There have been two features that regularly mark the history of U.S. public schools. Over the last century, our education system has been regularly captivated by a Big Idea — a savant or an organization that promised a simple solution to the problems of our schools.
The second is that there are no simple solutions, no miracle cures to those problems.
Education is a slow, arduous process that requires the work of willing students, dedicated teachers and supportive families, as well as a coherent curriculum.
As an education historian, I have often warned against the seductive lure of grand ideas to reform education. Our national infatuation with education fads and reforms distracts us from the steady work that must be done.
Our era is no different. We now face a wave of education reforms based on the belief that school choice, test-driven accountability and the resulting competition will dramatically improve student achievement.
Once again, I find myself sounding the alarm that the latest vision of education reform is deeply flawed. But this time my warning carries a personal rebuke.
For much of the last two decades, I was among those who jumped aboard the choice and accountability bandwagon. Choice and accountability, I believed, would offer a chance for poor children to escape failing schools. Testing and accountability, I thought, would cast sunshine on low-performing schools and lead to improvement. It all seemed to make sense, even if there was little empirical evidence, just promise and hope.
Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform — codified in its signature Race to the Top program — that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better.
Those who do not follow education closely may be tempted to think that, at long last, we’re finally turning the corner.
What could be wrong with promoting charter schools to compete with public schools? Why shouldn’t we demand accountability from educators and use test scores to reward our best teachers and identify those who should find another job?
Like the grand plans of previous eras, they sound sensible but will leave education no better off. Charter schools are no panacea. The nation now has about 5,000 of them, and they vary in quality. Some are excellent, some terrible; most are in between. Most studies have found that charters, on average, are no better than public schools.
On the federal tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, from 2003 to 2009, charters have never outperformed public schools. Nor have black and Latino students in charter schools performed better than their counterparts in public schools.
This is surprising, because charter schools have many advantages over public schools. Most charters choose their students by lottery. Those who sign up to win seats tend to be the most motivated students and families in the poorest communities. Charters are also free to “counsel out” students who are unable or unwilling to meet expectations.
A study of KIPP charters in the San Francisco area found that 60 percent of those students who started the fifth grade were gone before the end of eighth grade. Most of those who left were low performers.
Studies of charters in Boston, New York City and Washington have found that charters, as compared to public schools, have smaller percentages of the students who are generally hardest to educate — those with disabilities and English-language learners. Because the public schools must educate everyone, they end up with disproportionate numbers of the students the charters don’t want.
So we’re left with the knowledge that a dramatic expansion in the number of privately managed schools is not likely to raise student achievement. Meanwhile, public schools will become schools of last resort for the unmotivated, the hardest to teach and those who didn’t win a seat in a charter school. If our goal is to destroy public education in America, this is precisely the right path.
A version of this article appeared in the Mar 17 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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I kept waiting for the part where the education historian introduced a better plan.
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Thank you for bolstering my decision to homeschool my son.
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I keep waiting for the person to advertise their local teacher's union.
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"Schools work best when teachers collaborate to help their students and strive together for common goals, not when they compete for higher scores and bonuses."
Agreed, but what do you do with the schools that don't do that? There has to be some measure found to hold these teachers who don't care more accountable. If teaching is too grueling a career to keep up for 45 years, perhaps we consider retiring teachers to non-student-facing jobs earlier. Perhaps we train them better, and make them understand that no one works a 6.25 hour day and they're setting a bad example for their students but insisting on it (not to mention shortchanging them).
The charters that DO succeed, have longer school days, motivated parents and students (because it is true the teacher cannot do it alone), and teachers who are teaching not because they don't know what else to do, but because teaching is what they WANT to do.
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Sorry, but you are dead wrong. You have many, many, many teachers within public schools who are there because they want to be. Just as the author stated, much of the success of students come from what is taught at home. Students who don't want to learn, will never learn, no matter how great the teacher or the curriculum is. I totally agree with Bill Cosby when is says that the success of students has a simple solution, yet the conditions upon which you meet that success requires hard work which is called "studying!"
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I'm a public school teacher. I'm not sure why you think teachers work 6.25 hours per day. Do you think the teachers follow the school buses into the parking lot in the morning and then leave right after the buses pull out at the end of school day? The students at my school are in class from 8 to 3 (that's 7 hours by my count) and then I'm required to be in school a half hour before class and a half hour after...at a minimum...so that makes 8 hours - just like almost every other working person in this country. That's doesn't count the numerous meetings and conferences that are held after school, not to mention the lesson prep and grading that needs to be done every single day. I'm not complaining. I love my job - but I don't appreciate it when people take their mistaken impressions from their youth and apply them to the job I put my sweat and my heart into every day.
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In California, twenty percent of the 2011 Distinguished School are charters, even though charter schools make up only around 10% of the state's public schools.
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Maybe if the title of the article was correct, it might have more credibility. Charter schools are public schools, not private.
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