This is an interesting discussion about the future of American education, written by Marc Tucker.
Check out the October 12 edition of Flypaper, The Fordham Institute’s newsletter, and you will find a very thoughtful commentary from Checker Finn on the proposal from Theresa May, Britain’s new Prime Minister, to resurrect that country’s grammar schools. These are the selective high schools in the government-funded system that used to provide the gateway to university for most students on the basis of exams given at the end of what we call elementary school. There are a few of these schools left, but most were abolished by the Labor government nearly half a century ago on the grounds that they were a vestige of the British class system that denied access to higher education to students from the lower classes. While the grammar school system appeared to operate on merit, Labor argued that the system actually heavily favored students who entered school with much bigger vocabularies, a much wider exposure to books and high culture and much more support for education. So the system operated to enable the upper classes to reproduce themselves; their kids would continue to have the advantages they had always had, and the lower classes would continue to be denied an opportunity for social mobility, the very opposite of what government-funded schools are supposed to do.
Checker Finn muses on whether we made a mistake by expanding access to high schools to all. Was universal public education a mistake? Should we pay more attention to our smartest students?
Tucker writes:
Finn is right to draw the parallels between the United States and Britain on these issues. James B. Conant’s call for comprehensive high schools came at much the same time and with the same rationale as Labor’s call for comprehensive high schools in Britain. We both largely abolished selective admission to high schools at about the same time and for the same reasons. We both moved toward school choice with much the same rationale and both moved toward having the state rather than the locality take responsibility for the new schools. And both systems are performing more or less miserably now, relative to the other countries to which we usually compare ourselves. But that does not leave the United States—or Britain—with a choice between continuing on the road we are now on or returning to the old system. Neither will work. We know that from bitter experience.
Where do we go next?
You may notice if you scan the comments that I wrote the third one. I see this discussion as disconnected with reality. We stand at the cusp of an era in which the federal government is determined to make war on public schools and to promote religious schools and charter schools. We will have neither universal access, nor equity, nor excellence.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“We stand at the cusp of an era in which the federal government is determined to make war on public schools….”
Uh, I’d say we’re knee-deep (neck-deep?) in that era. NCLB was, arguably, the opening salvo (if not even before that). RttT was the cluster bombing. Trump might be the nuclear missile, but then, I’m not convinced that wasn’t already launched.
Dienne, There is some truth and potent imagery in what you say.
Even so, I think that the use of war imagery has become so prevalent in framing the many social, civic, cultural and political problems of our time that we are at risk of distracting attention from the real loss of life, the injuries, the havoc and the devastation caused by the actual conduct of war.
In my opinion, Marc Tucker is rehashing stale ideas. He is preoccupied with “performances” of schools and school systems only insofar as “performances” are translated into ratings from high to low with a lot of mediocre performances in the middle.
In this opinion piece, he is contributing to the EdWeek blog identified with a banner heading “Top Performers” and the subheading “Education in 2016 Through the ‘Top Performers’ Lens.”
I do not understand why the ideas of Tucker and Finn continue to be treated seriously.
Diane’s comments show that she has the big picture. Tucker is navel gazing.
.
“NTWLB”
“No think-tank wanker left behind”
The motto of the mucker
Just follow money and you’ll find
A Checker and a Tucker
Tucker should stop writing. He’s one of the original cradle to grave data-mongers. All he ever does is embarrass himself and those around him. Really, Poet should keep writing; Marc Tucker should stop.
Some people have made a career (“follow the money”) of being wrong.
The real problem is not that they were/are wrong, but that lots of people continue to listen to them even after it is blatantly obvious that they were wrong.
Being wrong is not a crime, but it is also not a source of credibility, not even when one admits oen was wrong.
If it were, scientists could acquire credibility simply by proposing wrong theories one day and then renouncing them the next.
Though that does not inspire confidence, it’s not all bad in the case of science because it can spur discussion ande there is little to be lost – other than the credibility of the person espousing the wrong theories.
The same can not be said for being wrong on public policies, which can have a profound impact on people’s lives.
