Tag Archives: democracy and education

If I were in charge…

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People sometimes ask me what I think needs to be done with the schools. This is really a two part question for me. One part is the policy side—what should or should or should not be required. The other part of the question is what are my ideas of what a good school and good teaching look like, which does not imply I believe in mandating those ideas even if I could. For this blog I will look at the former, and discuss the latter in my following blog.

miketest4What I would change is the mandating of curriculum (so called Standards). The mandating of standards for education in a democracy can only be justified in the case of an overwhelming consensus on such standards. There is no evidence for such a consensus, and lots of evidence that these is considerable controversy over both what such a curriculum should look like and whether there should be one at all. While I have my views on what I think all children should learn, I do not see it as my, or anyone else’s place to impose those beliefs on others, much less an entire nation.

Along with that is we need to get rid of high stakes mandated standardized testing. Standardized tests have so many problems, not the least of which is that they impose a standardized curriculum. If a certain test is required , and there are high stakes for how one does on that test, then teachers must teach to it, and students must gear themselves to it as well. That means standardized curriculum. Standardized tests are also, by definition, culturally biased—they have to be normed, which means an automatic bias to the dominant group. That is just a fact of psychometrics. And, as the test makers have admitted, their reliability for individuals is not all that great, and yet they are used to judge individual students. I also do not accept their validity for much more than a test taking skills, schools skills, and one’s zip code.

What I do support is a strong public school system. One thing such a system needs is at the very least equalized funding, and really more funding is need for those who live in poverty and have other strikes against them in life to at least begin to equalize some of the built in advantages those that are well to do and of the dominant culture can give easily to their kids without schools.

I also would not allow schools supported with public funds to select students. The only selection that can be justified is to balance in terms of demographics to more equally represent the community. Such balances do matter. It does matter that we are raised and schooled with those that represent the larger society. Schools of choice are great if the choice is the choice of the students and the parents and not of the schools. One way charter schools often get around this is counseling students out with such phrases as “Your child would/does not fit here.” I would ask of anyone stating that, “Do you have a better school for my child than this one?” If they cannot honestly find a better fit for that child, one that all parties agree to, then they have no place making such statements.

I would give local schools and localities autonomy over what and how to teach. But they would have to publicly justify their decisions, allow for public input and make their results public. What kind of results would vary, but again, they need to justify why they think the results they have used demonstrate a well educated democratic citizen. There would need to be some sort of democratic governance, but that can look different in different places.

These are the main things I see that are justifiable at the national or state level. Others you can think of?

The second part of the question is what do I think good teaching and schooling look like, which I will explore in my next blog.

School Deform

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Regarding the current moves of so called school “reform” at the national level. The aspect of this is toward a nationally standardized curriculum (i.e. Common Core). And it is standardization, not standards that are being mandated—make no mistake about it. Standards refer to the quality of something. There is little about quality in the national curriculum—rather what is mandated is the content. The only mandate about quality is about competition—that students have to score above certain cut off scores (and teachers being paid according to those scores). But scores do not equal quality—they equal quantity. These scores tell us virtually nothing about the qualities of the work that students (or teachers) can perform, certainly not about work that matters beyond testing.

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What mandated curriculum means is that what we want from public schools is a standardized citizenry. It really is that simple. We cannot teach innovation, creativity, and certainly not democratic citizenship in a school system where one answers to test scores on a curriculum to which those carrying out and engaging in that curriculum have virtually no say.

Those that are enacting this know that those with resources have a way out—schools for the rich still allow for creativity and self governance. That is what the privatization movement, along with the charter school movement is about (at least in part). This, as we know of everything else that is privatized, leads to a system in which the quality is based on one’s ability to pay for it. Those with the most resources can and do pay for schools that still allow for creativity, choice and abundant resources.

So really, the question is simple—if we want a system that teaches one group of children (and their teachers) to be obedient and standardized, and another group educated to be creative and powerful, then we should continue these current reforms. If we want democracy, then we need to democratize schools, and give them the resources and freedom that the rich seem to feel their own children deserve. It really is that simple. Have we or have we not given up on the idea of democracy?

What is Wrong with Vouchers?

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The rhetoric behind vouchers is that if everyone had vouchers parents could select the best school for their child instead of being forced to go to “government” schools*.

Where does such logic fall apart? There are two main logistical reasons it is really a false promise. One is economic and the other is question of who gets to choose.

The private schools that the elite send their children to cost tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend. I looked up a few progressive private schools and tuition ranged from $20,000 to well over $30,000, more than many private colleges. And the actual amount they spend per pupil is well over the tuition since they raise lots of extra money from alumni. (They also tend to pay their non-unionized teachers significantly less than public schools.)

