Paul Thomas of Furman University spent 18 years as a teacher in South Carolina. He now prepares teachers and writes articles, posts, and books.

 

He writes here about South Carolina’s reaction to the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Politicians and editorialists say there must be no back-sliding on accountability, that the state must recommit to holding teachers, students, and schools accountable.

 

But he notes that South Carolina’s dedication to testing and accountability started thirty years ago, and the state still lags far behind other states. So-called reformers say that the answer is to double down on failed strategies. Wouldn’t you think that thirty years of failure is enough?

 

Thomas writes:

 

The greatest education challenge, then, facing our state is addressing poverty and racism in our society so that education reform has a chance to succeed. Without adopting policy that deals directly with stable jobs with adequate pay and benefits, healthcare, childcare, and an equitable criminal justice system, our schools are destined to continue to struggle.

 

Next, we need to reconsider entirely education reform—not based on accountability but on equity of opportunity.

 

Labeling and ranking our schools—whether we use more than test scores or not—has been harmful, and it is past time to consider another process. As Bruce Baker, Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, and researcher Gerald Bracey have argued often, educational rankings tend to reveal more about conditions outside of the school’s control than about the quality of education. Overwhelmingly in all types of educational rankings the greatest predictor of high or low rankings is wealth or poverty.

 

However, The State actually hits on a better alternative: “But the focus must remain on the core function of the schools: providing all children in this state the opportunity to receive a decent education, of the sort that will allow them to become self-supporting, productive, taxpaying citizens.”

 

Equity of opportunity must replace accountability in SC—although this doesn’t mean lowering expectations or absolving schools or teachers from their responsibilities to students and the state.

 

What I propose is transparency about the opportunities to learn that all students are receiving in the context of social programs that help every student enter the doors of those schools on much more equal footing than they have historically or currently.

 

Those equitable opportunities must include for all students access to experienced and certified teachers, open door policies for challenging courses and programs (such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate), and equitably funded schools and facilities across the state. As well, we must end inequitable disciplinary policies and outcomes, tracking, and harmful current policies such as third-grade retention based on reading scores.

 

But grading and ranking schools must end as well.

 

Will we waste another generation of children by holding onto failed strategies?