It’s actually bizarre that our society (through our media) continues to hold people up as “experts” when they were catastrophically wrong on policies that negatively impacted millions of people (including children). Invasion of Iraq and NCLB come to mind.
Not only are the people who were wrong Still held up as experts, but the folks who were actually right are often marginalized and/or ignored. William Black was completely right about the massive fraud on Wall Street leading to the financial meltdown but was completely ignored by those in power and by the mainstream media.
Being right does not even seem to matter any more.
The current system of market driven “choice” is less egalitarian than public school options. The result is the shifting of funding from public schools to various private entities of dubious quality. It is inefficient and wasteful while it reduces the capacity of public schools to adequately serve the majority of students. Charter schools and vouchers allow resources to be distributed to a few at the expense of many while they also increase segregation. This process is anti-democratic.
“Reformers” have brain washed the public by presenting “choice” as a magic bullet. The reality is many charters offer more limited options to students than public schools Charters have mostly relied on antiquated, one size fits all instruction from minimally trained staff. Public schools that pool resources can offer more better options through magnet schools for specialized talents and interests. The loss of funds to home schools is generally carefully managed by requiring a limit to the number of students from any district, unlike some charters with permissive authorizers that can drain a public system into collapse. Increasing charter growth has the potential to destabilize communities, cities and even states.
retired teacher: if I may riff off of your excellent observations…
These two lines from the posting jumped out at me:
“Checker Finn muses on whether we made a mistake by expanding access to high schools to all. Was universal public education a mistake?”
This would be more surprising and disgusting—if I hadn’t just read in Mercedes K. Schneider, SCHOOL CHOICE: THE END OF PUBLIC EDUCATION (2016, p. 28), this bit from a 1995 interview with Milton Friedman, the ideological fount of all rheephorm wisdom:
“If in the absence of compulsory education, only 50 percent would be literate, then I can regard it as appropriate.”
I recently used on this website a bit of sage advice from Maya Angelou but it bears repeating:
“When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.”
😎
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Most high schools offer different tracks for the students: for those planning on going to college and those who will go directly into the work force. Some communities do offer specialized high schools (science/technology, arts/theater, etc.) which are selective and do have admissions requirements. These specialized high schools are under the supervision of the duly elected school boards and the district superintendent.
“Disconnected with reality” sums it up. This really is no laughing matter and not to be treated with casual cynicism. Throngs of individuals are about to takeover the mechanisms of our USA democracy and nearly everyone has a permanently severed connection with even the vaguest notion of a common good or an uncommonly good public school system. Delusional!
Ah, so now the so-called reformers are morphing from their (transparently dishonest) claim that they believe, “It’s all about the kids!” to “Well, maybe this universal education thing is overrated, after all.”
Yes, how dare we spend money that rightfully belongs to billionaires on the children of Those People!
The problem is, they can’t even bring back child labor (though many so-called reformers, and certainly their Overclass patrons, no doubt would love to) since there’s little or no need for human labor of any kind in those industries anymore.
I’m sure the Fordham Institute would happily accept money to produce “research” on the salutary effects of children working in the mines and factories again, except they are closed, and many of them will not re-open, and will need far fewer humans if they do.
Almost twenty years ago, when NY State was sued for its unequal funding of schools, the Republican governor of the time, George Pataki, argued that the state was not required to provide more than a 8th grade education, or its equivalent. Fortunately, the NYS Court of Appeals was wiser and more compassionate than that.
Imagine millions of under-educated adolescents, neither in school nor in the workforce, roaming aimlessly about (although perhaps Mark Zuckerberg’s for-profit “philanthropy” could provide them with virtual reality headsets, so as to keep them passive and indoors): now that’s a dystopian image.
Any court decision is only as good as the person rendering the decision. As Trump and Pence stack the courts with right wing, conservative judges, we may be returning to the dark ages.
