Education / Youth – Page 63

Education Reform Basics

Democrats for Education Reform is an important organization in our state. It’s composed of people–mostly, but not exclusively, Democrats–who want to approach education issues from the standpoint of what is best for children, and without the usual political constraints. (“Political constraints” in this context means automatic obeisance to the teachers’ unions. The organization is not anti-Union, but neither do its members feel obliged to agree with the union on every issue, as Democrats have traditionally done.)

Last night, my husband and I attended an event sponsored by DFER. There were at least a hundred people in attendance, and it was an interesting and diverse crowd: teachers from both traditional public schools and charters, business people, legislators and ordinary citizens concerned with the problems of public education. The speaker was was Stephen Brill, and he was “interviewed” by Matt Tully, the Star columnist who has written movingly about Manual High School and the issues facing educators in our poorer precincts.

Brill has recently written a book (who hasn’t??) about what’s wrong with public education. He is not an educator; he describes himself as a reporter. He made a lot of money establishing Court TV and several magazines; he was self-possessed to the point of smugness, and he made sure the audience knew he teaches a seminar at Yale.

Brill made a number of points that most observers would agree with, and he showed real skill in evading questions for which he clearly had no answers. (Case in point: he forcefully defended testing students as a method of evaluating teacher effectiveness. When I asked him how that should work in inner-city classrooms that experience student turnover in excess of 100% during the school year–classrooms in which the students being tested at the end of the year are not the same children who were tested at the beginning of the school year–he didn’t answer the question; instead, he launched into an extended and mostly irrelevant defense of “doing something” even if that something wasn’t perfect.)

The format was question and answer, and there was a lot of earnest discussion about the importance of good teachers (duh!), the pros and cons of charter schools, and the role of teachers’ unions. But the truly important question was asked at the very end of the program. It was a simple enough inquiry by a woman who identified herself as a longtime proponent of education reform: “how do you define a good education?”

It caught Brill flat-footed. And therein lies the real problem.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the education system is broken. (To his credit, Brill agreed that most suburban schools are no better than the schools serving urban areas–students simply tend to come from homes that have prepared them better.) Pretty much everyone wants to improve public education–I don’t know anyone who’s celebrating the status quo. But all the arguments about how to improve schools, all the fancy talk about measurement and testing and excellence, tends to ignore the central question: what do we mean by education? What should students know when they graduate? What skills should they have? Why? How does education differ from job training? How does education for citizenship differ from education as a consumer good?

The Chamber of Commerce wants schools to produce an “educated workforce.” Parents want schools to provide “marketable skills.” Policy wonks talk about global competitiveness. Our Governor seems fixated on credentialing–turning out students who’ve earned a piece of paper in the least possible amount of time. Some old fogies (me, for example) believe an education requires acquainting students with great literature, with science, with history, with at least a minimal understanding of their government, and–above all–the ability to think logically and critically.

It’s an unresolved–and largely unasked–question, and it’s the elephant in the room. Because if we don’t agree about what an education is, how on earth will we know whether we are providing it?

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What We Don’t Know DOES Hurt Us…

The other day, I was grading a research paper produced by a graduate student who shares my concerns over civic literacy. The paper included a comprehensive review of available research on the topic, much of which confirmed what we had already known about the American public’s appalling deficit in basic knowledge of our government and history.

But one finding floored me.

“In 2008, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s American Civic Literacy Program released the results of a study that tested the civic literacy of the general public, college graduates and elected officials. More than 2500 randomly selected people took ISI’s basic 33-question civic literacy exam, and more than 1700 failed, with an average score of 49 percent, and 30 percent of elected officials unable to identify the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence…only 32 percent of elected officials could accurately define the free enterprise system; only 46 percent knew that Congress has the power to declare war; and only 49 percent could identify all three branches of government. Perhaps most disheartening is that civic literacy ws one of only two variables that had a negative effect on whether someone ran for public office. In other words, the more you know about American government, history and economics, the less likely you are to pursue and win elective office.”

