The Death and Life of the great American School System

Chapter 9, the debate about teacher effectiveness is far from simple. It is not easy to identify the "best teachers." Some economists believe, like Bill Gates, that the best teachers are those who produce the biggest test score gains, so little else matters. Other economists say that a teacher who is "great" one year may not be great the next. Some social scientists question whether student test scores are reliable when used for high-stakes personnel decisions, but Gates apparently was not familiar with these debates. And common sense suggests that any system of measurement that produces a top quartile will also produce three other quartiles.

Prev List Next

When the regulations for the Race to the Top were released in 2009, Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Inst.i.tute described the new federal program as "NCLB 2: The Carrot That Feels Like a Stick." Petrilli liked ideas such as evaluating teachers based in part on test scores, pushing the expansion of charter schools, and expanding alternate routes into teaching. But the heavily prescriptive nature of the program, he said, marked the death of federalism. Instead of asking states for their best ideas, the Obama administration "has published a list of 19 of its its best ideas, few of which are truly "evidence-based," regardless of what President Obama says, and told states to adopt as many of them as possible if they want to get the money. It"s as if a bunch of do-gooders sat together at the NewSchools Venture Fund summit and brainstormed a list of popular reform ideas, and are now going to force them upon the states. (Wait, I think that best ideas, few of which are truly "evidence-based," regardless of what President Obama says, and told states to adopt as many of them as possible if they want to get the money. It"s as if a bunch of do-gooders sat together at the NewSchools Venture Fund summit and brainstormed a list of popular reform ideas, and are now going to force them upon the states. (Wait, I think that is is how this list got developed.)" how this list got developed.)"43 Now that the ideas promoted by the venture philanthropies were securely lodged at the highest levels of the Obama administration, policymakers and journalists listened carefully to Bill Gates. In a 2009 interview with Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post Washington Post, Gates signaled a new direction for his foundation. Hiatt wrote, "You might call it the Obama-Duncan-Gates-Rhee philosophy of education reform." It also was the Bloomberg-Klein-Broad philosophy of education reform. Gates said that his foundation intended to help successful charter organizations such as KIPP replicate as quickly as possible and to invest in improving teacher effectiveness. Gates a.s.serted that there was no connection between teacher quality and such things as experience, certification, advanced degrees, or even deep knowledge of one"s subject matter (at least below tenth grade). So, he suggested, the money now going to pay teachers for degrees or pensions should go toward preventing attrition in their fourth and fifth years. A few months later, Gates told the National Conference of State Legislatures that "if the entire U.S., for two years, had top quartile teachers, the entire difference between us and j.a.pan would vanish."44 As we saw in Chapter 9, the debate about teacher effectiveness is far from simple. It is not easy to identify the "best teachers." Some economists believe, like Bill Gates, that the best teachers are those who produce the biggest test score gains, so little else matters. Other economists say that a teacher who is "great" one year may not be great the next. Some social scientists question whether student test scores are reliable when used for high-stakes personnel decisions, but Gates apparently was not familiar with these debates. And common sense suggests that any system of measurement that produces a top quartile will also produce three other quartiles.

Thus, Gates proposes to concentrate on charter schools and teacher effectiveness, as does the Broad Foundation. With characteristic confidence, Gates a.s.serts that effective teaching can be taught, although he offers no examples to prove his point. Given the dubious research on which his foundation invested nearly $2 billion in small schools, one can only hope that he examines the extensive research that challenges his views on teacher effectiveness. He might also ask himself whether schools focused only on standardized tests of basic skills will produce the high achievement and creative thinking that he values and that are necessary to maintain the nation"s innovative edge and its productivity in the future.

The foundations justify their a.s.sertive agenda by pointing to the persistently low performance of public schools in urban districts. Having seen so little progress over recent years, they now seem determined to privatize public education to the greatest extent possible. They are allocating millions of dollars to increase the number of charter schools. They a.s.sume that if children are attending privately managed schools, and if teachers and princ.i.p.als are recruited from nontraditional backgrounds, then student achievement will improve dramatically. They base this conclusion on the success of a handful of high-visibility charter schools (including KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools) that in 2009 accounted for about 300 of the nation"s approximately 4,600 charter schools.45 Given the money and power behind charter schools, it seems likely that they are here to stay. If we continue on the present course, with big foundations and the federal government investing heavily in opening more charter schools, the result is predictable. Charter schools in urban centers will enroll the motivated children of the poor, while the regular public schools will become schools of last resort for those who never applied or were rejected. The regular public schools will enroll a disproportionate share of students with learning disabilities and students who are cla.s.sified as English-language learners; they will enroll the kids from the most troubled home circ.u.mstances, the ones with the worst attendance records and the lowest grades and test scores.

But why not insist that future charters fulfill their original mission, the one Albert Shanker envisioned in 1988? Why shouldn"t they be the indispensable inst.i.tutions that rescue the neediest kids? Why shouldn"t they be demonstration centers that show what can be done to help those who can"t succeed in a regular school? Why not redesign them to strengthen public education instead of expecting them to compete with and undercut regular public schools?

Do we need neighborhood public schools? I believe we do. The neighborhood school is the place where parents meet to share concerns about their children and the place where they learn the practice of democracy. They create a sense of community among strangers. As we lose neighborhood public schools, we lose the one local inst.i.tution where people congregate and mobilize to solve local problems, where individuals learn to speak up and debate and engage in democratic give-and-take with their neighbors. For more than a century, they have been an essential element of our democratic inst.i.tutions. We abandon them at our peril.

Business leaders like the idea of turning the schools into a marketplace where the consumer is king. But the problem with the marketplace is that it dissolves communities and replaces them with consumers. Going to school is not the same as going shopping. Parents should not be burdened with locating a suitable school for their child. They should be able to take their child to the neighborhood public school as a matter of course and expect that it has well-educated teachers and a sound educational program.

