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"A Broader, Bolder Approach" to school reform

"Evidence demonstrates, however, that achievement gaps based on socioeconomic status are present before children even begin formal schooling. Despite impressive academic gains registered by some schools serving disadvantaged students, there is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can substantially, consistently, and sustainably close these gaps."

--A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education

"Taken together, however, these effects suggest a cumulative disadvantage for lower-class children that depresses average performance, even with high-quality instruction. In other words, on average, with equally high-quality instruction, children from disadvantaged families will achieve at lower levels than those from families without these disadvantages.

"Research thus suggests that strategies to improve lower-class children’s performance will be more effective if they combine school improvement efforts with policies to narrow social and economic inequalities."

--Richard Rothstein, background paper, A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education 

In my last post I wrote how a group of market-friendly neoliberals has been anointed by the media as school "reformers."  The "reforms" they propose can be summed up succinctly:

• opposition to teachers' unions; and
• advocacy of accountability, merit pay and charter schools.

Real "reformers", many of whom are signatories to the statement they call "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education," dismiss the quick and simplistic reforms of the neoliberals and propose more comprehensive solutions to the low school achievement of poor and minority students.  Many of those solutions involve the health and well-being of children in the five years before formal schooling typically begins. 

They argue that until we enact social policies designed to ameliorate the debilitating effects of poverty on the ability to succeed in school, no amount of tinkering with school structure and pedagogy will close the achievement gap. 

In short, the problems associated with poverty cannot be addressed by education alone.

It would be helpful if school boards, including the Portland Public Schools Board of Education, would acknowledge that reality and stop blathering on about how the policies they adopt are designed with an eye on "closing the achievement gap."

That said, public schools can do a better job in helping students learn.  That won't be accomplished, however, by pushing test-based accountability, teacher merit pay, or charter schools.

(I said I would address those issues, particularly charter schools, in subsequent posts.  And I will, but circumstances here at home have prevented me from blogging as frequently as I would like.)

Charter schools, merit pay, and the "three stooges"

"Stooges" is how Jim Horn of School Matters described the three "unlikely comrades" featured in The Nation's excellent article, "The Selling of School Reform." 

Who are the three stooges?  Two Republicans --New York's Mike Bloomberg and Newt Gingrich --and Al Sharpton.  What the three have in common is that all are failed presidential candidates.  And this:

"The three are spokesmen for the Education Equality Project (EEP), an advocacy group that has attracted widespread media attention since its June 2008 launch, in large part because of its bipartisan call for policies like merit pay and the expansion of the charter school sector."

Other prominent members of EEP include up and coming young Democrats Corey Booker and Adrian Fenty (of Michelle Rhee infamy) who believe in applying free market principles to education and call themselves "reformers."  I call them what they really are --neoliberals, just like Bill Gates and Eli Broad, who, whatever political party they affiliate with, are nonetheless rich and not at all shy about using their wealth to force market-based reforms on the nation's public schools.

That means accountability, merit pay, and charter schools.

That brings us back to the EEP, the Education Equality Project, which is all about the "achievement gap."  Just what is the "achievement gap?"  It's the difference --or gap-- in scores on standardized achievement tests between the rich and the poor, the white and the non-white. 

That, too, is what accountability is all about --test scores.  Good schools get good test scores.  Lousy schools don't.  (That's where charters come in, but more on that later.)  Test scores also factor into merit pay.  How do you know who the good teachers are?  They're the ones with high scoring students.

Never mind ample evidence showing that an overemphasis on testing for accountability narrows school curricula.  What's taught is what can be tested.  Music?  Art?  Foreign languages?  PE?  They take back seat to the obsession with literacy and numeracy.

That's especially true in poor, high minority enrollment schools and school districts.

Real reformers --not the neoliberals-- take a decidedly different view.  From The Nation article:

"They [let's call them 'progressive reformers'] believe teachers and schools will not be able to eradicate the achievement gap between middle-class white children and everyone else until a wide array of social services are available to poor families. They envision schools as community centers, offering families healthcare, meals and counseling."

In other words, as I wrote sometime back, the schools alone cannot be held responsible for every social  ill.  If we want to close the achievement gap in this country, we better close the income gap. 

The free market "reformers" have adopted the mantra "no excuses," which in effect discounts poverty as a factor in the lower achievement of poor students.  Low expectations and lousy teaching, say the "reformers", are the culprits, not poverty.  Of course, they're wrong --dead wrong.  Research, and even 'hard science', provides abundant evidence that poverty plays a huge, and mostly negative, role in a child's education.

So what about charter schools?  Suffice it for now to say that although, as Scott Lehigh writes on Boston.com in praise of a recommendation to remove the "caps" on charter schools in Massachusetts, "some Boston charter schools" have improved the achievement of low income students, many --probably most-- have not.  In fact, most research indicates that charters do no better than traditional public schools in closing the  achievement gap.

There are other problems with the charter model as well.  More on that in subsequent posts.