Three Stops and Starts for #Education #Reform

The education reform conversation seems heated at times, and mired very much in partisan politics. Considering all of the various arguments and counterarguments, I’m finding three major issues that come up on a regular basis. From my perspective I think there are three things we need to stop doing in the reform conversation/actions and shift to some different actions.

1. Stop blaming teachers. By some counts, less than 30% of student learning is because of what the teacher does. Furthermore, in this high-stakes testing environment teachers have less and less control over what they teach in the classroom and instead implement the policies as set forth by their principals, superintendents, and policy-makers. If you’re going to hold teachers accountable, then hold them accountable for that which they are responsible to do. Instead of putting all responsibility for student learning on the teacher, we should (a) evaluate teachers on student growth and (b) evaluate how well teachers implement the policies handed to them by their administration. On the same token, we should (c) hold the administration accountable for the effectiveness of policy. In fact, we should hold administration accountable before looking to the teachers. If we are willing to give the administration credit when the scores are favorable, then we should also give them blame when the scores are unfavorable.
2. Stop making it about school choice. The narrative goes something like this: the teachers unions are protecting lazy teachers and prevent students from learning (even though 87–97% of teachers are rated as effective). Therefore if we create a different system where we can get rid of unions and then allow parents to make choices it will improve the system because the best schools will succeed and the worst schools will fail (sort of an educational Darwinism). This assumes that the “consumer” (the parents) (a) have the wherewithal to evaluate good education models, (b) have the resources to reach all of those choices, and the (c) choices the “consumer” makes is based on the quality of the model. I think all of those assumptions are false. School choice, however, has roots in the civil rights movement of the post-civil war era. Instead, school choice should be a means for parents to exercise options for students who don’t fit within the normative mold that public education necessitates.
3. Stop making it about charter schools. As one example (and from the Texas Department of Education website), “According to the Texas Education Code, the purposes of charter schools are to (1) improve student learning; (2) increase the choice of learning opportunities within the public school system; (3) create professional opportunities that will attract new teachers to the public school system; (4) establish a new form of accountability for public schools; and (5) encourage different and innovative learning methods. Out of five reasons, only one of those is really about school choice (and even that choice is within the context of a public school system). The rest of the reasons are about innovation. Charter schools were designed to use public funds to assess innovation and best practices, and then see how to scale those practices for a larger school system. Instead, we should use charter schools for their intended purposes: innovation.

I think that America is on the precipice, and if we were to apply some of the “know-how” that we have been known to produce, we could create one of the best educational systems in the world.

How Andrew Brenner Got it Wrong, part 3

Let me establish something right off the top.

I don’t know State Representative Andrew Brenner of Ohio. I’ve never met the man. I don’t even live in his state. I have nothing against him, personally. He seems like a nice guy, as much as an internet personality is reflective of a real person. Our “relationship” consists of two articles he wrote on education and a twitter feed. He was kind enough to follow me, I reciprocated. I’m just an education nerd finishing up a dual master’s degree here in Texas who is discovering a passion for education reform and education policy.

So when I say that Rep. Brenner “got it wrong” it really boils down to my disagreement with his viewpoint on education and education reform, and recognizing that his views represent other views. I’ve given two reasons why I disagree with him in my first and second posts. Here’s the third, and it’s a philosophical one (but don’t check out on me now, I can keep this easy).

A simple question: in a democracy that requires all students to go to school until a certain age, are those students entitled to a free public education, or a free private education?

Advocates of the school privatization model for education reform are basically arguing that students (and their parents) should “shop” for the best education for their money just like any other product or service. Once they find what they like, they should pay into that particular program and assume that the program will produce an outcome suitable for the student to become a productive and informed citizen. They often point to higher education as an example of how this model can work successfully. Market forces will allow the best educational programs to succeed and the worst to fail.

Here’s the problem with higher education as your standard: higher education assumes (sometimes wrongly) a certain baseline knowledge in its students. Higher education is based on the premise (again, currently wrongly) that the students are already trained as a productive citizen capable of contributing to the common good and public interest. Higher education is supplementary to the education a citizen receives, it is not required. I think that, in education, it against the best interests of the public to allow the weight and influence of corporate dollars to operate as the sole voice and engine for deciding what kids learn, and I think if you privatize education, that’s exactly what will happen.

This brings us back to the fundamental question: do we honestly believe that we can privately decide what will produce the best citizen, or is that a public conversation?

I think that’s a public conversation, guided by federal standards, enforced by the state, and implemented by counties (or cities). I don’t want Dell, Microsoft, or Citi solely setting the agenda for what my child should or should not know. I’m not against school choice. I’m not against competition. I am against oligarchy and plutocracy in a democracy. That thinking runs counter to the whole democratic experiment. I’m concerned that the school choice model will push us further in that direction. School privatization doesn’t solve the real problem(s) in public education and introduces another aggravating factor.

Thank you, Rep. Brenner, for sharing your ideas in a public forum. Thank you for your service in a public office. I fervently hope that as you continue to interact in the public square regarding that you would incorporate ideas from outside of your typical political viewpoint.

How Andrew Brenner Got it Wrong, part 2

In the last blog, I wrote a response to Ohio State Representative Andrew Brenner’s article calling for school reform and equating public education in the United States with socialism. Either his wife, the intern who runs his wife’s twitter account, or Brenner (it’s still a little unclear to me) accused me of misunderstanding the article. That same person also accused me of bad journalism because I responded to the article (because evidently the standard of blogging is that you’re supposed to let the other person know that you disagree with their clear, unambiguous statements before you disagree with them on a blog post).