The market serves us well when we want to buy a pair of shoes or a new car or a can of paint; we can shop around for the best value or the style we like. The market is not the best way to deliver public services. Just as every neighborhood should have a reliable fire station, every neighborhood should have a good public school. Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or the police department. It is possible, but it is not wise. Our society needs a sensible balance between public and private.

I do not here make an argument against private or religious schools. For over a century, our cities have struck a good balance between public schools, private schools, and religious schools. In particular, the Catholic schools in urban districts have played an effective role as alternatives for families that sought a religious education. Oftentimes, Catholic schools have provided a better civic education than public schools because of their old-fashioned commitment to American ideals and their resistance to the relativism that weakened the fabric of many public schools. Sadly, many Catholic schools have closed because of declining numbers of low-paid religious teachers, which forced their costs to rise, and because of compet.i.tion from charter schools, which are not only free to families but also subsidized by public and foundation funds. Catholic schools have a wonderful record of educating poor and minority children in the cities. It is a shame that the big foundations have not seen fit to keep Catholic schools alive. Instead, they prefer to create a marketplace of options, even as the marketplace helps to kill off highly successful Catholic schools.

The market undermines traditional values and traditional ties; it undermines morals, which rest on community consensus. If there is no community consensus, then one person"s sense of morals is as good as the next, and neither takes precedence. This may be great for the entertainment industry, but it is not healthy for children, who need to grow up surrounded by the mores and values of their community. As consumers, we should be free to choose. As citizens, we should have connections to the place we live and be prepared to work together with our neighbors on common problems. When neighbors have no common meeting ground, it is difficult for them to organize on behalf of their self-interest and their community.

With so much money and power aligned against the neighborhood public school and against education as a profession, public education itself is placed at risk. The strategies now favored by the most powerful forces in the private and public sectors are unlikely to improve American education. Deregulation contributed to the near collapse of our national economy in 2008, and there is no reason to antic.i.p.ate that it will make education better for most children. Removing public oversight will leave the education of our children to the whim of entrepreneurs and financiers. Nor is it wise to entrust our schools to inexperienced teachers, princ.i.p.als, and superintendents. Education is too important to relinquish to the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs.

American education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will stand up to the tyc.o.o.ns and politicians and tell them so?

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Lessons Learned.

WE HAVE KNOWN FOR MANY YEARS that we need to improve our schools. We keep stumbling, however, because there is widespread disagreement about what should be improved, what we mean by improvement, and who should do it. A strong case for improvement was made by A Nation at Risk A Nation at Risk, which warned in 1983 that our students and our schools were not keeping up with their international peers. Since then, many reports and surveys have demonstrated that large numbers of young people leave school knowing little or nothing about history, literature, foreign languages, the arts, geography, civics, or science. The consequences of inadequate education have been recently doc.u.mented in books such as Mark Bauerlein"s The Dumbest Generation The Dumbest Generation, Rick Shenkman"s Just How Stupid Are We? Just How Stupid Are We? and Susan Jacoby"s and Susan Jacoby"s The Age of American Unreason The Age of American Unreason. These authors describe in detail the alarming gaps in Americans" knowledge and understanding of political issues, scientific phenomena, historical events, literary allusions, and almost everything else one needs to know to make sense of the world. Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a pa.s.sive spectator rather than an active partic.i.p.ant in the great decisions of our time.

Education is the key to developing human capital. The nature of our education system-whether mediocre or excellent-will influence society far into the future. It will affect not only our economy, but also our civic and cultural life. A democratic society cannot long sustain itself if its citizens are uninformed and indifferent about its history, its government, and the workings of its economy. Nor can it prosper if it neglects to educate its children in the principles of science, technology, geography, literature, and the arts. The great challenge to our generation is to create a renaissance in education, one that goes well beyond the basic skills that have recently been the singular focus of federal activity, a renaissance that seeks to teach the best that has been thought and known and done in every field of endeavor.

The policies we are following today are unlikely to improve our schools. Indeed, much of what policymakers now demand will very likely make the schools less effective and may further degrade the intellectual capacity of our citizenry. The schools will surely be failures if students graduate knowing how to choose the right option from four bubbles on a multiple-choice test, but unprepared to lead fulfilling lives, to be responsible citizens, and to make good choices for themselves, their families, and our society.

For the past century or more, education reformers have tried out their ideas in the schools. A wide vanity of reformers and reform movements have offered their own diagnoses and cures. With the best of intentions, reformers have sought to correct deficiencies by introducing new pedagogical techniques, new ways of organizing cla.s.srooms, new technologies, new tests, new incentives, and new ways to govern schools. In every instance, reformers believed that their solution was the very one that would transform the schools, make learning fun, raise test scores, and usher in an age of educational joy or educational efficiency. As one innovation follows another, as one reform overtakes the last, teachers may be forgiven if from time to time they suffer an acute case of reform fatigue.

This constant reform churn is not the approach typically found in countries with successful schools. In November 2006, I attended a meeting of the International a.s.sociation for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, an organization of scholars that has been studying school performance in many nations since the 1960s. Two respected testing experts, Ina V. S. Mullis and Michael O. Martin of Boston College, described the lessons learned from decades of mathematics a.s.sessments in dozens of nations. As I listened to their presentation, I copied this list of the essential ingredients of a successful education system: "a strong curriculum; experienced teachers; effective instruction; willing students; adequate resources; and a community that values education." In their published essay, Mullis and Martin summarized their findings: Education is an arduous process. Different countries use different approaches, but effective education always requires enormous effort. Success requires developing a rigorous and progressive curriculum and providing all students with an equal opportunity to learn it. Success also depends on economic resources and a strong-willed society to ensure that students are ready to learn and that teachers are well prepared to provide instruction, as well as having the necessary facilities and materials. Education is an arduous process. Different countries use different approaches, but effective education always requires enormous effort. Success requires developing a rigorous and progressive curriculum and providing all students with an equal opportunity to learn it. Success also depends on economic resources and a strong-willed society to ensure that students are ready to learn and that teachers are well prepared to provide instruction, as well as having the necessary facilities and materials.1 The fundamentals of good education are to be found in the cla.s.sroom, the home, the community, and the culture, but reformers in our time continue to look for shortcuts and quick answers. Untethered to any genuine philosophy of education, our current reforms will disappoint us, as others have in the past. We will, in time, see them as distractions, wrong turns, and lost opportunities. It is time to reconsider not only the specifics of current reforms, but also our very definition of reform.

