The world of ed reform was never a uniform unified whole. Alliances between folks with different aims, folks with different styles of advocacy, even alliances between unprincipled opportunists and sincere true believers have always marked the reformster territory, and many of those alliances have not stood the tests of time and changes fortunes (not to measure the Trump administration).
So what does the landscape look like now? Here are some of the groups of education disruptors out there these days.
The Data Miners
This group has always been part of the picture, and it's important to remember that they have not gone away. They used to have lots of vocal allies, but they have learned to keep a lower profile. But behind every single digitized, computer-delivered education program is a whole industry excited about the data that can be thereby collected. The dream of conception-to-casket pipeline of data still lives.
Every time a digitized education tool shows up, someone should be asking what will happen to the data it collects. How will it be kept secure? How will it be shared? Pro tip: "We will only share the data with trusted partners" is a weasel-word answer that means "We will do whatever the hell we want." Another pro tip: The data that is being captured from your five year old today? Nobody anywhere on planet earth has the slightest clue what will become of that data twenty years from now. Question every digital tool that your school proposes to use.
Charter School Advocates
Pity the charter school advocates. When vouchers were off the table, charters had the support of a lot of folks who hoped they would be a Next Best Thing, a foot in the door. But now that vouchers are having their day in state legislators, Freedom Fans have left charters behind. Which is not to say that there isn't strong support for charters; they're still a great way to get your hands on taxpayer dollars, and there are still those who believe that charters are the best way to lift some students out of underfunded, under-resourced public school systems.
But charter supporters are in an awkward spot. They've long pretended to be public schools except when it suits them not to be. SCOTUS may soon rule on this distinction, but in the meantime, charters' desire to be "public" puts them in the path of those who want to burn the public system to the ground. The charter movement is where most of the people who actually want school choice can be found these days.
The Fighters for (Some) Parents Rights
First they wanted schools open and masks put away. Then they went after a straw version of critical race theory, which somehow expanded to include anything about race, gender identity, or sexual orientation. You've heard about Moms for Liberty, but they are just one of the more visible groups of culture warriors. You've heard of Betsy DeVos, but she's just one of the more visible rich elites backing this play.
It's easy to mistake these people for choice fans because they use some of the rhetoric and they back vouchers. But this group is not interested in school choice. Instead, they would like to commandeer and/or tear down the public system. Their dream appears to be a world in which getting an education for your kid is your own problem; your child will be entitled to the best education you can afford for them. Vouchers will take a bit of the sting off self-serve education for the poors (but not enough for them to afford top schools), and provide a nice kickback for the non-poors. The government will not be allowed to tell vendors what they may or may not do, what religions they may push, what people they may discriminate (though culture warriors will work hard to eradicate all choices of which they do not approve). And government will not be forcing me to pay too many tax dollars to educate Those Peoples' Children.
Implicit in this crowds' beliefs is that only certain values should be represented in education. They are not pro-choice, just as they are not pro-democracy. Education (and government) are legitimate only when they align with the Right Values. And the political opportunists allied with this movement are busy convincing anyone who will listen that public schools are aligned with all the wrong values and can't be trusted and so must be abandoned, dismantled, and replaced with an unregulated free marketplace-- no matter what other families and parents want.
Voucher Advocates
See above. Voucher advocacy is largely reduced to its true final form--a desire to defund public education, remove government from any and all education policy, and reduce education to a commodity that citizens must procure on their own. The key problem with selling that was answering the average citizen's question, "Why would we want to do that?" The [Some] Parents' Rights movement has provided an answer for that question, so voucher fans are going for it.
Techno Education
The pandemic did not help the cause of computer-delivered education business, but it's still around because A) we are pretty sure that the youngs think computers are really cool, B) computer-delivered education answers the question "What kind of education am I supposed to get for my kid with this tiny little voucher," C) software is cheap and doesn't unionize and so would solve all our HR problems and D) collecting that data!
Free Marketeers
The reformy movement used to include lots of people who said that choice must be pursued because it would bring with it better student achievement, more equity, better results for everyone, and some folks still try to make those points from time to time, but after twenty years the data simply doesn't support any notion that choice makes life better for students, nor does it save money, nor provide any of the other benefits.
As those arguments have worn away, some choice advocates have fallen back to what is, I think, a more honest argument. They believe that choice is, in and of itself, an important value that should be part of the education landscape regardless of outcomes, because it's just right.
