1845:
Massachusetts secretary of public instruction, Horace Mann, said Boston schools are ignoring higher-order thinking skills.

1902:
New York Sun editors said school is a “vaudeville show.”

1909:
Atlantic Monthly said, basic skills have been replaced by fads and fancy.

1927:
National Association of Manufactures said that 40% of high school graduates cannot perform simple arithmetic operations, nor express themselves accurately in English (please note that only about 20% of Americans graduated from high school at that time).

1947:
Benjamin Fine, in Our Children Are Cheated, said, “Education faces a serious crisis…We will suffer the consequences of our present neglect of education a generation hence.”

1958 March 28:
Life, in “Crisis in Education,” said that the “high school diploma has been devalued to the point of meaningless.”

1984:
Nation at Risk said, “the average graduate of today is not as well-educated as the average graduate of 25 to 35 years ago.”

2005:
National Governor’s Association says we must “restore the value of the high school diploma,” and “push students harder.”

Are you noticing a pattern? The above sampling of public school criticism [1] is the tip of the proverbial ice burg of school bashing that has become a tradition of politicians, business organizations, media editors, and educators. At no time in our history has there been a golden age of education, where everyone agreed that the school system was fulfilling its obligations well. Name a decade and you can find oppositional forces at work exposing a school crisis and warning of the doom that will soon follow if something isn’t done to save the sorry state of education.

Then, when criticism is spawned from within the walls of public education—such as, upper grade teachers who blame their colleagues for the lack of readiness in which they receive their current charges—the faultfinding seems confirmed. This bickering occurs at the elementary through the university level, where at the latter you can throw a piece of chalk in any direction and hit a professor who will be quick to lament the poor preparation of her current students. Is this cry from educators a new development in public school criticism?

Harvard’s Board of Overseers, shocked at entering students’ preparation, published samples of freshman writing to embarrass secondary schools in 1896.[2]

Apparently not.

If you search through history you will find the sky is always about to fall, and school will be the cause of America’s end. I call this continual stream of criticism the Chicken Little Syndrome, and it is a phenomenon that occurs throughout human experience, from the periodic prediction that the world will soon end, or at least society as we know it, to the inevitable grousing by the older generation over the state of the new generation.[3] The past always seems better and brighter when viewed from the present, and the future, in the hands of our youth, looks bleak. Yet, somehow, we not only persist, but thrive as a major world power.

Large systems need maintenance, and all large systems have parts that need to be adjusted as problems are uncovered. Public education is no exception, and there are certainly areas in which schools can do better. To change effectively, however, schools need support and help from the community. Threats and insults are poor motivators for people who care deeply about their profession and the children under their tutelage.

Much of our public school system’s difficulties are not isolated issues. Yes, there are things that can be done from within, but most educational problems stem from the communities that form our democracy. In other words, almost any crisis attributed to schools is actually a manifestation of a greater societal problem which began outside the school walls and, therefore, cannot be completely solved until we address it in a holistic manner. Poverty, drug abuse, child abuse, neglect, and health issues are a few of the direct causes of student failure, and to ignore these outside forces continues the cycle of blame which is not only unproductive, but damaging to an exceptional school system that struggles under the burden of unreasonable expectations.

For example, some years ago, an attempt was made to dump the obesity crisis on schools which caused many state legislatures to propose physical education requirements and other such patches to attempt to solve the problem. This, of course, won’t work any better than the DARE program did to prevent drug abuse,[4] and it will give critics yet another log to throw on their inflammatory remarks about the failing state of education.

It’s time for this nonsense to stop.

There are too many people ignorant of, or choosing to ignore for ideological reasons, public education’s many accomplishments. Educators, often weary from the every day struggles of teaching a diverse and complex population, are too busy doing their job to defend themselves. Most mistakenly believe that by doing their job well, they will prove to their critics that they…, well, do their job well. Unfortunately, many education critics don’t let things like facts get in the way of their ideology. Instead, educators are rewarded for their hard work by being slandered and libeled—called lazy, incompetent, and even terrorists[5] by people who should know better. Through the misuse of statistics and research, or erroneous data, invalid tests, and fallacious thinking, educators are continually being beaten down, and then threatened with lower pay, more summer classes, or losing their job because they are perceived as failing their students.

This relentless criticism has increased to the point where the U.S. Department of Education has joined the “schools are failing” crowd. This should come as no surprise to people who are familiar with former Secretary Paige who, as you remember, was responsible for the “Texas miracle”—which was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Paige is an advocate for privatization, and the people who once worked for him in Texas faked data to create a miracle that was a fraud.[6] How could we trust what came out of an organization he ran?

