Jack Schneider is a historian of education at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He is also co-host with Jennifer Berkshire of the podcast series called “Have You Heard?”
If you really want to know about the state of American education, Schneider proves, don’t ask Betsy DeVos or Arne Duncan. Ask a historian.
We have heard the laments since 1983 from the media and politicians and billionaires like Bill Gates and Laurene Powell Jobs.
As Schneider shows here, they are wrong.
He writes:
“So, how are America’s schools doing?
“In most cases, just fine. Better than ever.
“But America’s schools don’t merely reflect our nation’s material prosperity. They also reflect our moral poverty. Our schools are simultaneously an embrace and a refusal, revealing exactly who is included and who isn’t. Most of us can say our children are getting a great education. Yet whose children are “ours”? What do they look like? Where do they rest their heads at night?
“Reform rhetoric about the failures of America’s schools is both overheated and off the mark. Our schools haven’t failed. Most are as good as the schools anyplace else in the world. And in schools where that isn’t the case, the problem isn’t unions or bureaucracies or an absence of choice. The problem is us. The problem is the limit of our embrace.
“Perhaps, then, a reset is in order. Instead of telling a largely untrue story about a system in decline — a story that absolves us of any personal responsibility — we might begin telling a different story: about a system that works. It works to deliver a high-quality education to those we collectively embrace. And it works in a different way for those we have collectively refused. When a school fails, it is because we have failed.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Public schools are what equalizes opportunities for everyone. No more money for charter or voucher schools. If parents want to pay for private education, fine, but none of my tax dollars for anything but PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
Exactly right! You should be at the NPE conference in Indy. Watch the livestream if you can.
Inspiring!!!
so much unity this year: very energizing
Yes, private sector education reformers lie about public schools. They repeatedly tell the same lies.
They also lie about corporate charters — a lot! And as one lie is revealed, they shift to another one.
They lie before the corporate charter open. They lie after it is open and failing. And they lie after a charter is closed because it failed to achieve anything they lied about before it was opened. They also lie to keep failing charters open forever to keep the public’s dollars flowing into their bank accounts.
One of the biggest lies that is driving good people from teaching is that administration can tell the difference between a good and bad school. When testing suggests there is a problem with a school, it is almost never news to the teachers. The students do not listen, they do not read, they do not practice, the school is not functioning. Teachers know when these behaviors have taken over. It is not difficult to see. But teachers are placed in the crosshairs with modern school reform, whether this comes from the political con men or the Ph.D. Education schools. Administors, schooled in education, swallow these mandates or suggestions as gospel, lacking the filter to see whether such suggestions have any logical basis. If it works in one county, we will try it in another.
Thus, even before NCLB and RTTT, teachers were being exposed to the idea that one lesson plan format lay at the basis for school improvement, that one evaluation rubric would eliminate bad teachers, and that private subcontractors could do a better job in some subset of school activities.
I think this post is correct, we are doing pretty well. But we need to admit that we cannot do studies and little academic dances to do better. School is about ideas and academic skills, not about whether your class sits in little circles or at computers. Students who lack either the intellectual ability or background to complete appropriate work need to go where the appropriate behavior can be learned. Administors need the funds to help every student, not just an arm twisting from the Feds with a catchy phrase. Students who do not put forth the proper effort need to be taught to do so. To do otherwise places them and society in a dangerous place. But it takes funding.
School used to be considered in loco parentis. Ironically, as the legal profession backs away from this idea, the necessity of it grows. My students come into class after all night Fortnite, after conversations with their parents at two in the morning over their parent’s personal problems. I am forced to be the parent that suggests things like a good night’s sleep instead of a fortnit’s sleep.
We are doing OK in places, but whole communities report trouble. Too often, when teachers report trouble, help comes in the form of asking them to work harder for less money.
“The students do not listen, they do not read, they do not practice, the school is not functioning. Teachers know when these behaviors have taken over. It is not difficult to see.”
For thirty years I taught in schools that fit this description but “these behaviors” never took over my classroom or the classrooms of most of the teachers at the same schools. Most if not all of the teachers that let that behavior take over their classrooms are the teachers that left public education and never returned. They couldn’t manage their classes and they burned out fast.
In every class, no matter how many students did not listen, read or work to learn, there were always a few students that did, and they were the ones that went on to college after HS graduation.
But the students that fit the description in the quoted passage above were the ones that dragged down the schools average high stakes test scores. Those students are like a five gallon bucket of cement dragging the school down to the bottom of the deep lake.
Another reason why high stakes, rank and punish tests are worse than vomit, diarrhea, and Donald Trump’s mouth and twitter fingers (with an emphasis on DT since he is worse than vomit and diarrhea).
When someone casually asks me how my students are doing, my answer is always the same: it depends on the student. Near perfect attendance, attentive, good work ethic, asks for extra help, supportive and encouraging parents – well they’re doing just fine.
So how are America’s schools doing? Depends on which school? When the majority of students match description above – well they’re doing just fine.
The better question is, “Do America’s schools offer enough opportunities for success?”
Define success?