John Merrow here examines the public purpose of public schools, which has been corrupted by forty years of treating standardized tests as the measure of school success.
He writes:
What exactly is the public purpose of school? Why do communities invest in the education of all their young, instead of simply leaving the task of education to families? We know that parents send children to school for a host of reasons, but the larger purpose–the communal goal–is worth considering.
Let me assert my hypothesis: the public education system has been highjacked by people obsessed with measurement, so much so that children are reduced to their test scores. For about 40 years most school reform efforts have been directed at symptoms, such as low graduation rates, low test scores, or “the achievement gap.” While these s0-called reforms sound great and may even produce temporary improvements, they inevitably fail because they are not addressing the root cause of our educational problems: an approach to schooling that is mired in the past and cannot fulfill the needs of the twenty-first century…
It’s not clear to me that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos believes that schools have a public purpose; her actions suggest that she believes a child’s education is the family’s responsibility–full stop, end of story.
“Help”: This acknowledges that schools are junior partners in this. They exist to help—not replace—families.
“Grow”: Schooling is a process, sometimes two steps forward, one back. It’s akin to a family business, not a publicly traded stock company that lives and dies by quarterly reports.
“American”: E Pluribus Unum. We are Americans….an observation that bears emphasizing today, as we see Donald Trump playing racial politics with a vengeance.
“Citizens”: Here we need to put flesh on that term and figure out what we want our children to be as adults. Good parents and neighbors? Thoughtful voters? Reliable workers? And what else?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I sure wish Merrow had been this thoughtful when he was busy promoting Rhee and her broomstick.
People do evolve. Years ago, I was an advocate for instructional technology that wedded graphical user interfaces with programmed learning models. Then, I saw firsthand the problems with these.
Well, yes, people evolve. But it’s kind of ironic for Merrow to bemoan how public education has been “hijacked” when he was instrumental in facilitating the hijacking. And to this day he has never apologized in any but the most mealy-mouthed terms. He hasn’t really even acknowledged his role.
I do understand, Dienne. I, too, used to be infuriated by his cheerleading for Deform.
I say time to believe in redemption.
I certainly wish that some of our most powerful brethren might struggle down from the lower branches to walk about on a solid pair of intellectual legs.
Merrow’s articles are his apology. Much more telling and useful than a formal one.
I agree with your assessment that Merrow is “apologizing” for his past actions by writing articles that show how much he has changed his views.
You will never get a “mea culpa” from him. That’s his choice.
I made a different choice. But then, I had openly advocated for choice and testing for many years, and I felt compelled to say that I was wrong and do whatever I could to change the course of policy.
Merrow was never an advocate, as I was. But his reporting certainly helped Michelle Rhee, until her behavior opened his eyes. His last piece on PBS exposed her mendacity and meanness.
Unlike him, you did apologize, did not you, Ms. Ravitch?
Dunce, I wrote a book renouncing my past views. I assume you never knew that or you would not have asked.
Dr. Ravitch has been very, very clear about her former ideas and how she came to see that these were wrong. Her bravery, in that regard, is a model to us all.
What am I missing with this over the top hatred for John Merrow? The man is a journalist. He wasn’t making policy. He reported stories and like many other journalists (and progressive politicians) was fooled by the reform propaganda. Journalists film people doing what they do. Yes, his journalism ended up presenting a far too positive view of Rhee, but that was no different than almost all the education journalists out there and many progressive politicians who actually sat on committees that decided education policy.
What makes Merrow different is that he realized that his reporting was not telling the entire story and so he started being a much better reporter. And when that got him into trouble, instead of stopping he kept going. Merrow has been trying to enlighten the public about problems with reform and charters for many years now.
The fact is, most people haven’t heard of Merrow. Merrow doesn’t make policy. Merrow didn’t vote for the Every Student Succeeds Act. He didn’t go to Virginia and campaign for a DFER candidate to help the ed reformers turn Virginia into a pro-charter state like California and New York.
Does everyone who has ever been fooled into thinking that the ed reformers were okay have to apologize? Because there are some presidential candidates in the primary who have presented some excellent education ideas and I think that is terrific. To dismiss those ideas because the candidate previously worked hard to elect a DFER candidate and supported “public charters” and has not abjectly apologized for that yet seems truly unnecessary.