That explains a lot. It also raises an important question: What is the minimum content of an adequate “civics” education? What do all of us need to know in order to participate in self-governance?

In 1988, E.D. Hirsch stirred up a storm of controversy by arguing that, absent a minimal cultural literacy, students didn’t understand what they read. His basic point was that a common understanding of cultural/historical references is necessary for people to communicate. Most critics accepted that premise; where Hirsch got into trouble was by listing what he considered the necessary knowledge.

Recognizing that I’m stepping into those same choppy waters, let me just suggest some essential elements of civic literacy–beginning with an acknowledgement that neither the general public nor elected officials need to be scholars or (worse still) “intellectuals.” We are talking about very basic information necessary to conduct a rational discussion about our shared public institutions.

1) Every student who graduates from high school should know basic American history. I don’t care if they know the year the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but they should know who the Pilgrims and Puritans were, why we fought the American Revolution, what the Enlightenment was and how it changed our definition of liberty and informed our approach to self-government and individual rights.

2) Every voter should know the basics of American government: what is meant by checks and balances and separation of powers, and the identities and duties of each of the three branches of government. Citizens should be able to recognize and define the rights protected by the Bill of Rights. (When only 51% of Americans agree that newspapers should be allowed to publish without prior government approval, we are clearly failing to provide that education.)

3) Voters don’t need to know the definition of a neutron, or how to spot a fossil, but they should know what science and the scientific method are. And they should know the difference between the scientific term “theory” and our casual use of that term.

4) Our endless debates over taxation and economic policy would benefit enormously if every student who graduated from high school could define capitalism, socialism, fascism and mixed economy; if they knew the difference between the national debt and the deficit; and the difference between marginal and effective tax rates. (I’m always astonished by the number of people who think that being in the 50% bracket means you pay 50% of your income in taxes.)

Education reform is a hot topic right now. Basic civic knowledge needs to be at the top of that reform agenda.

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Legislative Whack-A-Mole

As I noted in yesterday’s post, our intrepid legislators are hard at work making fools of themselves on the taxpayers’ dime. There’s the effort to ban the non-existent use of Sharia law by the state’s judiciary, a bill prescribing how school children must sing the Star Spangled Banner (no, I am not making that up–and I’m not going to say anything more about it, either–too depressing), and the effort that will not die no matter how many courts rule it unconstitutional: a bill to allow the teaching of creationism in public school science classes.

What’s wrong with this effort by Senator Kruse (he of the “no Sharia” bill)? Ah, let me count the ways.

First of all, the Supreme Court has ruled that injecting “creation science” (as the bill calls it) into public school science classrooms, is unconstitutional. The reason? “Creation science” is not science. It is religion. In fact, the courts will allow creationism to be taught in classes on comparative religion.

Proponents of teaching this religious dogma in science class consistently betray an utter lack of understanding of what science is. First of all, they use the term “theory” to suggest that evolution is “just a theory.” What they clearly do not understand is that in science, the term “theory” has a specific meaning–and that meaning is very different from the way you and I use the term in casual conversation. The common use means “guess” or “speculation.” In science, a theory is constructed to explain the relationship of carefully documented empirical observations.

There is one common thread to the two meanings, however, and it is what sets science apart from religion or ideology: both our casual “theories” and scientific theories are falsifiable. That means they must be changed if new evidence emerges that warrants such change. The scientific method is built on this concept of falsification–scientists constantly challenge and test what they think they know, and modify their understandings accordingly. That is how science advances.

If a belief is rigid, if it is held despite facts that challenge all or part of it, it is by definition not science. (If Senator Kruse will explain how God can be dragged into a high school lab and tested, he might have–excuse the expression–a prayer.) Creationism is a matter of faith, and faith–again, by definition–is not science.

It probably goes without saying that in a state pursuing economic development through a variety of bio-science initiatives, passage of Kruse’s bill would send a very embarrassing message. Evolution, after all, is the necessary basis of biology. But what is most depressing about this exercise is its predictable futility. During the past decade or so, creation “science” has been authorized in Kansas and Pennsylvania and–predictably–struck down by the courts. (In Kansas, voters also went to the polls in droves to defeat the Kansas Board of Education members who’d made the state a national laughingstock). It’s like the game of “whack a mole”–you whap it here and it pops up there.

