As the editor of a magazine dedicated to coverage and advocacy of school reform, I have to balance the line between fiery rhetoric and thoughtful analysis. After all, while passionate argument will rally like-minded people, it is clear, data-driven reporting and editorializing that will win over people who may be sympathetic to one’s positions, but aren’t ready to commit to one side or another. Data is great for shedding light on what is happening on the ground and can even generate anger and indignation.
But bomb-throwing, bombast, even plain and blunt talk — such as Virginia education czar Gerard Robinson’s statement that American public education has an “achievement crap problem” — is also needed. In fact, it may be needed even more. As former National PTA CEO Byron Garrett once pointed out, people already have a sense of what is wrong. What people need are statements that showcase the nation’s educational crisis in uncompromising, light-shedding terms. Same with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s declaration yesterday that “teaching can no longer be the only profession where you have no rewards for excellence and no consequences for failure to perform”. But Liam Julian of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute declares that Christie’s rhetoric, along with that from former D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee (and quite likely, Robinson’s own harsh words) is “abrasive”, “unsettling” and “Manichean”. From where he sits, the language should be toned down lest teachers union publicists use it to rile up their own troops.
Certainly it is interesting that Julian himself used some pretty harsh language to describe Christie and Rhee (ironic, don’t you think?). More importantly, Julian misses the importance of rhetoric in crystallizing a debate and in forcing issues that need to be out there for all to see.
Julian makes a demand for less zealotry as if defenders of traditional public education — including the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — are somehow going to be won over by meek talk (and will respond in kind). This isn’t exactly so. Status quo defenders hold the positions they do not because they can be convinced, but because their vision of what education should be, along with their self-interests, directly conflicts with the aims of the school reform movement. They are defending their positions fiercely, with as much fiery talk from their side as reformers get from the Rhees and Christies. In a political and ideological battle, there is going to be harsh rhetoric and it is to be expected.
School reformers are not likely to reach common ground with traditionalists when it comes to this conflict of visions. It isn’t worth the time. So reformers can’t simply talk calmly; they must talk with fire, with a little bombast and with fire. This is in the best tradition of past movements, including the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s (when the smooth rhetoric of Martin Luther King came together with the fiery oratory of Malcolm X to advance liberty for African-Americans) and the abolitionist movement of a decade earlier. There is, in fact, no reform movement that was ever won with a pitcher of sweet tea.
Julian also fails to consider the urgency of this moment. With 1.3 million kids dropping out every year, and millions more suffering from educational malpractice and neglect, the time for niceties is over. When the kids suffering are your own — or kids coming from the same neighborhoods, sharing the same skin tones and emerging from the same economic backgrounds — then this whole anti-zealotry argument doesn’t fly one bit. Julian can easily argue against zealotry because it isn’t his kin that are subject to low-quality education.
Let’s be blunt: As a player within the Beltway with greater access to data on school and teacher quality than the average person (and who rubs shoulders with some of the players on the other side) Julian has a few more options than the rest of the child-bearing adults who are or will become parents. To parents whose kids are doomed to attend dropout factories and for taxpayers looking at billions spent on education for little gain — neither of whom will actually meet a teachers union president in their lifetimes — Christie’s “unsettling” words sum up the problem point blank. They’re in no mood for the cool talk Julian desires; these are the only kids these parents have, they want the best for them, and they want all that opposes their efforts to get their kids a high-quality education to get out the way.
The reality is that it is as haphazard for a child to get a high-quality education now as it was during my grandmother’s childhood during the Great Depression. This is especially true for our poorest kids who have few options in escaping the worst public education has to offer. When the quality in teaching instruction can change simply based on the classroom in which a child lands or the zip code in which they live, you can’t react to it with calm When a system of compensation and performance management continually keeps low-quality teachers in classrooms while failing to recognizing the work of high-quality instructors, you can’t offer milquetoast bromides. And when you have folks such as Diane Ravitch, Randi Weingarten and Dennis Van Roekel opposing any meaningful use of data to improve teacher quality because it may make their colleagues and allies uncomfortable, smooth talking won’t suffice.
We need a revolution, not an evolution, in American public education. And you don’t get a revolution just by talking calmly to the opposition; even William F. Buckley Jr. (and Thomas Paine) would tell Julian that. You use all the rhetorical, political and idea-based tools at one’s disposal and go hard, deep and strong. In short, you need a little bit of Christie’s zealotry and you need some nice research papers. The battle won’t be won with just the latter.