The thing I detest most about Ed Reform in its current incarnation is the insistence upon one yardstick for all students. Kids differ. An extremely diverse economy needs that variation–we need cosmologists and cosmetologists. What our current system does is tell MOST students, you are a failure, you don’t measure up, you aren’t what we were looking for. You didn’t meet The Criteria.
Instead of seeing education as a race to the top of some one stairway, with losers left panting on the landings below, we should re-envision it as a garden of many paths.
Only 32 percent of Americans 25 and older hold bachelor’s degrees–a little less than a third of the adult population.
So why do we continue to provide an educational system that seems ideal only for training future lawyers and assistant professors of electrical engineering?
I agree! Vary the playing fields, and don’t let competition be the be all end all, or you get sink-or-swim situations and mentalities (pass/fail, love it/leave it to Beaver). Very destructive and reductive! Let joy, surprise, passion and inspiration be the primary drivers for our citizens, our kids.
yes, yes, yes
In 1940 only about 25 percent of Americans 25 and older held high school diplomas. I do not think that would have been a good argument against designing an education system that is geared to creating high school graduates.
Educational Attainment in the United States: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2017/comm/americas-education.html
Not what we’re saying.
It is not?
Surely you would say that any emphasis on graduating from high school was very “destructive and reductive” in a society where only a quarter of the population has a high school degree. After all, a high school diploma is a sink or swim situation.
Nope.
Teaching Economist, what I think I said, above, and again below, is that most of our students will not be heading to college, and under the current system, they waste a lot of years trying to figure out what they will be doing with themselves, and they do this at a terrible cost. We could have a system that provides many more alternative tracks for our secondary-school students–one like those found in many countries in Europe. The Bush Jr. administration gutted the federal contribution to Vocational Education, and the whole emphasis in Ed Reform has been on a one-size-fits-all solution. An important development is that Pearson took over the GRE and revised it to make it a lot more difficult, resulting in kids who had dropped out having to take the test many times (and pay Pearson a lot of fees) before being able to get a high-school equivalency that would enable them to enter a post-secondary Voc Ed program. What a waste. As an economist, you should grok this.
“Pearson took over the GRE”
Isn’t the GRE for entering grad school? If it is, how does it relate to kids’ trying to get into college?
GED. Sorry.
Education is too rigidly stratified, narrowed and unvaried.
OK, most kids will be HEADING for college, but most (60 percent) of those who do will not complete a bachelor’s degree in four years.
Mr Shepherd. I totally agree with You!
Fin!
🥰
As it stands, it sits.
Education is too rigidly stratified, narrowed and unvaried.
Well said, Akademos!
I’m not sure what to make of the stats on those over 25 holding a BA. That includes all the folks who found 2 yrs sufficient, or flunked out or continued later etc. I’m more accustomed to the stats on those matriculating.
When I was in hisch in mid- ‘60’s, the # of folks who matriculated to 4-yr colleges was about 30%, where it had climbed from 25% in the ‘50’s [a huge increase over previous decades]. Just by my year of college grad [1970] it had leaped forward again to 50%, then to about 60% by 1990; today we’re at 70% matriculating to 4-yr colleges.
So, Bob, I am not sure why you say that “most of our students will not be heading to college,” when 70% of today’s American kids in fact do so. They may not finish—it may cost them too much—it may not land them the kind of job they’re hoping for—but that’s what they’re doing.
I totally agree we should be restructuring 10th-gr through doctorate to the sort of multiple-career-path edsys seen today in a number of Euro countries. That, however, would require a restructuring of our economy. All those countries’ education is publicly funded from roughly age 6-24.
I don’t want to write off that 30 percent, Bethree. And I don’t want to write off the 60 percent of kids who start college who don’t finish it in four years. That is, again, MOST students not getting a bachelor’s degree. We need a system that recognizes that most won’t–that provides other, more viable tracks for them.
Everyone has an opinion on what the purpose of public education is. Where should we go for guidance as to that purpose? I contend that we should start with the states’ constitutions for that is where the authorization for public schooling is and where we can find rationales for public schooling.
Twenty five of the constitutions give a purpose and twenty five are silent. Those rationales given can be divided into two groups: One the main purpose is to enable the state to continue through its educated citizenry. The other is that public education is for the benefit of the individual in which the student may grow and learn that which the student and parents/guardians deems necessary.