Since at best the voucher proposals I have seen only pay a small fraction of that, these vouchers will leave the recipients with few real choices without putting out a lot more money. I do not think the public is going to go for vouchers of $20,000+ and have never even heard such figures discussed. If they did, the public education bugets would soar. (And those already in private schools would and should claim they should get the subsidies too). What it would do in effect, at the rates being proposed, is subsidize the middle class and rich to abandon public schools and send their children to private school, and while leaving such choices out of reach financially for the poor.

The other issue is who chooses. Most private schools have selective admission, and limited space. Since unlike public schools they get to choose their students, even if the voucher fully paid for them (which of course it will not), they would still most likely cream the easiest students to teach, leaving the more difficult to teach children in the public schools.

These two factors in combination would end up subsidizing private schools and middle and upper class families at the expense of public schools and the poor that are left in them. This would further segregate our schooling system into the haves and the have-nots.

Since I have never heard voucher proponents either suggest that vouchers should be at the levels necessary to have them cover the full cost of most private schools, nor to force private schools to take those children, I find their arguments disingenuous.

Charter schools, in theory at least, get around both of the above limitations. There is no tuition; schools receive the same funding as the other public schools, and (at least in California) schools cannot select the students. (In reality, though, they often find ways of using other means to “encourage” and “discourage” certain types of students.) So, is this not a solution?

Why I still do not favor even this is that it fundamentally changes the purpose of public schools. Traditionally we have considered the education of the next generation to be a concern of society as a whole. In fact, virtually every society has considered this to be true throughout history. For this reason, locally elected school boards have governed our public schools.

Charter schools and voucher systems make schooling a private consumer choice. In the charter and voucher systems consumers choose among the choices offered them, but have no guaranteed right to have a say about the schooling other than making that choice. Those who do not have children in the schools have no say at all. Private schools are run privately, and do not have to answer to the public. Charter schools usually have to answer for test scores and financial responsibility, but even there it is to the state and not in any direct way to the local public. While charter schools have governing boards, they select their own members of those boards. This gives control of the content of schooling to those who run the schools, often for-profit concerns, but even if not, private concerns of some sort. While our government is not perfect, should I really trust those who have private agendas and do not have to answer to the public to decide the how and what of our next generation’s schooling? Public school boards are elected, and have open meetings; private schools do not have to. Even if the charters do have open meetings, they are often run by national organizations and so are inaccessible and would probably just say, “Don’t send you child here if you don’t like it our agenda.”

Vouchers and charters are about redefining the public as consumers rather than citizens, which is part of a larger corporate agenda to destroy public institutions and the limit the power of the public.

For the above (and other) reasons, I see truly public schools as the only answer for those committed to a democratic society.

*Read between the lines the implication that anything the government does must be poor quality. Yet since parents in the suburbs and rich areas are perfectly happy with their public schools, why is it only the public schools that the poor kids go to that seem to be failing? “Government” schools for the rich and middle class are fine it seems—as long as they don’t have to share them with the poor.

Common Core

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I have been hearing from many friends who work as K-12 teachers, as well as some teacher educator colleagues here in California, that they are excited to see the coming of the Common Core standards. They see in them a move away from an emphasis on teaching by rote and a move toward emphasizing higher order thinking skills. I truly hope that they are right about this. A shift in balance from a preponderance of rote and conformist styles of teaching to more emphasis on creativity and the other aspects of what are called the higher order thinking skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy is needed.

On the other hand, I have been hearing some critiques from other colleagues, especially early childhood educators, about some of the specific standards that they say are developmentally inappropriate. One of those that I hear mentioned often is having young children doing more expository reading and writing.

However, what I want to address here is that regardless of the specifics of the content of the new Common Core standards, they are actually a continuation of what I see as a dangerous trend in the educational policies of this nation.

Common Core standards are now nationally mandated standards. In order to justify such a mandate several assumptions have to be accepted. One is that a lack of uniformity in the curriculum nationwide is part of the problem in today’s education. Such standardized curriculum have often been the mark of totalitarian governments—we used to make fun of how in the Soviet Union on a certain day at a certain time every fourth grader in that nation would be studying the same thing. Is this what we need?

The argument for national standards is that many nations that outscore us on international standardized tests have national standards. First off this connection breaks one of the first rules of research—confusing correlation with causation. Furthermore, other nations that don’t have national standards also beat us, and we beat many that do have them. Not to mention all the problems with comparing the quality of educational systems based on those tests (e.g. who is being tested in each country is not comparable, and is what is being compared what really matters?). Also the meaning of national standards varies enormously. In many countries they are just a general guideline, much like the California frameworks used to be.

