A Different Perspective on Education Reform

I read with interest Chris Pattacini’s comments in this forum () and would like to offer my own views regarding the three major flaws in his blog’s thesis, all of which seem to be incorporated into his comments directly from the teachers union talking points.

The first is his demonization of “standardized testing.”  According to the Chairman, standardized testing is the cause of the achievement gap and will only make it worse going forward. What???? This is a smoke screen, folks. Teachers have been “teaching to the test” since the 1920’s. How do they grade their students? Right, mostly by how they do on the subject tests the teachers administer. Without some sort of standard evaluation there is no way to know if students are really learning, or to compare students in one school from another, or one school system from another. Plus, the “achievement gap” everybody talks about is a reflection of the student  performance results of standardized testing, not the testing itself. 

So getting rid of standardized testing won’t help solve all our problems as the Chairman suggests – but actually all it would do is make these problems a little less obvious! (Of course, that might solve the BOE’s and the teachers union’s public relations problems a bit. But better educate our students? No.)

Let’s recap. Standardized testing is not supposed to be a solution to our educational problems. It is just a diagnostic tool that allows us to determine where and how serious those problems are. Which is perhaps why defenders of the educational status quo like to degrade them! When I failed math in my freshman year of high school (algebra, ugh!) I tried to explain to my parents that the test was unfair. That argument didn’t work for me. And it doesn’t work for Chairman Pattacini, either.

Sure, some kids are better test takers than others. Tests can’t adequately measure some desirable traits (creativity, inquisitiveness, etc.). And poorly designed tests can encourage cramming and rote learning rather than genuine educational achievement. But well-designed, fairly and universally administered tests can tell us if a student can adequately read, understand concepts, and do basic math. This is essential information for the parents and taxpayers who are funding public education efforts. And I have never heard opponents of objective third-party testing offer a better alternative. Improve the tests if you want – but don’t eliminate the only objective measuring tool we have!

The second flaw in the Chairman’s reasoning is his argument against charter and magnet schools. It’s a familiar argument, because the teachers unions successfully developed and promulgated it decades ago to squash the concept of school tax vouchers to be used to assist students in failing schools to attend nearby private and parochial schools that were more successful in educating their pupils. (Manchester’s only government recognized “Blue Ribbon” school, by the way, is a parochial elementary school.)

The union’s argument, (motivated perhaps by the fact that, as in private and parochial schools, most charter school teachers pay no union dues!) is that this is only a solution for some students, and will make it harder to help those that remain in the failing schools. In reality, creating charter schools that are free of some of the outmoded baggage of our traditional schools shows amazing promise, and provides a laboratory that will help develop successful educational strategies and techniques that can be universally applied throughout our public education efforts.

Had the teachers union been in charge of the cruise ship Titanic I assume that all hands would have been lost, since, by their view, if there weren’t enough life boats for ALL the passengers then they should have all been allowed to drown together. I don’t think the Titanic survivors would have bought into that theory. I don’t believe that the parents of students whose educational futures and odds of career success have been vastly improved through their charter school experience would buy into it. And I don’t believe that the taxpayers footing the bill for public education should accept it either.

The third culprit in the trinity of excuses that the Chairman offers for our educational ailments is one that the teachers unions have been testing only recently: It’s all the fault of the parents and today’s society. There’s nothing wrong with the Chairman’s observations, mind you. In fact, I might go even further than he does in decrying single parent homes, broken families, sub-cultures that value celebrity over substance, etc. But, the bottom line is that our educational system must be able to deal effectively with students living in this environment that we are seemingly unable to appreciably alter, rather than throw up their collective hands in despair.

The challenges educators face today are probably no more daunting than those overcome by earlier generations of teachers, principals, administrators, and boards of education. In the 100 years between the Civil War and the election of John Kennedy as President, millions of immigrants came to this country. Many spoke little English and were impoverished. Poor nutrition, cultural differences, and exposure to criminal elements were also pervasive. Yet the nation’s public schools educated their children efficiently and effectively, creating today's American middle class.

As a post-war baby boom student in a lower middle class town in New Jersey my schools were overcrowded and underfunded. We shared books and other educational resources. There was a critical shortage of teachers. Yet those in charge of public education stepped up and made it work. And we need to make it work today.

Yes, the times have changed. And today’s challenges are different. But perhaps the real problem is that while the challenges are different, our public schools have resisted change to the point where they are superbly organized and equipped to educate 1950’s students and prepare them for the 1960’s and 70’s, but hopelessly unable to deal with 21st century children or prepare them to become productive adults in the very different world in which they will be living the rest of their lives.  

And that, friends, is exactly what public education is supposed to do. If we have to reengineer schools – in fact our whole public education system – from the ground up, then that’s exactly what we should do. Teachers unions be damned. (I’m old enough to remember when the railroads were an efficient and thriving public service enterprise. Their ability to change with the times was undermined by management that refused to see the big picture and intractable union featherbedding rules that required “firemen” and “brakemen” to be hired and paid long after they were technologically irrelevant.)

I agree with Mr. Pattacini on the multi-dimensional approach that is needed to make our public education system perform as intended. And student nutrition, universal pre-school, extended school days and years, and better teacher evaluation and training (including financial rewards for the best teachers and termination of the weaker ones) are all good ideas. And I’ll end with a statement the Chairman might find shocking: I believe that higher levels of educational funding are needed to do the job. But I am also certain that those additional funds will not be forthcoming until taxpayers feel that these funds aren’t being wasted by the myopic managers of an outdated system. Educators need to come out of their cocoons and begin to adopt the changes that business and industry have made over the past fifty years. They need to start looking at concepts like “educational productivity” and the outsourcing of non-educational tasks. They need to stop drinking the CEA and AFT Kool-Aid, start to seriously consider ideas that the teachers unions have programmed them against and start paying more attention to those genuinely advocating for our students. They need to understand that it’s their job to make public education work, whatever it takes. And that if they can’t get the job done they need to step aside and make way for those who think they can.

And, most of all, they need to stop making excuses.