In summarizing the purposes of education as outlined in 20 of 25 constitutions I propose the following fundamental purpose:
“The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”
You might add that your book contains a more complete discussion of the state constitutions to which your refer above.
Thanks for mentioning the book–The discussion is in Ch 1 “Purpose of Public Education” in “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education”. I was trying to keep the discussion to the topic at hand. . . not that I haven’t blatantly plugged the book before.
As far as “help grow American citizens”. . . I find that to be rather overbearing in the sense that it is the state then that determines what is right for the student rather than the student and his/her parents/guardians, when younger, making that determination. Growing citizens implies to me that the citizen is a ward of, is only a cog in a society that determines one’s future. Growing citizens has a very Orwellian sound to it for me in that the state is the determining factor not the student in the student’s own growth and learning.
“Growing citizens implies to me that the citizen is a ward of, is only a cog in a society that determines one’s future.” Duane, this seems to give short shrift to the role of informed citizens in safeguarding democracy. Granted, we can’t mandate civic education (or any specific ed content) to the states, but I don’t think that’s what Merrow is proposing. It seems to me there’s no harm & much to be gained from inspiring a national conversation on what we expect public education to accomplish, regardless of the content of state constitutions.
I can agree that “there’s no harm. . . “, however, without a base principal to guide that national conversation, what are we left with other than a thousand different opinions that can’t be reconciled. By utilizing what the state constitutions have to say about the purpose of public education, especially since those purposes are part of the language of the legal, official authorization in the constitutions that have such language, for me it is the only place to discern that purpose. Again, otherwise we end up with a cacophony, a mishmash of ideas and concepts with no ability to distinguish which one(s) might be the guiding purpose(s).
The language of “growing citizens” certainly doesn’t sit well with me, as I have stated, it implies that the education of the individual is under control of the state and not the individual. We have seen examples of that sort of state control-China, the USSR, Nazi Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, etc. . . . and the results have been blood chilling.
I can’t agree at all with “growing citizens” as the state’s desires override the desires of the individual student. I’ll go so far as to call it Unamerican.
Once we grow citizens, in school, there will be assessment. In TN we have citizenship test
Civics Assessments
Per state law (T.C.A. § 49-6-1028), all districts must ensure that a project-based civics assessment is given at least once in grades 4–8 and once in grades 9–12. The project-based civics assessments are developed by the district to ensure students demonstrate an understanding of civics and achieve the learning objectives contained within the social studies standards. All districts must complete the project-based assessment form by May 31, 2019.
Additionally, per state law (T.C.A. § 49-6-408A), students must take the United States citizenship and immigration test during the student’s high school career (i.e., grades 9-12). Schools in which all seniors earning a regular diploma and also earn a passing grade (70 percent or higher) on the U.S. civics test will be recognized by the department as a U.S. Civics All-Star School. All districts are required to submit their civics compliance form by June 21, 2019 for their 2019 graduating seniors.
Although I agree with all of Merrow’s assertions, I think his most significant one is “The public education system has been highjacked by people obsessed with measurement, so much so that children are reduced to their test scores.” There are many reasons why test scores often misjudge a student’s ability. The most common ones are stupid questions and improperly judged answers.
Amen
Grow”: Schooling is a process, sometimes two steps forward, one back. It’s akin to a family business, not a publicly traded stock company that lives and dies by quarterly reports.
Please notice that “grow” here is still viewed in economic/business terms but with a shift in scale from a large corporate entity to a “family business.” I find no sense of growth as a process that is fundamentally about individual students whose development is multifaceted, occurs over time, and at no constant rate for any aspect we may be attending to.
“Schooling” a child is also not the same as educating a child. Schools are a convenience for education, especially in a mass society, where stable family units cannot be counted on to manage or provide home-schooling. In another era, going to school also meant entering a larger social network with rules and opportunities beyond kith and kin. In theory (Deweyian) schools provided an introduction to some of the virtues and obligations of living in a democracy. No school was planned or organized as a no-nonsense test-driven bootcamp. Now of course, we have techies who think schools are literally unnecessary because tech enables anytime, anywhere learning… if you are equipped with the proper devices.
I could go on. The hijacking has been well documented. Unfortunately many who claim to be educators have been enablers of the preoccupation with gaps,
Good catch.
