This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, May 2, 2012 - Here's something I need to learn: how to stop feeling like banging my head against a wall whenever I read the latest the news about the reform of public education.
Among the 165 education-related bills the Missouri Legislature is considering this term are two that also appear on the website of StudentsFirst, a national organization headed by former D.C. school chancellor and self-proclaimed reformer Michelle Rhee.
These two bills -- HB 1526 and SB 576 -- take up respectively the regulation and tenure of teachers and the expansion of charter schools outside of Kansas City and St. Louis into unaccredited districts and beyond. Missouri lawmakers will be considering these proposals in the context of a state where the education funding formula across districts is itself in a state approaching political gridlock.
So why is a nationally renown education crusader like Rhee taking such an interest in these bills (not to mention in the educational lawmaking in 16 other states)? In a recent Post-Dispatch oped article, Rhee wrote, "The status quo doesn't come close to being good enough for kids today, the folks who will have to compete for jobs in a global economy tomorrow."
Who, exactly, are these "kids today" Rhee is talking about? Who are these "folks that will have to compete for jobs" and require our immediate intervention because the status quo is not good enough? May I submit that these kids are neither:
- in well-resourced, high-functioning, wealthy public districts nor
- attending super-enriched, more or less wonderful independent schools that can cost up to $50,000 a year in tuition.
I think we can all agree that those kids are basically fine. They have P.E. and A.P.s. They still get to take art and music and go out to play at recess. They learn other languages. They have libraries filled with books and resources and librarians trained to teach. They have social workers and nurses to help them with emotional and physical problems.
Most crucially, their teachers are not so totally crushed by the pressure to improve standardized test scores that they must strip the curriculum of everything except what testmakers deem worthy of putting on those tests.
As a rural 4th grader told me last week, when I asked what he had been up to in science, a subject he said he loved, "I can't really remember right now. We haven't done science for a while because of the MAP tests." Oh, right, it was April in Missouri.
Reformers claim they want to change the status quo, but what they mean is that they really want to change it for children in communities that have little power to make their schools what they want, the schools where kids in 4th grade can't really read. Well, I do, too.
Reformers claim they want to ensure that our state's teachers are as good as they can be and are evaluated fairly and regularly. They want school administrators to have more power and leeway in hiring good and firing lousy teachers, and who are themselves more accountable for building-wide achievement.
Yeah, yeah, me, too. Who doesn't? Bad teachers need to get better. Really terrible teachers need to find another way to make a living. And principals set the tone for the whole school, and should be as good as they can be.
The problem I have with some of the legislation backed and funded under the banner of reform in Missouri and elsewhere is not a consequence of incompatible goals. The problem is with the "how." How do we make the people who spend the most time in schools better at what they do? Reformers want to test, and measure, and punish, and fire, and "financially incentivize," and open up more and more charter schools.
Instead of harping, as I usually do, on actual research in the learning sciences and education theory; instead of referring to the data-grounded knowledge pertaining to student learning, achievement, and educator professional development that many reformers care not to pay any attention to but which has successfully driven the agenda in high-achieving, educationally equitable places like Finland -- I will simply state what should be happening.
Three interrelated (if complex) processes need to be set in motion to help the schools that need improving.
- Make sure human and material resources are distributed equitably across districts.
- Set up the conditions and climates within schools for adults to figure out for themselves how to get better at what they do. View and treat teachers and administrators as collaborative knowledge producers.
- Fund all educator preparation and professional development programs that provide high-quality courses and training in educator action research.
Not doing whatever we can to facilitate and support these processes is to keep on stirring up the same group of teachers, principals, and children in the same old pot. And not just any pot: This one is a pressure cooker.