Our schools will not improve if we continually reorganize their structure and management without regard for their essential purpose. Our educational problems are a function of our lack of educational vision, not a management problem that requires the enlistment of an army of business consultants. Certainly we should mobilize expert managerial talent to make sure that school facilities are well maintained, that teachers have adequate supplies, that noninstructional services function smoothly, and that schools are using their resources wisely. But organizational changes cannot by themselves create a sound education program or raise education to the heights of excellence that we want.

The most durable way to improve schools is to improve curriculum and instruction and to improve the conditions in which teachers work and children learn, rather than endlessly squabbling over how school systems should be organized, managed, and controlled. It is not the organization of the schools that is at fault for the ignorance we deplore, but the lack of sound educational values.

Our schools will not improve if elected officials intrude into pedagogical territory and make decisions that properly should be made by professional educators. Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations. Nor should the curriculum of the schools be the subject of a political negotiation among people who are neither knowledgeable about teaching nor well educated. Pedagogy-that is, how to teach-is rightly the professional domain of individual teachers. Curriculum-that is, what to teach-should be determined by professional educators and scholars, after due public deliberation, acting with the authority vested in them by schools, districts, or states.

Our schools will not improve if we continue to focus only on reading and mathematics while ignoring the other studies that are essential elements of a good education. Schools that expect nothing more of their students than mastery of basic skills will not produce graduates who are ready for college or the modern workplace. Nor will they send forth men and women prepared to design new technologies, achieve scientific breakthroughs, or accomplish feats of engineering skill. Nor will their graduates be prepared to appreciate and add to our society"s cultural achievements or to understand and strengthen its democratic heritage. Without a comprehensive liberal arts education, our students will not be prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy, nor will they be equipped to make decisions based on knowledge, thoughtful debate, and reason.

Our schools will not improve if we value only what tests measure. The tests we have now provide useful information about students" progress in reading and mathematics, but they cannot measure what matters most in education. Not everything that matters can be quantified. What is tested may ultimately be less important than what is untested, such as a student"s ability to seek alternative explanations, to raise questions, to pursue knowledge on his own, and to think differently. If we do not treasure our individualists, we will lose the spirit of innovation, inquiry, imagination, and dissent that has contributed powerfully to the success of our society in many different fields of endeavor.

Our schools will not improve if we rely exclusively on tests as the means of deciding the fate of students, teachers, princ.i.p.als, and schools. When tests are the primary means of evaluation and accountability, everyone feels pressure to raise the scores, by hook or by crook. Some will cheat to get a reward or to avoid humiliation. Schools may manipulate who takes the test and who does not; district and state officials may fiddle with the scoring of the test. Districts and states may require intensive test preparation that mirrors the actual state tests and borders on inst.i.tutionalized cheating. Any test score gains that result solely from incentives are meaningless because gains that are purchased with cash are short-lived and have nothing to do with real education.

Our schools will not improve if we continue to close neighborhood schools in the name of reform. Neighborhood schools are often the anchors of their communities, a steady presence that helps to cement the bonds of community among neighbors. Most are places with a history, laden with traditions and memories that help individuals resist fragmentation in their lives. Their graduates return and want to see their old cla.s.srooms; they want to see the trophy cases and the old photographs, to hear the echoes in the gymnasium and walk on the playing fields. To close these schools serves no purpose other than to destroy those memories, to sever the building from the culture of its neighborhood, and to erode a sense of community that was decades in the making. Closing a school should be only a last resort and an admission of failure, not by the school or its staff, but by the educational authorities who failed to provide timely a.s.sistance.

Our schools will not improve if we entrust them to the magical powers of the market. Markets have winners and losers. Choice may lead to better outcomes or to worse outcomes. Letting a thousand flowers bloom does not guarantee a garden full of flowers. If the garden is untended, unsupervised, and unregulated, it is likely to become overgrown with weeds. Our goal must be to establish school systems that foster academic excellence in every school and every neighborhood.

Our schools cannot improve if charter schools siphon away the most motivated students and their families in the poorest communities from the regular public schools. Continuing on this path will debilitate public education in urban districts and give the illusion of improvement. In exchange for the benefits of deregulation, charter schools should use their autonomy from the usual rules and regulations to show what they can do to educate students who have been unable to learn in a traditional school. In the future, charter schools should be valued partners of traditional public schools. Charter schools should be designed to collaborate with traditional public schools in a common mission: the education of all children. In this mission, they should be allies, not enemies or compet.i.tors.

Our schools will not improve if we expect them to act like private, profit-seeking enterprises. Schools are not businesses; they are a public good. The goal of education is not to produce higher scores, but to educate children to become responsible people with well-developed minds and good character. Schools should not be expected to turn a profit in the form of value-added scores. The unrelenting focus on data that has become commonplace in recent years is distorting the nature and quality of education. There are many examples of healthy compet.i.tion in schools, such as science fairs, essay contests, debates, chess tournaments, and athletic events. But the compet.i.tion among schools to get higher scores is of a different nature; in the current climate, it is sure to cause teachers to spend more time preparing students for state tests, not on thoughtful writing, critical reading, scientific experiments, or historical study. Nor should we expect schools to vie with one another for students, as businesses vie for customers, advertising their wares and marketing their services. For schools to learn from one another, they must readily share information about their successes and failures, as medical professionals do, rather than act as rivals in a struggle for survival.