The other argument for national standards is that standardization means everyone gets an equal education. The problem, according to this argument, is that in communities serving the poor the children get a watered down curriculum and national standards will mean the poor get the same education as everyone else. This assumes many things—that we want all students to end up the same, that equal inputs equals equal outputs, that as long as the standards are the same, all other differences for rich a poor kids are erased (opportunities beyond school, resources, nutrition, not to mention funding, as we have the least equal school funding of any industrialized nation in the world).

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However, the main issue that I want to discuss here is the assumption of a national consensus on how children learn and what they should learn. In a totalitarian state or dictatorship, the right of the State to dictate such matters is assumed. However, in a democracy, to mandate something nationally should only happen in cases where there is a strong national consensus. Even if there were a majority opinion, such a mandate would just be a form of tyranny of the majority.

Do we have a national consensus on what children should learn and how they should learn it? To many people, at first glance people seem to think it is obvious. We teach kids reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Then I guess history, science, and social studies. But, is there really any such consensus? They have to learn to be fluent in reading and writing, and to know algebra, and the important facts of history and science.

But what does it mean to be fluent in reading and writing? Who says algebra is that important? What are the facts of history and science that are most important? And then there is how do we teach these things, and how do we know if they were learned?

Given that there are major debates on each of the above regularly, it is clear we do not have any actual consensus. Ask a variety of friends regarding how schools should teach, what they should teach, and what the main goal of schools should be, and I bet you will get a wide variety of answers. And that is your friends—once you start asking those in different communities, of different political, religious and cultural persuasions, the diversity increases.

If you ask the leading educational experts of today, you will probably get even less consensus. There is still huge debate among educational theorists about approaches to education. Direct Instruction versus constructivist and discovery approaches. What content is most important. How we measure success. It is just for that reason that most standards have been long comprehensive lists. To reach consensus, the committees making the standards just all accept each other’s ideas.

Now let us look at some things we do know about learning. As all of us notice, children always tend to want to be and act like the important people in their lives, imitating those they see as successful—especially those they want to and think they can be like. We learn from the company we keep and the experiences we have, to sum up and simplify the theories of such giants in learning theory such as Bandura, Vygotsky and Piaget.

Democracy is only partially a set of rules and procedures for making decision and electing representatives. More centrally, it is a way of thinking, a habit of mind. Therefore if we want our students to be democratic citizens they need to be socialized in a democratic environment. Are our classrooms or schools such environments? I doubt many could claim they are. A nationally mandated curriculum makes that virtually impossible. States are required by the Federal Government to impose the standards on their schools. This is done through the school districts who then order their principals to carry it out, who then order the teachers to do so, who then impose the curriculum on the students. We thus end up with people all down the line who are powerless except to carry out the designs of those above them. Those who oppose or disagree with the curriculum will either choose not to be part of such a system, learn to keep quiet about their opposition, or will likely lose their jobs. Children cannot learn democracy in such a culture. A few privileged students may learn it elsewhere or perhaps later, but public schools will not be part of that lesson except as a negative example.

If we look at the most successful schools around the country they do not share a common set of beliefs between them, except maybe a belief that all their students can and will succeed. They each have a very different set of ideas about what is important for children to learn and how best to carry it out. There are the Met schools in which students mostly work with an adviser while engaged in internships with minimal formal classes. There is High Tech High, where students develop projects and inventions often using computer technology. There are the schools of Deborah Meier (CPEI, Mission Hill) based on their five habits of mind and using a graduation by portfolio design. There are the KIPP schools based on a philosophy of no excuses, a longer school day and year and family involvement. There are the Montessori schools based on their particular form of pedagogy and curriculum. Waldorf has theirs, and I could go on and on. Each of these schools or programs has a record of success. Those who work at the school often have developed together those standards or at least chosen to be there because of them, as have the families. It is this freedom that we should be striving for in a democratic nation.

Even if you disagree with me about the central purpose of public education being to prepare students for democracy, or if you disagree about how that is achieved—in fact especially if you do not agree—you are in fact bolstering my argument against the Common Core standards (or any set of national standards). That is, we clearly do not have a consensus, and who has the right in a democracy to impose such a consensus by fiat?

Standards-Based Education

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Currently in education there is a lot of talk about standards-based education and the need for high standards. I will discuss in this column where that concept came from and how it has been distorted from its original use.