Before I could ask for clarification of whatever it was that I misunderstood, Brenner wrote a clarifying article. I want to applaud him for backing off of some of the more inflammatory rhetoric that he employed in his previous article (probably to stimulate the conversation) and employ a more reasoned argument for his policy. I anticipate this new article won’t get as much airtime, but it’s the one that deserves the interaction on the mainstream news cycle.

I still respectfully disagree with Brenner for a couple of reasons; I will deal with the first in this post.

Brenner states, “In one of the school districts I represent, my local school district of Olentangy, we spend approximately $9,400 per student.” He also points out, “While the cost per student in our urban schools is roughly twice the per student spending in the schools I represent, they are failing and failing miserably. I don’t think a school district like Youngstown, which spends roughly $20,000 per student and received 2 Ds and 3 Fs on its state report card, should continue to operate in the manner they are now.” Similarly, Brenner notes, “We are spending approximately one-third the cost in most of our rural schools as opposed to our urban, and they too have poverty and drugs. Yet, these rural schools are out performing our urban and many of our suburban schools.”

If I take these three statements at face value and as the truth, then I have to ask: since rural schools are out-performing urban and suburban schools, then how can we duplicate what the rural schools are doing?

Caveat: I don’t live in Ohio, so I can’t speak to the specific practices of Ohio schools. I strongly suspect, though, that Ohio rural schools succeed and out-perform due to community engagement, not because of school choice. Rural schools can do more with less because the schools happen in communities that have a strong history and habit of pulling together to deal with the ills of the community. In his previous article, Brenner pointed out that early “one-room schoolhouses” often took place in houses of worship—Christian churches.

This wasn’t a coincidence. Basic education (reading, writing) occurred in the home, by the parents. After that children went to some kind of school for either vocational training or liberal arts education (generally understood to prepare for citizenship). Christian churches that were the institution most concerned with the public good in this case and so they opened their facilities and resources to allow for the education of the middle and lower classes. If you were wealthy, you hired a tutor or sent your children to (very exclusive) private schools.

It was the efforts and concerns of the community, and one of the institutions in that community that drove the creation of the public school as we know it.

I don’t think the free market is a “magic bullet” to the problem of school reform. It’s not that I disagree with school choice. It’s that I disagree with school choice as the chief means for school reform. I do not think that education is a product. The product (the outcome) is the educated student. Education is what you do to create the product. It is a system of experiences designed to shape the values, drives, and interests of the individual. Using a product-based model will not provide the solution.

Thank you, Rep. Brenner, for taking on the monumental task of education reform in the United States of America. Thank you for attempting a multidisciplinary approach to reform. My hope is that you will broaden your perspective beyond the ideas of Friedman and economics to bring real, positive, change to education.

How Andrew Brenner Got it Wrong, part 1

I tried to resist, but I’m writing this blog in response to an article that Rep. Andrew Brenner of Delaware County, Ohio wrote.

His main issue with our educational system as it stands seems to be that, “our public education system is already a socialist system.(sic) and has been a socialist system since the founding of our country.” He also believes that school teacher unions are to blame for our current state of affairs, while acknowledging, “Over 40 years ago, public school teachers felt like their ideas were not being listened to, that their pay was inadequate, and that classroom sizes were not appropriate; so they unionized against the bureaucratic machine known as our public education system.”

So in summary, socialism = bad, teachers unions = bad, and therefore socialism + teachers unions = really bad.

His solution is, “to move to a more privatized system,” since, “In a free market system parents and students are free to go where the product and results are better.” In Rep. Brenner’s article, education is a product that should be bought, sold and traded to the highest bidder. In his view, the free market will force education to be better and to perform better. His perspective of education as product is unsurprising given his background. According to his bio, Rep. Brenner has no formal training in educational policy, theory, or methods. Instead, his training is in business administration, with emphases in marketing and economics. I suspect his knowledge of education as a legislator comes from people who paid to have access to him, and therefore come with an agenda. And yet, he is vice-chair of Ohio’s education committee.

So yes, I think Rep. Brenner got it wrong; because this is my blog, I get to tell you why.

Rep. Brenner stated, “While one room school houses (which were also used in many cases as houses of worship) worked well 100 years ago when most students graduated by the 7th grade, the same system does not work well today.” His implication is that we still operate under the one-room school method. Here’s the problem: I don’t know of one-room school houses that exist in the United States today. While students in primary grades generally stay in one home room, many schools will rotate specialists in and out. For example, my father worked as a science teacher for an elementary school before he retired, and he rotated in and out of teachers’ rooms to handle the science load. I understand that the kids also rotated into other classroom for arts and music education, in spite of the push for cuts in the face of the well-documented benefits of arts education.

In this case, I think Rep. Brenner put forth a straw-man argument, making the case against something that doesn’t actually exist. I would agree with him that we do use certain antiquated philosophies and methods in education. I think, in the realm in which he attempted to argue, the issue is related to our model based on modernist methods in an increasingly post-modern society, and industrial age techniques as we’ve passed (or are passing into) the information age.

So, Rep. Brenner, I applaud your desire to reform education. I hope that you would be more fair with your objections to the current problems so that you can offer a real and effective solution.