Steven Singer finds that there is a missing ingredient in the present discourse about School Reform. Reformers think they have made great strides if they open more opportunities for choice. What reformers have not been willing to do is to guarantee that every child has the right to an excellent education.
We know what excellent education looks like. It is the education that the 1% demand for their own children. Small classes. Experienced teachers. Beautiful grounds. Ample supplies. A well-stocked library. A curriculum that takes every child as far as they can go. No obsession with test scores.
So why do reformers want other people’s children in overcrowded classes, staffed by inexperienced teachers, focused in tests. Learning to obey and conform?
Singer writes:
“Let’s get one thing straight: there are plenty of things wrong with America’s school system. But they almost all stem from one major error.
“We don’t guarantee every child an excellent education.
“Instead, we strive to guarantee every child THE CHANCE at an excellent education. In other words, we’ll provide a bunch of different options that parents and children can choose from – public schools, charter schools, cyber schools, voucher schools, etc.
“Some of these options will be great. Some will be terrible. It’s up to the consumer (i.e. parents and children) to decide which one to bet on.
“In many places this results in children bouncing from school-to-school. One school is woefully deficient, they enroll in another one. One school closes suddenly, they start over again at another.
“It’s terribly inefficient and does very little good for most children.
“But that’s because it’s not designed with them in mind. It does not put the child first. It puts the education provider first.
“It is a distinctly privatized system. As such, the most important element in this system is the corporation, business, administrator or entrepreneurial entity that provides an education.
“We guarantee the businessperson a potential client. We guarantee the investor a market. We guarantee the hedge fund manager a path to increased equity. We guarantee the entrepreneur a chance to exploit the system for a profit.
“What we do NOT guarantee is anything for the students. Caveat emptor – “Let the buyer beware.”
“Imagine if, instead, we started from this proposition: every child in America will be provided with an excellent education.
“Sound impossible? Maybe. But it’s certainly a better goal than the one we’re using.”
There is much more. Singer doesn’t have a cookie-cutter in mind.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fascinating to read this comment, and then a few minutes later to see this statement that “an excellent education is every student’s right”.
“”My own parents expected more of me and made sacrifices, so that I could have a good education. An excellent education is every student’s right. We must continue to fight together to ensure that this right manifests into an everyday reality for our young people.” —Los Angeles school board member and charter school founder, Ref Rodriguez
I understand some who post here disagree with and flat out don’t like Ref Rodriguez. But I thought it notable that Singer and Rodriguez agree that an excellent education is a right.
cross posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Here-s-an-Idea-Guarantee-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Consumer_Education-For-All_Education-Funding_Education-Testing-170625-14.html
I always operated under the assumption that our mission was to provide all students with an excellent education within the constraints of the budget. Fortunately, my school district promoted continuous improvement and professionalism. Before NCLB this was possible.
Unfortunately, laws of most states include a statement about an adequate education or one that is thorough and efficient. These terms can be interpreted in many different ways so students get what the states want them to have. Maybe the emphasis should be on a equitable education with an emphasis on fair funding, and perhaps changing the way schools are funded. Our current method of funding systematically cheats urban students that often have the greatest needs.
If our country values our young people, we will not subject them to the endless churn and burn of the market, which exists, to make money. As Singer points out, in a market students are considered widgets that serve companies to make profit. Young people are no longer the priority. Local communities lose their right to self governance as corporations gain control over local school budgets. This will place young people in the hands of corporations, a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
The miracle of “choice” is a big lie that is being sold to us in order forward privatization. Choice equals no voice, and no local control over local money and governance. In this link, Peter Greene examines “choice” and explains what it will not do. http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/06/what-choice-wont-do.html
Q Our current method of funding systematically cheats urban students that often have the greatest needs.END Q
Amen. I have often said, that funding education from property taxes, creates educational “apartheid”. Wealthy districts can afford excellent schools, poor districts cannot afford excellent schools. The result is that the areas with the greatest need do not have the resources that the students need. The result is a “vicious cycle” ,where people who can afford to move out of the poor areas, move out, and transfer their tax payments to the wealthy areas, with the superior public schools.