The idea of a standards-based educational system came from the work of Ted Sizer (1932–2009). In the early 1980s he was involved in a nationwide study of high schools that resulted in his book Horace’s Compromise (and later Horace’s School and Horace’s Hope). In Horace’s Compromise, Sizer describes the work of a typical teacher, and how no matter how willing, well-meaning, and hardworking, the teacher cannot meet the needs of the over hundred students he sees everyday, and how students by the same token cannot do deep quality work while jumping from one subject to another each with a different teacher and mostly sitting there being expected to soak up facts and concepts. In other words, the lack of real quality learning going on in schools was not the fault of teachers or students, but the design of the institution and the compromises teachers and students made with each other to survive in such an institution.

Sizer proposed that instead of students being rewarded for successfully passing a certain number of courses, and being in school a certain amount of time, they be required to demonstrate the knowledge and abilities of a successful high school student through some sort of performance assessment where students actually showed they could apply what they had learned. He also posited certain attributes that schools would need in order to carry out such an education. What came out of that directly from Sizer and likeminded educators was an organization, the Coalition of Essential Schools, which holds a set of ten common principles that schools doing such work adhere to. This organization supports schools in trying to make the changes to move toward applying these ideas. According to Sizer, how schools would measure this success, and how each school would carry out those principles in practice, needed to be locally decided.

This idea of Sizer’s that students should graduate by being measured against a set of standards rather than just seat time became popularized in the 1990s. However, in many ways the concept got turned on its head. For one thing, the term “standards” took on a new meaning from its usual everyday meaning of a level of quality. Instead “standards” became laundry lists of facts and concepts, both broad and discrete, to be learned, as well as levels of performance. These standards, rather than being locally decided as Sizer proposed, have been mandated by State authorities (and now we are moving to National mandates). In most states these laundry lists of standards are typically so long that one expert declared that it would take over 20 years if students were just exposed to the material for each standard, and much more if they were really expected to master them.

The other distortion is that meeting these standards is measured by standardized tests. Performance has come to mean not what Sizer had in mind—the ability to carry out real world tasks that used the knowledge and abilities that schools decided were important—but how one “performs” on a standardized test. These standardized tests are designed to test students’ recall of a random sample of what is on that laundry list of facts and concepts. High standards have come to mean high scores on such tests.

Sizer’s idea was that graduation by standards should free up schools to look and act differently, and free up students to demonstrate their knowledge in a variety of ways. The current practice of “standards” has meant the standardization of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment of the students, as well as their teachers, schools, districts and states by the use of standardized tests.

So far there is no evidence that the current use of standardized curriculum and the high stakes use of standardized tests has improved the quality of education. The achievement gaps these so called reforms were to solve are as great or greater than before these changes. Graduation rates are overall no better, and we do not hear high school teachers claiming that students are coming in more prepared than they used to be. So far the only response the education establishment has offered to this lack of results is that we need more standardization, more tests, and higher stakes.

On the other hand, Sizer’s ideas of standards without standardization have also been tried out, at times with astounding success. One of the first schools to implement Sizer’s ideas was Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS) a public school of choice in New York’s East Harlem. Deborah Meier, building on her work at Central Park East Elementary School, collaborated with Ted Sizer on how to meld his ideas and hers to develop a secondary school on the Coalition principles. They came up with a school where students studied fewer topics, and worked with fewer teachers more intensively. All faculty and administrators worked as advisors who stayed with students over time and met with their advisory group daily. Students took part in internships in real world professional settings. The standards of the school were upheld through a series of portfolios and defenses of those portfolios in front of a committee. Students graduated, not after a prescribed number of years or prescribed number of completed courses, but when they had successfully passed and defended those portfolios. The standards of Central Park East were built around certain “Habits of Mind” that the faculty believed were important in all facets of life and in all disciplines. To a large extent, the demonstration of the use of those habits was the rubric used to decide if the portfolio or defense of the work met the schools standards. The students of CPESS had success at graduating high school and going on to, as well as succeeding in, college far beyond their demographic equivalents in other public high schools in New York (see David Bensman’s fascinating book Central Park East and its Graduates which documents his study of CPESS alumni).

After CPESS, a whole network of such schools sprung up all over New York City, and to some extent nationwide. Schools such as Urban Academy, the International High Schools, the Met schools, High Tech High, and Boston Arts Academy, to name just a few, continue in this tradition of high standards without standardization, of depth of knowledge over coverage, and of the importance of relationships with students as essential to successful education. While each of these school looks very different, in each school one will see students who are passionately following their own interests while being held to a common set of high standards in a non-standardized curriculum. These schools have shown that they help students beat the odds in terms of graduation and getting into college. Even more importantly, these schools produce graduates with positive attitudes toward learning and their ability to shape their own futures and contribute to the larger society.

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.

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.