Kevin Kosar, who earned his Ph.D. at NYU in a study of federal education policy, researched the use of the term “failing schools.” It was seldom used until 1990. Since then, as you can see when you open the link, it has become a commonplace term.
This is clearly political, since test scores for every group are higher today than they were in 1990, graduation rates are higher, and dropout rates are lower.
“Failing schools” is a term that enables privatizers to take over more public property and to enroll more students when their neighborhood school was closed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have often wondered about the history of dropout/graduation rates. If you were to track every decade of the 20th century, it would probably show a graduation rate at a steady incline. I think that high school graduation for parents of baby boomers was more the exception than the rule.
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Graduation rates can be calculated in various ways. They are now at their highest point in history.
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Diane, did you see Dan Rather’s recent report basically discrediting the notion that there is a shortage of candidate in STEM? It was a real eye opener and sad at the same time. So much American talent being wasted. Who is feeding Obama the idea that we need to build students in the STEM area. He looks completely foolish and out of touch or just a plain liar(I’m not sure which)
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STEM? Just think of all those voucher schools teaching creationism. If we were serious about modern science, we would teach it.
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Are the graduation standards at the highest point in history as well?
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People haven’t needed a high school diploma to get a decent paying job until more recently. I can’t help believe the rate has risen steadily out of need.
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The NY Times had an article last week saying that you need a college diploma to get a job as a file clerk.
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Bingo! You hit the nail on the head, Diane!
It’s a “brilliant” yet very nefarious device to insure that the public is always ready to accept the “necessary reforms” that come and go on a regular basis, like the latest pop culture fads.
It’s absolutely essential that The Privatizers have “Failing Schools”, “Bad Teachers” and “Low-Performing Students” —and, to buy them vital “street cred”, an amorphous “Achievement Gap”, allowing them to both lament the differences between our poorest and most affluent students, AND be nimble enough to “move the goalposts” whenever necessary, to keep their specious narrative alive and well in the public sphere.
Because once you convince the public that these “failing” and “bad” things exist, it’s much easier to get their support for the agenda-driven closure or replacement of anything The Privatizers desire.
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Very interesting. There is almost no mention in the first one until Reagan and then really up under Clinton. The next is nothing until Clinton and then way up. This figures as Clinton did us four real bad ones. First-1994 was NAFTA and WTO which offshored jobs. Two-the 1996 Telecommunications Act which wiped out the free press. Three-the 1999-2000 Banking Deregulation Acts which created an out of control unaccountable wild west banking system just like the one that took all my grandfathers and others money before 1929. Four-Privatization, including schools. After all charter schools began in 1992-94 as the total answer.
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Thank you for recounting and summarizing the Clinton Years so well. While he was responsible for many other bad things as well—from the absolutely cowardly DADT to the truly odious DOMA, the elevation of the truly sick Dick Morris to “Oval Office Rasputin” (until he got caught playing “footsie”…) the abolition of Glass-Stengall, and much more—the ones you provided were among Clinton’s most egregious.
Why the continuing, absolute worship of this man among certain segments of progressives, even when specifics such as the above are laid out directly in front of them?
Throughout the 90’s I’d hear Clinton’s steadfast defenders say “He’s much better than the Republicans!”—which is what I hear the same people say today about Obama.
True, during both presidencies. But is this the new standard for our chief executives: that they just be less extreme than the absolute wacko right-wingers in Congress?
And sadly, when it comes to the issue of K-12 education, I have to concede the obvious: President Obama—through his appointment of, and strong support for, the absolutely horrific policies of Arne Duncan—-is the worst president on K-12 public education since the establishment of the federal DOE.
As someone who worked with all his heart and soul to elect Barack Obama in 2008, it breaks my heart to have to say this. But it’s true and we can’t live in denial if we really want things to change for the better.
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Clinton definately sold-out the American worker. Obama is an out of touch disaster. When will we have a candidate that actually works for the people? They all seem bought out to me.
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I never understood the reverence for Clinton. He was too centrist for me. Plus, I saw the immediate consequences of his “reform” of “welfare as we know it.” I taught at and then became the Director of private child care centers during that era and suddenly we had a revolving door of low income families who had been approved for government subsidies which didn’t last for more than a few months, because the parents (usually single moms) had gotten menial jobs and no longer qualified for assistance –but they couldn’t afford to pay for child care on minimum wage either. Ugh! My heart really went out to them…
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Let’s also not forget how The Achievement Gap – a rhetorical trope that intentionally seeks to avoid discussion of every other social misery index – is part of that propaganda blitz of buzzwords and euphemisms.
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“Data Driven Decision Making” eerily mirrors Kosar’s graphs… but value added appears to be a term that waxes and wanes— it almost looks like an idea that the private sector abandoned for itself but has adopted for public education
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Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
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This is a wonderful example of why historical thinking (the kind that can’t possibly be captured on standardized tests), historical scholarship, and historical teaching are so essential to all of us. The assumptions and tropes of the present come to see, again and again, as natural and inevitable. Historical work shows that sense of naturalness to be false, identifying in the process just whose interests are served by making the controversial fall well below the collective radar.
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My guess is that the reason why “failing school” showed up more often in books initially is because people used to frequently refer to individual students who were performing poorly as “failing school.” I don’t recall that term being used to characterize individual schools prior to the the late 80s.
I remember noticing when the onus of failure was taken off students and poverty and placed on schools, in the Reagan era, with the 1983 publication of “A Nation at Risk,” particularly after William Bennett declared the Chicago Public Schools the worst in the nation, in 1988. That was followed in the 90s by an era of school reform in Chicago and the terms “failing schools” and “failing school” began to be used often then (with the latter used more in reference to individual schools than to individual students).
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Diane, correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you one of the people who used the term “failing schools” a lot in the 1990s? Don’t you bear some of the responsibility for popularizing the concept of a “failing school”?
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What I would like to see is another line (or lines) on the same graph that shows the trend in some meaningful metric(s) that might be reasonably tied to the failure or success of schools. If that/those line(s) are flat, then “failing schools” is probably hype or outright deception. If they track together, then maybe there is something to the term “failing schools.”
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