Our schools will not improve if we continue to drive away experienced princ.i.p.als and replace them with neophytes who have taken a leadership training course but have little or no experience as teachers. The best princ.i.p.als have had a long apprenticeship as educators, first as teachers, then as a.s.sistant princ.i.p.als, and finally as princ.i.p.als. The princ.i.p.al should be the school"s "head teacher," the person who evaluates teachers and helps those who are struggling to teach well. If princ.i.p.als have not spent much time as teachers, they are not qualified to judge others" teaching, nor can they a.s.sist new teachers.

Our schools cannot be improved by blind worship of data. Data are only as good as the measures used to create the numbers and as good as the underlying activities. If the measures are shoddy, then the data will be shoddy. If the data reflect mainly the amount of time invested in test-preparation activities, then the data are worthless. If the data are based on dumbed-down state tests, then the data are meaningless. A good accountability system, whether for schools, teachers, or students, must include a variety of measures, not only test scores. To use a phrase I first heard from educator Deborah Meier, our schools should be "data-informed," not "data-driven."2 Our schools cannot be improved by those who say that money doesn"t matter. Resources matter, and it matters whether they are spent wisely. The best-informed and most affluent parents make sure to enroll their children in schools that have small cla.s.ses, a broad curriculum in the liberal arts and sciences, well-educated teachers, and well-maintained facilities. Ample resources do not guarantee success, but it is certainly more difficult for schools to succeed without them. If we are serious about narrowing and closing the achievement gap, then we will make sure that the schools attended by our neediest students have well-educated teachers, small cla.s.ses, beautiful facilities, and a curriculum rich in the arts and sciences.

Our schools cannot be improved if we ignore the disadvantages a.s.sociated with poverty that affect children"s ability to learn. Children who have grown up in poverty need extra resources, including preschool and medical care. They need small cla.s.ses, where they will get extra teacher time, and they need extra learning time. Their families need additional supports, such as coordinated social services that help them to improve their education, to acquire necessary social skills and job skills, and to obtain jobs and housing. While the school itself cannot do these things, it should be part of a web of public and private agencies that b.u.t.tress families.

Our schools cannot be improved if we use them as society"s all-purpose punching bag, blaming them for the ills of the economy, the burdens imposed on children by poverty, the dysfunction of families, and the erosion of civility. Schools must work with other inst.i.tutions and cannot replace them.

IF THERE IS ONE THING ALL EDUCATORS KNOW, and that many studies have confirmed for decades, it is that there is no single answer to educational improvement. There is no silver bullet, no magic feather, no panacea that will miraculously improve student achievement. There are no grounds for the claim made in the past decade that accountability all by itself is a silver bullet, nor for the oft-a.s.serted argument that choice by itself is a panacea. Accountability and choice may or may not raise test scores, but neither is a surefire way to improve education.

Higher test scores may or may not be a reliable indicator of better education. The overemphasis on test scores to the exclusion of other important goals of education may actually undermine the love of learning and the desire to acquire knowledge, both necessary ingredients of intrinsic motivation. Investing inordinate amounts of time in test-preparation activities may well drive up the scores. It would be surprising if scores did not rise when so much effort is expended to push them up. Yet at the same time that scores go up, the youngsters may be ignorant of current events, the structure of our government and other governments, the principles of economics, the fundamentals of science, the key works of literature of our culture and others, the practice and appreciation of the arts, or the major events and ideas that have influenced our nation and the world. Even as their scores go up, they may be devoid of any desire to deepen their understanding and knowledge and may have no interest in reading anything for their own enlightenment and pleasure. And so we may find that we have obtained a paradoxical and terrible outcome: higher test scores and worse education.

WHAT, THEN, CAN WE DO to improve schools and education? Plenty.

If we want to improve education, we must first of all have a vision of what good education is. We should have goals that are worth striving for. Everyone involved in educating children should ask themselves why we educate. What is a well-educated person? What knowledge is of most worth? What do we hope for when we send our children to school? What do we want them to learn and accomplish by the time they graduate from school?

Certainly we want them to be able to read and write and be numerate. Those are the basic skills on which all other learning builds. But that is not enough. We want to prepare them for a useful life. We want them to be able to think for themselves when they are out in the world on their own. We want them to have good character and to make sound decisions about their life, their work, and their health. We want them to face life"s joys and travails with courage and humor. We hope that they will be kind and compa.s.sionate in their dealings with others. We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness. We want them to understand our nation and our world and the challenges we face. We want them to be active, responsible citizens, prepared to think issues through carefully, to listen to differing views, and to reach decisions rationally. We want them to learn science and mathematics so they understand the problems of modern life and partic.i.p.ate in finding solutions. We want them to enjoy the rich artistic and cultural heritage of our society and other societies.

One could make the list of hoped-for outcomes even longer, but the point should be clear. If these are our goals, the current narrow, utilitarian focus of our national testing regime is not sufficient to reach any of them. Indeed, to the extent that we make the testing regime our master, we may see our true goals recede farther and farther into the distance. By our current methods, we may be training (not educating) a generation of children who are repelled by learning, thinking that it means only drudgery, worksheets, test preparation, and test-taking.

So let us begin with a vision of the education we want for our children and our society.

To move toward that vision, we should attend to the quality of the curriculum-that is, what is taught. Every school should have a well-conceived coherent, sequential curriculum. A curriculum is not a script but a set of general guidelines. Students should regularly engage in the study and practice of the liberal arts and sciences: history, literature, geography, the sciences, civics, mathematics, the arts, and foreign languages, as well as health and physical education.