E.D. Hirsch makes a great case that the achievement gap is largely a knowledge gap. One of his proofs is France’s old curriculum, which robust evidence shows narrowed the gap between classes and races (in the late 80’s France switched to an American-style progressive ed system and the achievement gap has exploded there). Until our K-12 system reorients itself to teaching knowledge as opposed to Lumosity-type brain training (e.g. inference-making exercises; or practice using context clues), the lower classes will never catch up to the upper classes who are bombarded with knowledge at home. Neither Tucker nor Finn seem to see that curriculum reform, not reorganization of the schools, holds the best hope for reducing the achievement gap.
The degree to which public schools have mistakenly leaned toward the “teaching” of empty, isolated skill sets is embarrassing and is undermining the credibility of our profession.
Reading Diane’s “Left Back”, one sees there are many great thinkers who have vigorously rejected progressive education. For example, W.E.B. Du Bois, who said, “The object of a school system is to carry the child as far as possible in its knowledge of the accumulated wisdom of the world…Anyone who suggests by sneering at books and “literary courses” that the great heritage of human thought ought to be displaced simply for the reason of teaching the technique of modern industry is pitifully wrong, and, if the comparison must be made, more wrong than the man who would sacrifice modern technique to the heritage of ancient thought.” Sounds like E.D. Hirsch to me.
Another formidable anti-progressivist is philosopher Michael Oakeshott. I’m reading his “Voice of Liberal Learning” now. Here he criticizes the anti-knowledge trend in education (in 1975, but the rhetoric is almost the same as today’s): “Learning here is said to be ‘learning to think for oneself’ or to be the cultivation of ‘intelligence’ or of certain intellectual and moral aptitudes –the ability to ‘think logically’ or ‘deliberatively’, the ability not to be deceived by irrelevance in argument, to be courageous, patient, and to speak lucidly, and so on. And, of course, all these and more are aptitudes and virtues that a learner may hope to acquire or to improve. But neither they, nor self-understanding itself, can be made the subject of learning. A culture is not a set of abstract aptitudes; it is composed of substantive expressions of thought, emotion, belief, opinion, approval and disapproval, of moral and intellectual discriminations, of inquiries and investigations, and learning is coming to understand and respond to these substantive expressions of thought as invitations to think and to believe.” In other words, W.E.B. Du Bois is right: you can’t teach people to be smart without filling their minds with the smart stuff earlier humans have already figured out –i.e. culture. Making thinking skills –not the heritage of human thought –the focus of education is folly.
It is sad that so few teachers are even aware that progressive dogma is even debatable. They’re so thoroughly brainwashed. I am embarrassed for my profession when I explain this situation to my non-teacher friends. It behooves teachers to learn about this rich and cogent heritage of anti-progressivist thought, which is either soft-pedaled, ignored or vilified at most education schools.
Ponderosa:
I’d think twice about relying on Hirsch and his broad generalizations. His claim that his views are based on rigorous research is questionable. Here’s an illustration from an article titled “Abusing Research: the Study of Homework and Other Examples,” by Alfie Kohn:
“Rather than misrepresenting what “the data” say, some authors and researchers misrepresent what specific studies have found. In such cases, it’s difficult to blame simple sloppiness or misunderstanding. Examples of what I’m calling pseudoreliance on research are easy enough to discover. Noam Chomsky once commented that much of academic scholarship consists of routine clerical work. Thus, when a published assertion is followed by a parenthetical note to “see” certain studies, it doesn’t require any special talent to accept the invitation: You just head over to the library, dig out those studies, and see what they say.