Interpreting test data is a complex issue, but it is often presented in simplistic ways which distort reality. At times, the data is so poorly analyzed that the conclusions are a sham. Because of the increase in misleading information, backed by incendiary rhetoric, a failing school consensus has been ingrained in most Americans.[7] Today, seeing a newspaper headline that begins with “Our failing schools…” is accepted by nearly everyone without challenge.

Within much of the criticism can be found another underlying problem: defining good schools. The good school concept ranges from people who feel we should teach classic literature, Latin and Greek, to those that feel children should learn whatever interests them. Some want their religious teachings included in the curricula, even to the point of teaching creationism as science theory, while others insist on a complete separation of church and state. Some would have us return to segregated schools, while a few would rid the country of schools altogether.

There will always be people who are unhappy about they way things are being run. This fact stems from the diversity that makes up our democracy. The spectrum of beliefs in this country—philosophical to political to moral—is complex and often contradictory. So how can we get a diverse population to agree on what a good school should be? Knowing that 100% agreement is highly unlikely, what would be our criteria for a successful compromise? Who gets to set the criteria for a good school, and what are the tools used to determine success?

Looking to the government we find that to be considered a good school our students must pass a series of multiple-choice standardized tests.[8] Although there is value in testing, it is not without its problems, some quite severe. A quagmire of scandals and personal tragedies continue to plague our education system caused by poorly written tests, computer errors, mismatched curricula, and unreasonable goals which have affected both students and teachers alike. For example:

In the last three years, the company [NCS, the nation’s biggest test scorer] produced a flawed answer key that incorrectly lowered the multiple-choice scores for 12,000 Arizona students, erred in adding up scores of essay tests for students in Michigan and was forced with another company to rescore 204,000 essay tests in Washington because the state found the scores too generous.[9]

And another example:

[CTB] …jolted school districts in at least six states, including New York City, where it mistakenly sent nearly 9,000 students packing off to summer school.[10]

The biggest question about testing is: Why are we trusting massive, for-profit testing agencies to give us information about individual children, when it is a child’s teacher who knows his or her academic abilities best? Large scale testing should be used to evaluate curricula and programs, not children and teachers.

In the end, it matters little if every student passes a chosen standardized test, because there will always be the Bell Curve. We will always have low, average, and high; thus there will always be conflict, because some people will be unhappy with the statistical reality that half of us will always be below average no matter how good our schools are—and after all, who wants to be thought of as below average?

American business adds its opinion by saying good schools prepare children for the world of work. Usually phrases like “compete in a global economy” and “meeting the demands of the work place” are tossed in between complaining about young people’s dismal education. Bill Gates, whose public education seems to have served him well, has jumped on the criticism bandwagon of high schools launched by the “2005 National Education Summit On High Schools.” The message we are given is that America needs well-educated employees; if you’re well educated, then business can offer you the American dream.

Of course, be careful what you major in, or corporate America, including Microsoft®, will outsource your job to another country, and you’ll be left in the unemployment line.[11] The American dream, it appears, goes to the lowest bidder, who probably won’t be an American. Most large corporations treat people like products—anything that can maximize profits is good for business, even if it means putting Americans out of work and sending jobs to foreign soil—and so we must ask: When we talk of running schools like a business, is that the kind of mentality we want in our schools?

Maybe it is if we can get those test scores up. Put corporate business tactics in schools and get that “Donald Trump survival of the fittest” thing going and everyone will excel. Isn’t it the low expectations of the public schools that are causing so much student failure? Perhaps vouchers, allowing the free-market to take control of schools, is the answer. Good schools will survive, poor schools will fade into the night.

Yet, our government’s own General Accounting Office reports that of the schools they have audited most privately run schools perform no better than public schools—many of them perform worse.[12] The promises made by voucher programs, especially promising a better education to the poor, have not materialized in the voucher experiments around the country. Instead, we see what comes from putting our faith in a money-motivated system: profit before people.

Edison Schools, for example, was touted in the national press as able to run schools cheaper while producing higher test scores than public schools. Wonder why you haven’t heard much about Edison Schools lately? The short version is they failed miserably at what they promised.

Along with losing Miami, [Edison] is in trouble with other clients around the country, including its second-largest, Chester-Upland schools in Pennsylvania. Edison is blamed for many problems in the beleaguered school district, which is in financial meltdown, and several officials are calling for non-renewal of Edison’s contract. New York State’s Charter Schools Institute is recommending closure of Edison’s struggling Charter School of Arts and Technology in Rochester.[13]

The positive hype was shouted with bold headlines, but Edison’s transition into producing support materials and consulting is happening in a whisper. No doubt there are some public school districts in need of improvement, but shifting to a corporate based school system is not going to guarantee good schools.