Having a curriculum is not a silver bullet. It does not solve all our educational problems. But not having a curriculum indicates our unwillingness or inability to define what we are trying to accomplish. To paraphrase the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, Alice in Wonderland, if you don"t know where you are going, any road will get you there. The curriculum is a starting point for other reforms. It informs teachers, students, parents, teacher educators, a.s.sessment developers, textbook publishers, technology providers, and others about the goals of instruction. It provides direction, clarity, and focus around worthy ends, without interfering with teachers" decisions about how to teach. if you don"t know where you are going, any road will get you there. The curriculum is a starting point for other reforms. It informs teachers, students, parents, teacher educators, a.s.sessment developers, textbook publishers, technology providers, and others about the goals of instruction. It provides direction, clarity, and focus around worthy ends, without interfering with teachers" decisions about how to teach.

Other nations that outrank us on international a.s.sessments of mathematics and science do not concentrate obsessively on those subjects in their cla.s.srooms. Nations such as j.a.pan and Finland have developed excellent curricula that spell out what students are supposed to learn in a wide variety of subjects.3 Their schools teach the major fields of study, including the arts and foreign languages, because they believe that this is the right education for their students, not because they will be tested. They do the right thing without rewards and sanctions. Their students excel in the tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas. Their schools teach the major fields of study, including the arts and foreign languages, because they believe that this is the right education for their students, not because they will be tested. They do the right thing without rewards and sanctions. Their students excel in the tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas.

If we are willing to learn from top-performing nations, we should establish a substantive national curriculum that declares our intention to educate all children in the full range of liberal arts and sciences, as well as physical education. This curriculum would designate the essential knowledge and skills that students need to learn. In the last two years of high school, there should be career and technical studies for students who plan to enter the workforce after high school graduation. But they too should study the arts and sciences, so that they too may gain a sense of life"s possibilities. Because we are all citizens of this democracy, because we will all be voters, we must all be educated for our responsibilities.

Some will object that a country as diverse as ours can"t possibly have a national curriculum and will point to the debacle of the voluntary national history standards as evidence for their skepticism. The counterargument is that our nation had a de facto curriculum for most of the nineteenth century, when the textbooks in each subject were interchangeable. For the first half of the twentieth century as well, we had an implicit national curriculum that was decisively shaped by the college entrance examinations of the College Board; their highly respected examinations were based on a specific and explicit syllabus, designed by teachers and professors of each subject.

But what about the culture wars that will surely erupt if there is any attempt to decide what will be taught and learned in any subject? We can now see, with the pa.s.sage of years, that it is possible to forge a consensus in every contested subject-matter terrain if the various factions accept the necessity of working together and the futility of trying to impose their views on everyone else.

There is reason to hope that the curriculum wars of the 1990s have ended, not in a victory for either side, but in a truce. Where once there were warring partisans of whole language and phonics, now there is a general recognition that children need both. Beginning readers must learn the sounds and symbols of language, and they should learn to love reading by hearing and reading wonderful literature. Teachers should make sure that all children have a steady diet of good-no, excellent-literature in their cla.s.srooms. I would go further, hopefully not harming the possible consensus, to insist that all children should learn grammar, spelling, and syntax, which will enable them to write well and communicate their ideas clearly. Knowing the basic parts of speech will improve students" ability to understand and use the English language well.4 Furthermore, I suggest a short reading list-not more than ten t.i.tles-of indispensable literary cla.s.sics for each grade. Carol Jago, a high school English teacher and a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English, wrote a delightful explanation of how and why to teach the cla.s.sics today.5 Back in the days of the culture wars, it was taken as a given that any list would be oppressive, exclusive, and elitist, privileging some while leaving others out. One hopes we have moved beyond those contentious times and can at last identify essential writings that have stood the test of time and continue to be worthy of our attention. Back in the days of the culture wars, it was taken as a given that any list would be oppressive, exclusive, and elitist, privileging some while leaving others out. One hopes we have moved beyond those contentious times and can at last identify essential writings that have stood the test of time and continue to be worthy of our attention.

Without the effort to teach our common cultural heritage, we risk losing it and being left with nothing in common but an evanescent and often degraded popular culture. Let us instead read, reflect on, and debate the ideas of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry David Th.o.r.eau, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Walt Whitman, Emily d.i.c.kinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. E. B. DuBois, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Lewis Carroll, and many others whose writings remain important because of their ideas, their beauty, or their eloquence. Let us be sure that our students read the Declaration of Independence, the Const.i.tution, and other basic doc.u.ments of our nation"s founding and development. Cla.s.sic literature coexists happily with contemporary writings, especially when students are encouraged to engage in discussions about timeless issues such as the conflict between freedom and authority, the conflict between the rights of society and the rights of the individual, and the persistent dilemmas of the human condition. I do not suggest that it will be easy to shape lists of essential readings for every grade, only that it is necessary not to shirk this obligation if we wish to have excellent education for all. An English language arts curriculum without literature-real, named books of lasting importance-is no English curriculum at all.

In mathematics, the wars of the 1990s between traditionalists and constructivists have also subsided, although they flare up from time to time when parents discover that their children can"t add or subtract. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which initially emphasized the role of discovery learning and social interaction in learning, now recognizes that students must learn the basic facts of computation, which are necessary for successful problem solving and critical thinking. Many districts that mandate constructivist programs realize that they must also teach basic mathematical computation. A consensus is possible. The results of international a.s.sessments, in which American students have faltered over the years, have helped us to understand the importance of avoiding extremes and unnecessary polarization.

In the sciences, the ingredients for a solid, sequential curriculum are at hand, based on work already completed by the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science"s Project 2061 and the National Research Council. Students should study science in every grade, but this is hard to achieve when there are not enough science teachers. The study of science is also hobbled by the theological and political debate about evolution, which shadows every effort to devise science curricula on a statewide basis. The first problem can be solved with determination and resources; it is not beyond our reach. The second is not easily resolved because it involves a conflict with deeply held religious beliefs. Education authorities must separate teaching about science from teaching about religion. They must clarify to parents and the public that these are not the same. In other words, science cla.s.ses should teach science, as validated by scholarship, and religion cla.s.ses should teach religion. This principle cannot be compromised without doing injury to both fields of study.

