Why We Need a Clean Slate on School Reform

Back to school is a fresh start, that clean slate with the promise of new lessons and approaches. I wish we could get that clean slate—or smart board these days, I guess—in the great American debate over education reform.

We’re heading in the wrong direction, according to one critical report I read recently. It shows that the ideas backed by all of the different factions in the U.S. debate—corporate reformers, unions, union bashers, charter schoolers, budget cutters, standardized testers, test haters—won’t help us catch up with the countries that lead the world. We need a reform do-over.

International comparisons in education were once a topic reserved for academics and wonks. This was probably because as long as the U.S. lead the pack, there was no reason to look beyond our borders for best practices in schools. But now that places like Finland, Singapore, Japan, Shanghai, and Ontario, Canada, have shot past us, comparisons are the hot topic. That makes a study on those countries by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) titled Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An Agenda for American Education Reform important reading.

In the report, Marc Tucker, its author and president of the NCEE, illustrates the key point with, of all things, a reference to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” In the Sherlock Holmes novel, he notes, the key clue was the dog that did not bark. He goes on to say:

“In this case, the dog that did not bark is the dominant element of the American education reform agenda. It turns out that neither the researchers whose work is reported on in this paper nor the analysts of the OECD PISA (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment) data have found any evidence that any country that leads the world’s education performance league tables has gotten there by implementing any of the major agenda items that dominate the education reform agenda in the United States.”

Whoops! You might want to read that again: None of the policies so hotly debated here in Pelham or on the state and federal level are being used in countries where students are outperforming our kids.

On the list of things the world giants of education are not using are charter schools and vouchers, the support of education entrepreneurs to disrupt the system, and standardized test results to reward or punish teachers and principals.

Even more daunting is the list of changes we will all need to wrap our heads around if we are to catch up to the giants. I counted 32 bullet-pointed steps ranging from teacher training and pay to school finance, productivity and benchmarking. They are not small steps. They have nothing to do with mandates or tax caps, a common core curriculum or AP tests.

Under creating “a world-class teaching force” Tucker writes, teachers should master the subjects they will teach at the same level of people awarded bachelors degrees and going on to graduate education in those very same fields. “Make sure compensation for beginning teachers is and remains comparable to compensation for the other non-feminized professions,” he says. In other words, pay teachers what we pay engineers.

On school financing, the report is down-right revolutionary, calling for full state responsibility for education funding and uniform formulas for schools. “Let parents and students choose among public schools, with the funding following the students.” In other words, close the gap between rich and poor districts.

I can already hear the cries to man the barricades from Pelham, Scarsdale and Bronxville. But anyone who wants to argue with the study has to deal with one simple fact: It is reporting on places where the schools are right now doing a better job of teaching children.

Where to begin? I was encouraged that Finland and Quebec and the others did not get where they are by persistently testing students and expecting that to be the engine of reform. I would have been surprised if they had. But I wonder where the political will is to take on the kind of agenda that will mean success for all our students. Policy makers like to talk about “giving our children a 21st Century education” —it sounds bright, shiny and for the future. Other countries are doing it. We are not.

Next week’s column: A investigation of Pelham’s elementary math curriculum.

Read Rich’s blog at www.richzahradnik.com.