Merrow seems to be assuming that creating “reliable” workers is part of the purpose of education. I’m not so sure about that. For one thing, “reliable” all too often means “obedient” and schools shouldn’t be teaching kids to be obedient to anyone, including and especially schools or employers.
Second, creating workers – whether in terms of specific skills or general attitude – is the employers’ problem. Even if by “reliable” we simply mean “decent”, that’s part of general good citizenship/neighborliness and is best created by being decent and neighborly to your employees. Loyalty and respect are earned, not taught and certainly shouldn’t be enforced.
People should never speak of THE purpose of public schools, for the purposes are, of course, many. But if we are going to generalize:
From time immemorial, communities have instructed their kids. One of the purposes of that instruction has always been to share culturally important material–the stuff that creates ties, that creates community. That’s the general education stuff. Another has always been to pass on descriptive and procedural knowledge that will enable the kids to make a living–to survive. This plant is useful for menstrual cramps, this one vision. Here’s how to grind seed, how to fashion a cutting blade, how to plant cassava, how to build an adobe or clay-and-wattle hut. That’s the more specialized stuff. What are you going to do in this community? What are you good at and interested in? Will you plant, defend, hunt, build, cure the sick?
As it is now, half our kids are just biding their time in high school because they have excellent crap detectors and know that they are not getting news they can use–stuff that is going to help them make their way in the world. They know they aren’t going to college and that learning how to factor polynomials isn’t going to be a lot of use to them. The rest go off to college, and a third of them drop out without graduating. Another third finish college but end up back in Mom and Dad’s basement, farting around and playing video games for a few years until they figure out that they need to go take an associate’s degree in pharmacy tech so that they can earn a living. It’s an extraordinarily wasteful system–wasteful of kids’ time and energy and motivation and belief in themselves.
We would do well to teach A LOT MORE kids, early on, news they can use–as citizens and as workers. Here’s how to find out where the candidates stand on issues that matter to you. Here’s how to edit a video. Here are twenty key principles for designing/laying out a web page, a print ad, or a room.
“People should never speak of THE purpose of public schools, for the purposes are, of course, many.”
Indeed there are many purposes of schooling. But to NEVER speak of THE purpose of public schools seems to me to be quite an outrageous thought. I contend that yes, it is important to have a basic fundamental purpose and/or goal from which all the other purposes derive. And I believe that my summarization of the purposes as proposed in 20 of the 25 state constitutions is a vaild and useful statement from which all the others can be derived.
“The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”
I’m interested in hearing why you think that this cannot be a foundational purpose. Thanks!
I think, Duane, that securing the welfare of the individual is not the only primary purpose (though that is, obviously, an extremely important one). Public schools also promote the welfare of the society at large–which goes back to my comment, above, about the two traditional purposes of schooling–a) to enculturate the individual and thus make him or her part of the larger community and b) to provide the necessary knowledge for him or her to flourish. And, of course, neither of these happens unless the educational system also serves the purpose of providing nurture–ensuring that basic survival and emotional needs are met, especially in cases where these are not met by the home environment. These are not independent of one another, ofc. And, I have an instinctive aversion to generalization–which leads to nonsense like the invariant requirements that we now have for high-school graduation–the one-size-fits-all requirements that don’t properly reflect the diversity of students and of the larger culture. Standardization is for widgets.
Thanks, Robert! I too share your “instinctive aversion to generalization” and standardization of people.
I can agree that the purpose of public education should include having the student understand the broader society in which he/she lives and what that entails. I’d like to think that if the individual’s educational needs as determined by the individual obtain then the student will understand the importance of the community within which the child has grown up.
I’m not comfortable though with the term enculturate mainly because the Catholic Church did it’s best to enculturate, indoctrinate us through its schools and I rejected that before I was out of grade school.
For me ultimately, and the way I tried to have my class environment was to help each individual student get as much out of the class as they chose and possibly could even when what they chose didn’t necessarily match up to what I or their parents might have wanted. It is their choice. And more than one has commented through the years that they wished they had studied more, better, learned more in class. But hey, it was a learning experience one way or another for them. They determined it and they live with their choice. As it should be.