Even history can be rescued from the culture wars, which now, one hopes, are a distant memory. In contrast to the voluntary national history standards, which unleashed a national furor, Ma.s.sachusetts, California, and a few other states have demonstrated that it is possible to develop a history curriculum that is challenging and lively. Arguments over whose whose history should be taught amused academics and polemicists in the 1990s but helped to stifle the study of history in the schools. history should be taught amused academics and polemicists in the 1990s but helped to stifle the study of history in the schools.

At present, most students plod dutifully and unenthusiastically through obligatory textbooks of 1,000 or more pages stuffed with facts but lacking in narrative or intellectual excitement. The great stories of brave men and women, of heroes and villains, of tragic decisions and extraordinary deeds, are gone. The textbooks avoid controversy-which would hurt sales-and maintain a studied air of neutrality, thus ensuring the triumph of dullness. In The Language Police The Language Police, I wrote that the systematic sanitizing of textbooks had turned school into "the Empire of Boredom." The same children whose textbooks avoid controversy have easy access to eroticized violence and sensationalism on videos, television, the movies, and the Internet.6 History should be as exciting to young people as anything on television, but their textbooks turn it into a listless parade of names, themes, wars, and nations. Among all the subjects tested by the federal government, U.S. history is the one in which American students register the worst performance, even though almost all students are required to study it.7 To restore excitement and vitality to this subject, teachers and curriculum designers must raise questions, provoke debates, explore controversies, and encourage the use of primary doc.u.ments, narratives written by master historians, biographies, doc.u.mentaries, and other visual records of important events and personalities. Biographies are a terrific way to introduce elementary-age children to history. To restore excitement and vitality to this subject, teachers and curriculum designers must raise questions, provoke debates, explore controversies, and encourage the use of primary doc.u.ments, narratives written by master historians, biographies, doc.u.mentaries, and other visual records of important events and personalities. Biographies are a terrific way to introduce elementary-age children to history.

In the arts, we should agree that all children deserve the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument, to sing, engage in dramatic events, dance, paint, sculpt, and study the great works of artistic endeavor from other times and places. Through the arts, children learn discipline, focus, pa.s.sion, and the sheer joy of creativity. We should make sure that these opportunities and the resources to support them are available to every student in every school.

Many educators and parents worry that a national curriculum might be captured by "the wrong people," that is, someone whose views they do not share. I too worry that a national curriculum might be no better than the vacuum that now exists, might fail to lift our sights, and might fail to release us from the shackles of test-based accountability. There is also a long-standing, deep-seated fear in this country about the federal government taking control of the curriculum. This fear stems from the individualistic, libertarian strain in American history, which harbors a certain suspicion about "those bureaucrats" in Washington, D.C., who might try to impose wrong-headed ideas on our neighborhood schools. In fact, it is currently a matter of federal law that the U.S. Department of Education is not permitted to impose any curriculum on the schools. Thus, any national curriculum must be both nonfederal and voluntary, winning the support of districts and states because of its excellence.

Of course, a voluntary national curriculum might be established by private organizations, as the College Board did in the first four decades of the twentieth century. State officials might work together to create a curriculum that is national but not federal. As I write, the National Governors a.s.sociation and the Council of Chief State School Officers, working with state education departments and groups such as Achieve, are trying to develop common standards in reading and mathematics for the nation"s school. It remains to be seen whether these organizations, with all their political muscle, will be able to circ.u.mvent the pitfalls that have plagued previous efforts and avoid the empty blather that has made most state standards meaningless. If they draft standards only for reading and mathematics, then their effort may reinforce the skills-only approach to schooling that now prevails.

If it is impossible to reach consensus about a national curriculum, then every state should make sure that every child receives an education that includes history, geography, literature, the arts, the sciences, civics, foreign languages, health, and physical education. These subjects should not be discretionary or left to chance. Every state should have a curriculum that is rich in knowledge, issues, and ideas, while leaving teachers free to use their own methods, with enough time to introduce topics and activities of their own choosing. That would avoid unnecessary duplication from grade to grade and would guarantee that children in different districts-rural, suburban, and urban-are getting access to the same opportunities to learn.

Even now, about 1,000 schools use the Core Knowledge curriculum, which describes explicitly what shall be taught in the full range of liberal arts and sciences in each grade. Teachers in these schools spend about half their day teaching the Core Knowledge curriculum, not through rote drill but through projects and activities. The rest of the day is available for their own choices or for fulfilling local and state requirements.8 Students who have the benefit of this kind of sequential, knowledge-rich curriculum do very well on the standardized tests that they must take. They do well on tests because they have absorbed the background knowledge to comprehend what they read. Students who have the benefit of this kind of sequential, knowledge-rich curriculum do very well on the standardized tests that they must take. They do well on tests because they have absorbed the background knowledge to comprehend what they read.

Why is the curriculum important? It is a road map. Without a road map, you are sure to drive in circles and get nowhere. To be sure, some people like driving in circles, and some educators like teaching in a school without a curriculum. In a nation that prizes liberty, those schools should continue to do as they please. But most schools will want to know what teachers should teach and what students are expected to learn. A sound curriculum ensures that young people will not remain ignorant of the most essential facts and ideas of the humanities and sciences. Background knowledge is critical to understanding and learning; whether one studies history or science or any other field, background knowledge is crucial in enabling the student to quickly grasp and integrate new information.

To have no curriculum, as is so often the case in American schools, leaves schools at the mercy of those who demand a regime of basic skills and no content at all. To have no curriculum is to leave decisions about what matters to the ubiquitous textbooks, which function as our de facto national curriculum. To have no curriculum on which a.s.sessment may be based is to tighten the grip of test-based accountability, testing only generic skills, not knowledge or comprehension.