We should also keep in mind that in Donald Trump’s world of business, life is not about everyone prospering – it is about his business prospering. In his world people lose their jobs, companies go bankrupt, and people lose their pensions (think Enron). There are definitely winners and losers in the business world, in fact the majority of new business fail. How does that fit with No Child Left Behind?

High test scores and maximum profit (or in the case of public schools, being miserly) may be desirable goals, but focusing on these as primary school outcomes can lead to loosing sight of the child. In such an environment children can become statistics, valued only for their ability to raise the school average. Children with disabilities can be thought of as burdens that hurt the bottom line (both financial, for they cost more to educate, and lowering test averages), rather than a welcomed addition to a diverse school community. The focus becomes the shallow, narrow goal of test scores rather than the well-being of the child within the community.

It’s not that public schools can’t improve what is being done, but it is difficult to achieve positive results in a hostile environment driven by constant criticism. It is time to stop the flood of fault finding directed at public schools. We must stop focusing on fixing the symptoms of our problems. We need to back away and look at our communities and our society as a whole, and only then will we discover solutions to the problems within our schools, for they are only a reflection of what is ailing us.

This will be difficult, not only because of the complexity of our problems, but because there are people who do not have the community’s best interest at heart. Then there are others who believe their way of thinking is the only acceptable way for everyone to live, while some believe in solutions that have been proven ineffective many times over in the past. These people will attempt to distract us from the real issues, but we must not be distracted. If we are, our symptoms will only get worse, and our nation and children will suffer for it.

We must remove the ignorance that supports ideas like high-stakes testing retention [14], and having private firms take over schools that are perceived as failing. We must change our mind-set from fixing our failing schools, to improving one of the most democratic and successful school systems in the world. But most important, we must seek community-wide solutions to our problems. Parent involvement, the affects of poverty, drug abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, as well as how to deal with child disabilities and other factors that keep children from learning well. A few of these issues can be improved by schools, but most must come from community organizations and leaders.

Educators and parents must have the courage to speak out in support of public schools, for the giants of greed, intolerance, and ignorance currently have us at bay.

Notes & references:

1. With the exception of the opinions dated 1958 and 2005, the quotes, and many more, are cited in Richard Rothstein, The Way We Were? The Myths and Realities of America’s Student Achievement (New York: Century Foundation Press, 1998). The remaining two are cited in a forum post Gerald Bracey, EDDRA, February 23, 2005, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eddra/.
2. Richard Rothstein, Ibid., p.16.
3. David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle refer to this common generational lament in The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995) as the Socrates Syndrome. “Ever since Socrates roamed the streets of Athens 2,500 years ago, muttering about the lack of discipline and knowledge among Athenian youth…” (p. 11). It’s a generational tradition that still stands today.
4. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program (DARE) was designed to fight drug abuse and raise children’s self-esteem. According to a ten year study published in the Journal of Consulting Clinical Psychology (August 1999, Vol. 67, No. 4, 590–593), the DARE program has no effect on drug use, attitudes, or self-esteem. Drug abuse is a problem with roots in the whole community, and schools cannot solve it alone.
5. “Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a ‘terrorist organization.’” CNN, Monday, February 23, 2004. He did apologized, and most of us have made remarks in the heat of a moment that we regret, but none the less it was demoralizing to many teachers.
6. CBS 60 Minutes, “The ‘Texas Miracle’” August 24, 2004.
7. I recommend Gerald W. Bracey Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions about Public Education in the U.S., Second Edition. (Portsmouth, NH: Heineman, 2004), and David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995) for a good treatment of this theme.
8. This is a complex issue, and goes back to Henry Chauncey and the idea of the American Meritocracy. For a history of testing as a means for selecting the elite of this nation see Nicholas Lemann The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 200).
9. Jacques Steinberg and Diana B. Henriques “Right Answer, Wrong Score: Test Flaws Take Toll,” The New York Times, May 20, 2001.
10. Jacques Steinberg and Diana B. Henriques “When a Test Fails the Schools, Careers and Reputations Suffer,” The New York Times, May 21, 2001.
11. CNETAsia “Microsoft’s India outsourcing raises protests,” July 3, 2003. http://asia.cnet.com/news/systems/0,39037054,39139020,00.htm.
12. “Public Schools: Comparison of Achievement Results for Students Attending Privately Managed and Traditional Schools in Six Cities,” Report to the chairman, Committee on Education and the workforce, House of representatives, October 2003, United States General Accounting Office.
13. Parents Advocating School Accountability press release, Feb. 26, 2005 San Francisco, www.pasasf.org.
14. This comment refers to mandatory retention base on a test score, as opposed to a well thought-out decision based on the child’s needs, developmental stage, and chances of success.