The word you want there, I think, is acculturate. Enculturation is the process by which one absorbs one’s own culture. Acculturation is the process of getting someone of another culture to conform to the expectations of a different, foreign culture (the kind of thing that Americans did to Indian kids in the American Indian Boarding Schools). In a society as diverse as ours, of course, enculturation has to mean gaining familiarity with and ability to appreciate products from the great many cultures that have contributed and continue to contribute to our own.
No, I believe enculturate is the right term as I was brought up in that Catholic culture. Indoctrinate is probably even better but if one didn’t accept that Catholic culture they were not accepted, shunned, looked down upon.
Standardized testing serves little legitimate educational purpose. In fact, all the rating, ranking and labeling may be harmful to many students. It is the poor that suffer the most in this system as their disadvantage often limits their opportunities. I believe in multiple paths for students, but I also believe in maximum opportunity for those that seek it regardless of color or class.
So-called reform has used testing as a vehicle to separate and unequal educational options. Private charter schools are anti-democratic. Not only are they privately owned and operated, they provide vastly different experiences for students. Selective charters take the best students and reject the rest. The loss of funding diminishes the capacity of the public schools to serve the neediest students. I cannot understand that this unfair system is a value in a democratic nation.
Comprehensive public schools are far more versatile than any one size fits all charters. When communities invest in public schools, they can send their resources directly to students to support them in whatever their academic path may be. There is little to no waste, fraud, embezzling or profit in the arrangement. There are no charter management organizations to siphon off public money into private pockets. Public schools are essential in order to prepare future voters, and public schools are by far the best educational value for any community. In fact, they are a public asset that contribute to building a strong community. The is no legitimate reason to send public money to private schools.
There are so many ironies in Ed Deform. Where does one even begin? These are people who insist that we all be data driven who exercise no critical judgment, at all, about the quality of their data, about the sources of these, or the about inferences based on them and who refuse to accept the data that show that their data-driven reforms have failed utterly; who say they want market-driven systems in the public sphere but establish state and federal Thought Police to mandate de facto curriculum outlines (“standards”); who want to personalize by turning education over to machines.
I accept Merrow’s aims at good citizenry, including the “reliable workers” phrase if you mean dependable people who will work honestly and do honest work but will reject corrupt instructions by corrupt bosses.
But I would add one thing to Merrow’s citizenship list. We need to become a joining community again. Historical societies, groups like Habitat for Humanity, and library boards need more than the few people now struggling to fill the roles communities need. School is the perfect place to begin the idea that it is a joy to serve your community. Today I will take my daughter over to the library where she serves on the teenage advisory committee. She does this because she really loves to read and really likes books. She, like so many children, may never grow to write the great poem or novel, but cultures that imbed love of reading will be the soil from which a reading, thinking public will grow and blossom into a place where we do all of those other things Merrow wants.
I wish we could extricate ourselves from the muck of twenty-first century skills nonsense. The purpose of public education is not to create more data analytics algorithms. Coding is not what K-12 is for. No one is going to beam you up, Scotty. Believing in universal education is believing in the social contract underlying democracy. You know, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [y’all] are created equal.” The idea is that people are not intellectually subordinate to a ruling class, and with widespread education can rule themselves. Public school is for public rule. The twenty-first century could really use some eighteenth century Enlightenment.
The purpose of education in public schools?
I think it should involve a balance between self-realization/thinking for oneself (or whatever you want to call it) and an introduction to, training in and analysis of the underpinnings, aspects and expectations of our culture, local and global, which has its issues upon issues upon issues.
The big public education monopoly isn’t the right fit for all children. Forcing square pegs into round holes is not only ineffective, it can be very harmful to our children. When we as a people start to care more about kids than union jobs, then everyone can have opportunities.
What union jobs? Only 11 percent of American workers are now unionized, and almost all of those are in government jobs. The “big public education monopoly” is only a “big monopoly” if it is micromanaged by centralized authorities at the state and federal levels, which is precisely what the Education Deformers have been trying, quite successfully, to make happen. It is very bizarre indeed to have these worshipers of individualism and the free market to be trafficking in centralization of command and control.
Matt, what’s the right fit? One of the scandal-plagued Online charters? A religious school that teaches bigotry?
Already tried; things got worse, because that’s an uninformed blame game.
When we as a people start to care more about all of the kids than money, gentrification, status, privilege and unnecessary comfort, then everyone can have opportunities.
Saying you can’t fit a square peg in a round hole is segregationist. Square pegs and round pegs belong integrated together.