This is a form of “school choice”, which damages the least-affluent areas!
Charles, I agree that the suburban district publics can represent a very unfair form of school choice. That’s especially true when a state’s school funding program relies heavily on local property taxes.
It’s also true when a suburban district can deny urban students entrance to its schools unless they pay tuition. There are a few examples of cross district public school choice, with transportation provisions. But not many.
School choice plans vary. One of the largest and most inequitable allows affluent families to choose suburban schools which spend substantially more per pupil that urban or rural districts.
Joseph Nathan notes: “suburban schools which spend substantially more per pupil that urban or rural districts.”
Joseph Nathan if you believed that per pupil money was important, you would be fighting for MORE money for the urban and rural districts. A lot more. The fact that private schools with the most advantaged children say that it costs them at least $40,000/year to teach kids who have access to tutors, books, educational enrichment should tell you that the simple solution is to drastically increase funding and decrease class size for the children who have none of those advantages.
Instead you seem to say that if those $40,000/year private schools were ordered by law to random accept half their students from the most disadvantaged neighborhoods and receive $20,000/year for each one, all would be well and problem solved!
I’m just kidding — of course you wouldn’t say such an absurd thing that would require giving the poorest children the same advantages as the richest. Instead you offer the absurd “solution” that is Trump-like in its brilliance! Make the middle class parents who subsidize the schools for their own children to start also subsidizing the education of the poorest children with some of that money!
Reformers don’t really want better schools, as anyone who listens to the nonsense spouted by people like this know. If you want better schools for children in failing public schools, spend the same $40,000/year per pupil that rich kids get and see if there is an “improvement”. Given that in all your complicated and convoluted “reforms” you don’t just say “what happens if the most disadvantaged kids get the most advantaged education?” We SAW what happens when billionaires give millions and millions to a chosen charter school that only teaches the cheapest to teach children while wasting outrageous sums of that paying high CEO salaries, marketing, public relations, advertising, etc.
Imagine if those millions were instead spent on a REAL public school that spent the same $40,000/year per student as the private schools, but spent it on the most disadvantaged children? And I don’t mean give it to a charter school that simply rids itself of the expensive students so they can use that money to promote themselves. I’m talking about a public school that spends its money on more teachers and trained adults who address the needs of the students who really are being left behind. Not PR staff.
The denial of the complicit people in the reform business is practically criminal. You know what works. So spare me your “just bus all the urban kids to middle class schools so the parents there can share their little bit of extra money with the kids who need it most.”
Your notion of choice is appalling because you insist that the one choice that rich kids have is not an option. Non-rich families can sell their soul for a good education as long as they are complicit and look the other way at abuse. Or they can send their kids to underfunded public schools for the most difficult to teach kids. But not only do reformers fight against giving those parents a choice of a well-funded public schools, they look for ways to undermine the public schools that are working by asking them to do a lot more with their funding.
Establish very well-funded public schools. That is all ANY parents wants. They aren’t begging for their child to be bused far away from home to go to school. They want a great school at their neighborhood, just like we all do. And that takes a far cry more money than you believe those children deserve. Why should they have the education a rich child has — they just aren’t worth it.
Actually, a number of us have worked successfully to obtain more state $ for urban public schools (district) and charter. Minnesota has a funding formula that provides substantially more for public schools serving a high percentage of low income and limited English speaking students.
Over 40 years of work, in a number of states, I’ve learned that many families other than those that can afford to live in the suburbs also want options. Some want Montessori, some Core Knowledge, some an arts focused, or a language immersion school, some a large traditional school, some a smaller, more personalized project based school.
Fortunately a growing number of states are recognizing the value of providing options. Not enough states are recognizing the importance of putting more $ into the education of low income families. But in some states, district & charter educators have worked together to help increase funding for the education of students from low income families.
