, learning disabled, or for whatever reason unable to score well (they had a stomach ache?). This is, of course, an unattainable goal, at which point basically every school in the nation would be considered a “failure.” Since the greatest predictor of test scores is parental income and educational level, most schools that serve poor and minority students are already being labeled as failures, and being forced to give up local control of their curriculum. In the meantime, schools that serve higher income students can generally meet the test score goals and avoid the sanctions (at least for now).

As schools take drastic measures to boost test scores, they often turn the curriculum into full-time test preparation activities. Many parents may notice that their children enjoy school less, and find that this is not an atmosphere in which they want their children to spend 6 hours a day for 180 days a year. Those with the financial or other means often move their children into private schools or choose to home school their children. This again moves more children out of the public school system, which further reduces the number of people with a direct interest in maintaining them, especially among those who are likely to have political power. These also tend to be the students most likely to do well on these tests, making it even more likely that the school will “fail” the test.

As more and more schools get labeled “failure” under this law, those opposed to public education will say, “See, we tried everything we could, and this proves that the public school really are a failed experiment.”

A second way in which NCLB is an attempt to privatize pubic education is through the measures that schools must succumb to when they are labeled “failures.” At first they must hire consultants. These consultants generally come from the for-profit private sector, and are often connected to text book publishers. A school that continues to fail may be turned into a charter school, often run by for-profit companies, in those states that allow charter schools. Failing schools can be required to offer private tutoring to students who do not reach “proficient” scores on the tests (reducing funds available for improving or even maintaining the resources at the school). Also, these schools can be pressured or forced to use programs from a select list of publishers that are endorsed by the federal government, possibly giving up locally produced and developed programs. In this way, while the school may be public in name, many or most functions, and control over the curriculum, may have been given over to for-profit companies.

In this way the law actually has the effect of taking funds away from the schools that need it most, as schools that are labeled “failing” must spend their money on these outside consultants and to pay for private after school tutoring for the students who fail the tests, further reducing the already scarce resources to provide a decent education for the population as a whole. This does not even include the enormous funds that are required to conduct, purchase and score the tests and the test preparation materials.

This adds up to more and more schools being labeled “failure” in the mass media, more and more functions of schools being privatized, and more families of means choosing private or home-schooling for their children.

What is wrong with privatizing education? The question is do we want the educational decisions—the decisions about what we think it is important for our children to learn, and in what environment they will do that learning—being made by private corporations for private gain, or conversely by public entities, in which the public has a say, for the public good?