You are right. Matt wants the square pegs to stay with other square pegs and round pegs to stay with other round pegs.
Or something like that.
Well, people are not pegs. People are the product of a billion year of evolution, hence they’ve learned to fit any circumstance—any hole if that’s the task to accomplish.
But, as any living creature, people need some to time to learn to fit.
And why is anyone trying to force anyone through a hole like Success Academy.
“help, grow, American, and citizens.”
I dunno what being “American” and “citizen” mean. In any case, these are words that have been used by many to promote crazy political views and agendas, and I am not sure why they would be so crucial in public education.
OK I’m going to jump the gun & post my reaction to Merrow’s article before reading all 50 comments– at the risk of repeating somebody or whatever. Because I really don’t think this article is all that.
Merrow article
1. “the root cause of our educational problems: an approach to schooling that is mired in the past and cannot fulfill the needs of the twenty-first century” BS. The only consistent “approach” of pubsch’ing since its start in early 20thC is to provide a decent ed to as many children as poss. The definition of how many is possible has expanded to include black, other minorities, poor, handicapped, learning disabled, mentally ill; the definition of “decent” has expanded, as industry needs have expanded, from 8thgr to 12th gr to well-rounded as opposed to basic, from sufficient for entry to lowest-pd entry-level jobs to sufficient for entry to 2 or 4-yr tertiary ed.
“Both Bush and Obama administrations used scores on standardized tests as the most important measure of a teacher’s value… ‘Outstanding teachers give kids the skills and knowledge they need to escape poverty,’ and so on. To my ears, the people who say this are setting up most teachers (and public schools) to fail, because, while that recipe works for a few kids, poverty is a separate problem that those “supporters” seem willing to ignore.”
And on Merrow goes into long-proven-by-research-territory, w/o acknowledging the absurdity of measuring teacher ability via student scores, or even stopping to consider the sophistry of crediting only ‘outstanding’ teachers for these results (for a few kids), let alone the arrogance & downright anti-teacher-training et al agendas behind the ludicrous idea that bureaucrats can successfully bean-count & hull the ‘outstanding’ from the rest of the herd. It’s important to do so, because (a)these wrong-headed policies are still governing public schooling as we speak and (b)these wrong-headed policies are significantly narrowing curriculum & making every pubsch kid’s daily sch experience less than what it should be, & (c)these wrong-headed policies are visited proportionally more on poor kids.
I like very much Merrow’s formula “Help Grow American Citizens,” and much of what follows as he fleshes out that concept. But couldn’t even get through this section w/o another issue:
3. “Do we want to live in communities with adults who can work with others yet also think independently? Then let’s acknowledge that children should be working cooperatively in schools, and that they should be making consequential decisions about their own learning.” I like the first question, but I was expecting a whole lot more from the 2nd one. Not sure I even understand either ½ of the second question: what is the lack of cooperation on students’ part that Merrow observes, & how does it relate to the “approach” of pubschs? What are the “consequential decisions” students should be making “about their own learning” that are denied them in the current pubsch paradigm? These are provocative ideas, inquiring minds want to know.
Merrow’s conclusion is good, and positive—and it’s great, undervalued, & rare these days to get positive, forward-looking vision for public schooling: “It is within our power to build a system of schools that allows dedicated educators to be successful, while giving all children opportunities to reach their potential. Stop asking ‘How smart is this child?’ and ask instead, ‘How is this child smart?’ ” And of course he’s talking to the masses (preaching to the choir for us).
Choral members would like to hear some detail on how to move forward. Perhaps Merrow is not the guy. (Paging Arthur Camins.)
“I like very much Merrow’s formula “Help Grow American Citizens,”
Then, perhaps, you can explain to me what being American and Citizen mean as goals for schools to teach.
I don’t mean I think it should be a bumper sticker, just that I like where Merrow goes with it as a framework for thinking about how to describe what we want public schools to accomplish.
What little he says under “American” suggests we need plenty of American history in public education – particularly regarding our successes and failures related to “united we stand” & “a house divided.” I would add studies of “melting pot” vs “multiculturalism” concepts here, and a look round the world for how other nations/ regions have managed these challenges.
As to “citizen,” Merrow asks good questions to spark thinking on this. My only contribution would be the need for a renewed emphasis on civic education.