And the National Alliance for Public Charters recently strongly criticized the Trump/DeVos budget recommendations for suggesting that many millions be taken from programs that serve students from low income families. This statement reads in part,
“. We are dismayed by the deep cuts proposed to other programs within and beyond the Department of Education. The proposed $54 billion in overall cuts to non-defense discretionary spending—over $9 billion coming from the Department of Education alone—would have long-lasting, far-reaching negative consequences for children, families, communities, and our country as a whole.
“While we appreciate and welcome the Administration’s commitment to charter public schools and the public school students they serve, we urge the Administration and Members of Congress to consider all the ways the federal budget impacts public school students—both district and charter school students. We call on Congress to raise the budget caps on non-defense discretionary spending to avoid lasting negative impact to our children and the future of our nation.”
http://www.publiccharters.org/press/national-alliance-statement-white-houses-proposed-fy18-budget/
Well said. “So why do reformers want other people’s children in overcrowded classes, staffed by inexperienced teachers, focused in tests…” The key word in this question as “big-hearted” top-down “progressives” (or now conservatives) push to invasively control the lives of poor/non-dominant-culture children — and those who have the audacity to keep working with them — is, as always, the word OTHER.
Because they are ENTITLED!
Choice can be good, if the choice is between pedagogies and diploma paths WITHIN the traditional public school system with full transparency and with teachers and staff free to request transfer without loss of rights. Choice of entrepreneurs is not the same thing.
Guarantee an excellent education? If you don’t control all of the input factors, you cannot guarantee the outcome. If all the factors that a school system and its principals and teachers are in place, opportunity to learn can be assured. If, however, student responsibility is cleverly concealed in a euphemism like, “having high expectations of students success” (which most teachers do have, but as an evaluation measure is arbitrary), then students will figure out that they have no responsibility.
And students quickly figure out that the tests they take have no effect on their grades or promotion, but may be used in their teachers’ evaluations.
One way to overcome that is to insist that no tests may be used in evaluating teachers, individually or collectively (school-wide), unless students are held accountable for their results (course failure and/or retained in grade)
We need to realize that money is only one thing that suburban schools have over urban and rural schools. The most important aspect of education is a school with a culture that amines and supports creativity and learning. There are many rural schools filled with students that do not respect the desire to learn. Students who study are often derided as too studious. I have heard that this is also the case in some urban settings.
I have seen classes with some very capable students, but they did not work together for the good of the group. The most positive thing that can happen in a school is for a critical mass of motivated students to begin to find delight in the process of learning together. The most daunting task in education is to try to teach children who believe it is wrong to learn. You could pour money on that latter group with a firehose and there would be no positive outcome.
My advice is to start early and build.
Agreed that having a culture that promotes, honors and encourages achievement is very important. Fortunately, there is a good deal of information and experience about how educators, along with families, community members and students, can do this together.
Here is a link to one publication by ASCD
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/111014.aspx
Many other materials are available.
Thanks, Joseph. I read some reviews with interest. It is unfortunate that I probably will not get to read the book. One of the facts of life is the limited time we spend here on earth and the different foci of our lives. Studying history taught me that you can never read all the books yourself. I came to that conclusion after reading Steven Runciman’s three volume history of the crusades.
I like the five pillars approach of the book, and suspect that I would like their ideas. I am also lucky enough to teach in a school with a very positive culture. Like all Utopias, it disappoints some, but is mostly positive. Was positive, I should say, before the present reform movement pushed children into classes for which they were unprepared and made principals evaluate teachers on a basis that was unreasonable.
They seem to suggest that you begin with staff dialogue. I would heartily agree. That was the most important aspect of the school I found thirty years ago. They seem to suggest a need for making learning last. This fits my belief that life is a limited thing, as I pointed out above. So I bet I would like them. Thanks.
Roy, thanks for being a teacher and a learner.
I agree it’s not possible to read everything valuable. But we can learn from some of the most effective schools. Here’s a link to a brief newspaper column I wrote about an effort to do that:
http://hometownsource.com/2017/06/22/joe-nathan-column-educators-who-illustrate-what-we-honor-on-july-4/
Thanks for the link