Why not leave well enough alone, and let the textbook publishers decide what all children should learn? To anyone who might be satisfied with this response, I say: Sit down and read a textbook in any subject. Read the boring, abbreviated pap in the history textbooks that reduces stirring events, colorful personalities, and riveting controversies to a dull page or a few leaden paragraphs. Read the literature textbooks with their heavy overlay of pedagogical jargon and their meager representation of any significant literature. Note that nearly half the content of these bulky, expensive books consists of glitzy graphics or blank s.p.a.ce. Challenge yourself to read what your children are forced to endure, and then ask why we expect that textbooks-written and negotiated line by line to placate politically active interest groups in Texas and California-are up to the task of supplying a first-rate curriculum.9 One of the few states with an excellent curriculum in every subject is Ma.s.sachusetts. Perhaps not coincidentally, students in Ma.s.sachusetts have the highest academic performance in the nation on the National a.s.sessment of Educational Progress and rank near the top when compared to their peers in other nations. When Ma.s.sachusetts partic.i.p.ated in the TIMSS international a.s.sessment in 2007, its fourth graders placed second in the world in science, surpa.s.sed only by Singapore, and its eighth graders tied for first in the world in science with students in Singapore, Chinese Taipei, j.a.pan, and Korea.10 When students in Minnesota took the TIMSS tests, eighth graders tied with Singapore in earth science; in mathematics, their performance was mediocre, like the nation"s. William Schmidt, the U.S. coordinator for TIMSS, said that Minnesota has a strong curriculum in earth science, but not in mathematics. The lesson, he concluded, is that American students "can be the best in the world when we give them a curriculum that is focused and coherent and that is delivered by teachers well trained in the content being offered at that level." When students in Minnesota took the TIMSS tests, eighth graders tied with Singapore in earth science; in mathematics, their performance was mediocre, like the nation"s. William Schmidt, the U.S. coordinator for TIMSS, said that Minnesota has a strong curriculum in earth science, but not in mathematics. The lesson, he concluded, is that American students "can be the best in the world when we give them a curriculum that is focused and coherent and that is delivered by teachers well trained in the content being offered at that level."11 If our nation or states or districts have a good curriculum, we must ensure that our a.s.sessment systems reflect and reinforce what is taught. There is a maxim among educators that "what gets tested is what gets taught." The a.s.sessments used in our schools should be as good as the curriculum. I do not seek to abolish standardized, multiple-choice tests; they give a quick snapshot of student performance at a specific point in time. But they are not sufficient to measure student learning. To lift the quality of education, we must encourage schools to use measures of educational accomplishment that are appropriate to the subjects studied, such as research papers in history, essays and stories in literature, research projects in science, demonstrations of mathematical competence, videotaped or recorded conversations in a foreign language, performances in the arts, and other exhibitions of learning.

Nor should test scores be the sole measure of the quality of a school. Every state should establish inspection teams to evaluate the physical and educational condition of its schools, to ensure that a full curriculum is taught (not only the tested subjects), and to review the quality of teaching and learning. Inspectors should judge teaching and learning by observing it, not by using checklists to note whether students have "learning goals," teachers have "data binders," schools have "data inquiry teams," or other nonsensical requirements based on the jargon of the day.

The goal of evaluation should not be to identify schools that must be closed, but to identify schools that need help. The job of educational authorities is to solve problems, not evade them by shuttering schools. When schools are struggling, the authorities should do whatever is necessary to improve them. This may mean professional development for teachers, smaller cla.s.ses, targeted programs in reading or other subjects, after-school activities, additional tutoring for students, extra supervisors, a better disciplinary policy, parent education cla.s.ses, and other interventions that will strengthen the school"s capacity to educate its students.

With a strong and comprehensive curriculum and a fair a.s.sessment and evaluation system in place, the schools must have teachers who are well qualified to teach the curriculum. Teachers must be well educated and know their subjects. To impart a love of learning, they should love learning and love teaching what they know. They should have professional training to learn how to teach what they know, how to manage a cla.s.sroom, and how to handle the kinds of issues and problems they are likely to encounter as cla.s.sroom teachers. As in many other aspects of education, we do not have ways to quantify whether a teacher loves learning, but we have some important signposts, such as their education, their command of the subject, and their skill in the cla.s.sroom. Prospective teachers should be tested on their knowledge of what they will teach, and they should be regularly evaluated by their supervisors and peers.

To attract and retain the teachers we need, schools must offer compensation that reflects the community"s respect for them as professionals. Many districts are trying various forms of performance pay, and we should watch those experiments closely. Some districts will offer higher salaries to attract teachers in fields where there are chronic shortages, such as science and mathematics. Others may offer bonuses to those who perform extra a.s.signments. Differential pay schemes are in flux and are likely to continue changing for several years, as we learn more from current efforts. But whatever the results may be, no manipulation of salary schedules will suffice to overcome the absence of a sound curriculum, willing students, supportive parents, collegial administrators, and good working conditions.

If our schools had an excellent curriculum, appropriate a.s.sessments, and well-educated teachers, we would be way ahead of where we are now in renewing our school system. But even that would not be enough to make our schools all that they should be. Schools do not exist in isolation. They are part of the larger society. Schooling requires the active partic.i.p.ation of many, including students, families, public officials, local organizations, and the larger community.

As every educator knows, families are children"s first teachers. On the very first day of school, there are wide differences in children"s readiness to learn. Some children have educated parents, some do not. Some come from homes with books, newspapers, magazines, and other reading materials, some do not. Some parents encourage their children to do their schoolwork and set aside a place and a time for them to study, some do not. Some parents take their children to the library, zoo, museum, and other places of learning, while some do not. As a result of different experiences in early childhood, some children begin school with a large vocabulary, while others do not.

Researchers Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley studied the language development of young children and found a huge disparity between children from impoverished families and children from professional families. Before the age of three, children from the advantaged families had vastly more exposure to words and encouragement than children who grew up in poor households.12 Their study implies the need for early intervention, even before the age of three, as well as intensive adult education for parents. Their study implies the need for early intervention, even before the age of three, as well as intensive adult education for parents.