Meanwhile, the state’s real problems languish and the legislature’s real business is neglected.

I guess there’s a lesson here: don’t be some fancy-pants elitist who actually understands biology. And for goodness sake, watch how you sing the Star Spangled Banner…..

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Entering the Minefield

The Mind Trust is one of those “do good” organizations that virtually everyone supports. It has spent its relatively brief organizational life doing work that is essentially uncontroversial–studying what sorts of methods work in the classroom, offering Fellowships to good teachers, and reminding the public generally about the importance of education to everything from economic development to quality of life.

Now–as Chef Emeril might say–they are “stepping it up a notch.”

A news release issued this morning introduces a dramatic proposal to restructure and improve Indianapolis Public Schools. In the words of the release, it “describes how by shrinking the central administration of IPS and giving schools more autonomy we could:

send about $200 million more a year to schools without raising taxes,
provide high-quality universal pre-kindergarten to all four-year-olds,
invest $10 million each year to recruit great teachers and principals and incubate great new schools,
empower teachers to innovate in the classroom and reward them for strong results,
ensure there is a great school in every IPS neighborhood, and
provide parents with dramatically more quality school choices.

It is the boldest urban reform plan in the United States.

In developing this plan, The Mind Trust engaged local and national experts to analyze high-performing urban public schools across the country and distill the key conditions for their success- autonomy, accountability, and parental choice. Crafted after 18 months of research and design, The Mind Trust’s plan presents a new vision for how IPS and other urban districts could be restructured to create these conditions for all public schools.”

The plan is available online, and deserves a careful reading. There may be provisions that raise red flags–certainly, there will be ample debate and discussion, especially about proposals to turn control over to the Mayor and Council, who have shown little interest in education to date and who have many other responsibilities to discharge. (On the other hand, to suggest–as Matt Tully did this morning–that such a change somehow divests control from the voters is silly; citizens vote in far greater numbers for Mayor and Council than they do for School Board, and I’d be willing to wager a tidy sum that more people can name their Councilor than can identify their School Board representative.)

There is wide agreement that IPS is failing. Whether this is the plan that will fix it is an open question. But any plan that begins by admitting the obvious–that the current bloated administration is a problem rather than a solution–deserves consideration and support.

Schizo America

Lately, I’ve been noticing how schizophrenic American politics are.

We talk endlessly about democracy and the importance of citizen participation while we enthusiastically endorse efforts to erect barriers to voting; we celebrate the ideal of meritocracy while supporting economic policies that enrich the privileged at the expense of the poor; we lecture welfare recipients about “personal responsibility” but never utter the phrase to corporate fat cats profiting from corporate welfare.

And then there’s our absolutely schizoid approach to “standards” and “elitism.”

Public schools are constantly criticized for lacking adequate standards for achievement. Reformers have insisted on high-stakes testing, teacher benchmarks, and a whole range of other measures all geared to improving performance–to measuring up to a standard.

Meanwhile, people who have achieved academically are routinely dismissed as out-of-touch elitists. One of the most common accusations leveled at President Obama is that he’s an “elitist”–an accusation based not upon his lower-middle-class upbringing, but upon his academic performance and the provenance of his degrees.

It’s not just Obama, of course. It’s anyone with a couple of degrees or demonstrated expertise. (When someone doesn’t like a column of mine, an email calling me an “elitist academic” is commonplace–presumably, simply teaching at a University makes one an elitist. In a related phenomenon, in some minority communities, getting good grades is derided as “acting white.”)

When the acquisition of a measure of expertise routinely generates scorn, it sends a very mixed message about what it is that Americans really value.

When we compare the test scores of American students with the scores of students from other countries, we might want to inquire into the cultures of the countries whose students do better than ours. Perhaps the cultures of such countries support academics in ways American culture does not.

Maybe those countries have cultures that are less schizo.