“That’s exactly what I did after coming across the following sentences in a book by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.: “It has been shown convincingly that tests and grades strongly contribute to effective teaching” – and again, on the following page: “Research has clearly shown that students learn more when grades are given.”[5] An accompanying footnote contained five citations. Given the existence of a considerable body of evidence showing that grades have precisely the opposite effect, I was curious to see what research Hirsch had found – particularly since he had elsewhere made a point of boasting that his views have “strong scientific foundations” in the sort of “consensus mainstream science” that is “published in the most rigorous scientific journals.” (He has also distinguished himself from “the educational community,” which “invokes research very selectively.”)[6]
“It turned out that the references Hirsch cited didn’t support his claim at all. As I reported several years ago, all five sources in his footnote dealt exclusively with the use of pass-fail grading options, and all were restricted to college students even though the focus of his book, and the context of his claim about grades, was elementary and secondary education. Four of the five sources were more than 25 years old. Two not only hadn’t been published in rigorous scientific journals; they hadn’t been published at all. Of the three published references, one was just an opinion piece and another consisted of a survey of the views of the instructors at one college. That left only one published source with any real data. It found that undergraduates who took all their courses on a pass-fail basis would have gotten lower grades than those who didn’t. But the researchers who conducted that study went on to conclude that “pass-fail grading might prove more beneficial if instituted earlier in the student’s career, before grade motivation becomes an obstacle.” In other words, the only published study that Hirsch cited to bolster his sweeping statement about how the value of grades is “clearly shown” by research actually raised questions about the use of grades during the very school years addressed by his book.[7]”
(Phi Delta Kappan, September, 2006)
http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/abusing-research/
By the way, have you ever used Lumosity? I used to be a subscriber, and my firsthand knowledge tells me that Lumosity games bear little resemblance to practice in making inferences or using context clues–not even metaphorically.
Randall,
Perhaps Kohn’s criticism of this one Hirsch claim is valid (I would have to read the studies cited to be sure). Even if so, by itself it wouldn’t do much to shake my faith in Hirsch’s intellectual integrity. I’ve read many of Hirsch’s books and other writings (have you?) and I’ve been able to get a good sense of the quality of his mind.
I have not tried Lumosity myself, but isn’t the principle the same: the idea that exercising the brain –rather than feeding it knowledge –is what makes the brain stronger and smarter?
I spent many hours with A Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, a book that has Hirsch’s name on it (along with two co-authors). For lots of reasons I thought it was a terrible book. And I must have paid twenty bucks in library fines after repeatedly checking out and renewing other Hirsch books that I couldn’t wade through. I just don’t buy either his premises or his arguments.
I believe he did make a contribution to literary theory, but his idea that you must recover the author’s intention in order to understand a text is taking things too far. Once out of his area of expertise, he is in over his head. Based on what I’ve read, and though he does say some things about cognitive science that have been common knowledge among teachers for decades, I wouldn’t trust his “scholarship” in education as far as I could throw a carton of his books. He touched a public nerve, but that doesn’t make his claims valid.
It looks to me like his critique of American education is based on ideology, not on how teachers like me, who believe in constructivism, the whole language approach, and other progressive ideas, actually teach. Or taught. In over thirty years of teaching, I never met a teacher who was opposed to imparting knowledge in the classroom.
You make the “anti-knowledge” claim often. I just don’t buy it.
Every teacher is entitled to her own philosophy of education and approach to the classroom, so I wouldn’t tell you how to teach or what to think. What you’re doing, though, is attacking thousands of professionals who have views and experiences that may differ from yours, though you really don’t know what their classrooms, or even their curricula, are like. I’m not going to attack your classroom. Why would you want to attack mine? Do you really believe that if all teachers thought your way, American education would be saved?
Like I said, Lumosity games don’t resemble reading comprehension activities. But as for improving thinking through teacher-guided practice, that actually works. Trying to solve challenging problems works. As do aerobic exercise, sleep, meditation, reading fiction, traveling, learning a new language, learning a musical instrument, intermittent fasting (or so I’ve read), and doing absolutely nothing (after working on a difficult problem for a while).
Some experts believe that the brain really is kind of like a muscle after all. There’s a lot to learn about the brain and the mind and how to improve them. I wouldn’t dismiss any of these ideas out of hand.
We did not make a mistake by making education compulsory through age 16.
We made the mistake if limiting the pathways for success. testing has constrained the possibilities even more. Let’s face it, there will never be the political will necessary to create a system that truly serves all students – despite the requirement to do so.
Your comments were on point…
Meanwhile there’s this:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF?platform=hootsuite
While we are debating how to prepare students today’s workforce, AI is about to take away millions of middle class jobs and we’re not making the investments we need to… https://waynegersen.com/2017/01/12/debates-about-governance-and-privatization-are-beside-the-point-when-ai-is-about-to-displace-millions-of-jobs/