Families must do their part to get children ready for school. Families implant basic att.i.tudes and values about learning, as well as the self-discipline and good manners necessary for learning in a group. Families must remain involved with their children, encourage them, monitor their schoolwork, limit the time they spend with electronic devices, meet with their teachers, and see that they have a regular place to study. They must encourage them to take their schooling seriously, respect their teachers, and behave appropriately in school.

Children from families that provide a literate environment are likely to be more successful in school than children who lack this initial advantage. And what of the children whose families, for whatever reason, are unable to provide support for learning at home? They too must be educated, and schools must go to extra lengths to be sure that they learn the social behaviors and skills that make learning possible. One of the reasons that so-called no-excuses schools, such as KIPP, have achieved good results is that they unabashedly teach the behaviors and att.i.tudes that students need for success in school. Students are taught to sit up straight; dress neatly; look at the teacher; shake hands firmly; make eye contact with the person who is talking; don"t speak out in cla.s.s unless called upon by the teacher; be nice; work hard. Many parents like the idea that the school will teach these behaviors and att.i.tudes, because they want to protect their children from what they perceive as the chaos of the streets, the destructive behavior of gangs, and the bullying of other students. The no-excuses schools are a response to the weakening of social norms that once supported parents; now even the best efforts of families are often contradicted by what children see on television, in the movies, and in their interactions with peers.

What is surprising is that the public schools ever stopped stopped expecting children to act with civility in relations with their cla.s.smates and teachers. When I was a student in public schools in Houston many years ago, every teacher told the cla.s.s to sit up straight, speak only when called upon, stop talking out of turn, and listen to your neighbor when he or she was speaking. We were constantly reminded to "be nice" and "work hard," though in somewhat different language. Those who did not behave appropriately were sent to the princ.i.p.al"s office, not to face corporal punishment (although the big boys did), but to bear the shame and humiliation of having been sent there. expecting children to act with civility in relations with their cla.s.smates and teachers. When I was a student in public schools in Houston many years ago, every teacher told the cla.s.s to sit up straight, speak only when called upon, stop talking out of turn, and listen to your neighbor when he or she was speaking. We were constantly reminded to "be nice" and "work hard," though in somewhat different language. Those who did not behave appropriately were sent to the princ.i.p.al"s office, not to face corporal punishment (although the big boys did), but to bear the shame and humiliation of having been sent there.

Schools must enforce standards of civility and teach students to respect themselves and others, or they cannot provide a safe, orderly environment, which is necessary for learning. The regular public schools must learn this lesson from the no-excuses schools and restore the historic tradition of public schools as places where students learn good behavior, good citizenship, and the habits of mind that promote thoughtfulness and learning.

Our nation"s commitment to provide universal, free public education has been a crucial element in the successful a.s.similation of millions of immigrants and in the ability of generations of Americans to improve their lives. It is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a world leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market. The market has been a wonderful mechanism for the development of small and large business enterprises; it has certainly been far more successful in producing and distributing a wide range of high-quality goods and services than any command-and-control economy. But the market, with its great strengths, is not the appropriate mechanism to supply services that should be distributed equally to people in every neighborhood in every city and town in the nation without regard to their ability to pay or their political power. The market is not the right mechanism to supply police protection or fire protection, nor is it the right mechanism to supply public education.

To be sure, we must respect and value the diversity made possible by private and religious schools. We should see the coexistence of these different kinds of schools as an ecosystem of educational inst.i.tutions that has developed over many years and has served our nation well. None seeks to destroy or replace the other, and each serves different populations and sometimes the same populations at different times.

As a nation, we need a strong and vibrant public education system. As we seek to reform our schools, we must take care to do no harm. In fact, we must take care to make our public schools once again the pride of our nation. Our public education system is a fundamental element of our democratic society. Our public schools have been the pathway to opportunity and a better life for generations of Americans, giving them the tools to fashion their own life and to improve the commonweal. To the extent that we strengthen them, we strengthen our democracy.

At the present time, public education is in peril. Efforts to reform public education are, ironically, diminishing its quality and endangering its very survival. We must turn our attention to improving the schools, infusing them with the substance of genuine learning and reviving the conditions that make learning possible.

Notes.

CHAPTER ONE.

1 Alfred L. Malabre Jr., Alfred L. Malabre Jr., Lost Prophets: An Insider"s History of the Modern Economists Lost Prophets: An Insider"s History of the Modern Economists (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1994), 220. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1994), 220.

2 Diane Ravitch, "Tot Sociology: Or What Happened to History in the Grade Schools," Diane Ravitch, "Tot Sociology: Or What Happened to History in the Grade Schools," American Scholar American Scholar 56, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 343-354; Ravitch, "Bring Literature and History Back to Elementary Schools," in 56, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 343-354; Ravitch, "Bring Literature and History Back to Elementary Schools," in The Schools We Deserve: Reflections on the Educational Crises of Our Time The Schools We Deserve: Reflections on the Educational Crises of Our Time (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 75-79; Ravitch, (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 75-79; Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

3 William Chandler Bagley, William Chandler Bagley, Cla.s.sroom Management: Its Principles and Technique Cla.s.sroom Management: Its Principles and Technique (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 3; William Henry Maxwell, "On a Certain Arrogance in Educational Theorists," (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 3; William Henry Maxwell, "On a Certain Arrogance in Educational Theorists," Educational Review Educational Review 47 (February 1914): 165-182, esp. 165-167, 171. 47 (February 1914): 165-182, esp. 165-167, 171.

4 Diane Ravitch, "Programs, Placebos, Panaceas," Diane Ravitch, "Programs, Placebos, Panaceas," Urban Review Urban Review, April 1968, 8-11; Ravitch, "Foundations: Playing G.o.d in the Ghetto," Center Forum Center Forum 3 (May 15, 1969): 24-27. 3 (May 15, 1969): 24-27.

Prev List Next