What if every child in America got a high-quality education? What if they could choose any school, be it in their own neighborhoods or elsewhere, so they can get the curriculum and instruction they need for success in school and in life? What if every school was a culture of genius in which good-to-great teaching, strong, entrepreneurial leadership and rigorous, college preparatory instruction useful for white- or blue-collar work was the norm? What if parents could be active decision-makers in shaping the education their children get — even to toss out teachers and managers who aren’t making the grade?
These “what ifs” should be at the heart of the effort to reform American public education — and end nearly two centuries of practices and ideas that don’t work for children now (and probably didn’t work all that well back then). And solving those problems should be pursued unabashed, unashamed and unafraid of taking on defenders of practices not worth protecting.
Amid all the debates over whether teachers unions should force school districts into collective bargaining, and arguments over testing and cheating, it is easy to forget what it at stake for our children and for this nation. In many ways, that is what defenders of the status quo want. Getting tangled into the weeds of debate serves the purpose of continuing practices that serve allies who teach in classrooms, run schools, sit on school boards and teach in ed schools.
When folks like USC’s Mike Rose declares that reformers are too busy crafting a narrative in which they are taking on problems that haven’t been solved, they are trying to take eyes off the reality that the practices and ideas for which they have long advocated have been abject failures. When they argue that poverty is the underlying cause of academic failure, they are attempting to ignore the sterling examples of schools and teachers who help even the poorest kids succeed. And when opponents of school reform argue about the expertise and teaching experience of reformers, they are trying to bog down honest, thoughtful discussions about why we must reform how America recruits, trains and pays teachers.
The obfuscation isn’t always effective. But it does play to the ignorance of people who may sense that American public education is in failure, but don’t know why. It is also effective in rallying like-minded adults who have benefited the most from a system in which mediocrity in instruction, curricula, leadership and thinking is not only tolerated, but encouraged and sometimes, publicly celebrated.
When these efforts at sidestepping happen, reformers must remember to return the conversation to the real issues at hand: The fact that every hour, 150 kids drop out of school and into dire futures. That one-third of fourth-graders in this country — and half of those who are black or Latino — are functionally illiterate and will never catch up academically. That 13 percent of America’s students — more-often boys than girls — are diagnosed as learning disabled, even though most of them have issues that are related to reading and not to cognitive ability. That America’s students lag behind the rest of the world, ranking 24th in math on the PISA exam of international student achievement. That the presence of dropout factories starves our communities — including our urban neighborhoods — educationally, economically and socially. These few facts alone demand that educational malpractice and neglect can no longer be tolerated or allowed to continue.
Reformers must then make the strong case for why the solutions they offer can work — and point to the examples of this. They should argue strongly for Parent Power, for overhauling school funding, for stronger accountability, for more-rigorous curriculum and for revamping our teaching corps. They must argue for expanding the pool of talented, entrepreneurial minds to come into education — and expanding their opportunities to develop new ways to help all children succeed. And they should forcefully declare that there will be no more waiting for Sputnik moments — and that reform of American public education will happen by all means.
Most importantly, they should be unabashed and unashamed in their advocacy. This doesn’t mean engaging in similar kinds of obfuscation. Nor does it mean advocacy without self-reflection or internal criticism. After all, healthy, muscular advocacy is also thoughtful and honest. What it means is being proud to say that they want better lives for all kids and will not spare no quarter in achieving this vision.
School reformers should then point to this reality: That those who defend the practices and traditions that have rendered American public education a bastion of academic and social failure suffer from a problem of logical dissonance. That they ignore the systemic problems that have led to the fostering of persistent dropout factories that endanger the futures of children (and are costly to families and taxpayers alike). That they ignore evidence — including January’s report from the Center for American Progress — that more money doesn’t equal better student achievement. That they ignore gender achievement gaps — including the fact that half of young black and Latino men will never graduate from high school, and that a quarter of high school seniors from college-educated families read Below Basic proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. And that they hold on to failed theories — from arguing that socioeconomic and racial integration is the silver bullet for improving student performance, to defending quality-blind reverse-seniority layoff rules — when they could actually advocate for better systems of educating children.
Let’s be clear: The Diane Ravitches, Randi Weingartens, Richard Kahlenbergs, Mike Roses and Dennis Van Roekels have so thoroughly embraced a limited, impoverished view of what education can be for so long that they don’t know that there is something better (or in the case of Ravitch, who actually knows better, more interested in attaining the status of enfant terrible). They are shamelessly abetted by folks such as the NAACP’s Benjamin Todd Jealous, who are too afraid to challenge their own theories or the biases of their aging members. Their thinking is as cheap and dusty and mediocre as the Kentucky Derby glasses my dear departed grandma stored in the china closet in her home in South Ozone Park, next to the grander, splendid and useful porcelain of ideas espoused yesteryear by giants such as Charles Eliot (who argued that college prep curricula was a great idea), and the new silverware of ideas advanced by the Howard Fullers of the school reform movement today. And, like those chintzy commemorative glasses, their stale theories don’t belong in anyone’s intellectual china closet or even on the table of debate over reforming education.
The school reform movement has a grand, inclusive and positive vision for helping all children. And that vision should be advocated furiously, shamelessly, zealously and without giving quarter. Our kids deserve no less.