However--and I've long puzzled over this--that invariably comes with a belief that choice must be yoked to some sort of free market mechanisms. The free market is a lousy match for any critical human service. It's not evil; it's just a bad match for any system that needs to deliver an essential service to all members of society.
Science of Reading
Want the emperor of the universe to force everyone to use SOR in their school, because whatever they're doing its's probably terrible and wrong. Do not engage. Just walk on by.
Test O Crats
They emerge every time that new test results are released. We've made some progress here; after the last NAEP test results were released, some folks actually managed to discuss them without using phrases like "student achievement" or "school effectiveness." But the spread of Learning Loss as a marketing term over the last year tells us that there are still people insisting that the only purpose of schools is to get students to crank out higher test scores. It's particularly appealing to folks who think anything that matters can (and must) be measured (makes me wonder how they measure family success at home), and to people who want to market a solution that can move those numbers.
Nothing pushed on education since the days of A Nation At Risk has done more damage to actual education than high stakes testing. It should be fought at every possible level, from pointing out that the pursuit of test scores has not improved anything to demanding that people say "raise test scores" instead of "improve student achievement."
Improve student outcomes
There are days when I think that maybe, just maybe, the disintegration of the education reform movement has left room in the center for people who actually want education to work, and by "work" I don't mean "raise test scores" or "creates entrepreneurial opportunities for education-adjacent businesses." I mean "help students learn and become their best selves while growing in understanding of what it means to be fully human in the world."
Crazy hopeful talk, I know, but I like to think that there's a possibility that supporters of public education and people who have been associated (through personal preference or by employment) with the reformster movement could have productive conversations, precisely because some of the most destructive disruptors have moved farther afringe. Kind of like planting a garden in pasture after a wildfire has come through.
I think there are people out there who actually want to do the best by students and aren't just saying so to back their latest political or marketing play. I know being cranky is on brand for me, but I've always been a hopeful kind of crank.
This isn't the full range of disruptor out there (prediction: within twelve hours of posting this, I will realize there's a group I need to add). And as the education debates have atomized all over the country, your local experience will vary (some folks are up to their neck in anti-freedom groups like Moms for Liberty, and some are not).
A comprehensive list like this makes one wonder, what are the public schools doing wrong to drive so many parents away from a free and usually convenient version of educating their children, I know parents are not even close to being a monolithic group, but I do believe that public school educators have either failed to act on important issues or they've made have made some serious errors in judgement when it comes to addressing the expectations of the vast majority of parents.
ReplyDeleteHere's are some key problem areas that I think need some self-reflection and self-correction in order to bring those lost parents back:
1) Rampant cell phone use combined with 40+ million Chromebooks and 7+ million iPads that dominate our classrooms have completely transformed the secondary education landscape (all screens, all the time) – and not in a good way.
2) Photomath, Calculator Soup, Chegg, Write My Essay and countless other apps and websites have normalized cheating and made it readily accessible in the classroom. (See #1)
3) Human (child) sacrifice on the altar of standardized test score data has produced an unprecedented expansion of the K to 8 (and beyond) null curricula, closing doors and shuttering windows of opportunity.
4) Embracing debunked methodologies such as discovery learning, constructivism, project-based learning along with the mistaken notion that 21st century thinking, and problem-solving skills can be taught in an intellectual vacuum. All while rejecting and even ridiculing the importance of content and procedural knowledge.
5) Ignoring cognitive learning theory and our understanding of developing young brains has pushed advanced, subjective, and often abstract standards down into elementary classrooms in lieu of teaching fundamentals/basics. Collective failure to understand that, with few exceptions, students throughout the K to 12 public school years remain at nearly every level, concrete, novice learners.
6) Failure to create fair, just, and redemptive disciplinary codes that include concrete limits of student disruption, misbehavior, and apathy.
7) Retaining 20th century school year schedules and grade level promotion policies that shun any sense of urgency or student responsibility – and that have produced a path of least resistance to the graduation stage that is laughable.
May I add to your list since I am a parent who chose a private HS for child #2 while child #1 graduated out of the public system (in MD). An FYI: the private schools here are filled (and competing) with former public school students and many of the teachers are from the surrounding public school systems.
Delete8) Common Core curriculum...get rid of it!
9) Treat students like they are whole human beings instead of data points for ratings in US News & World reports, Zillow, Niche
10) Stop it with the SEL/DEI purchased curriculum programs to try and raise test scores or control behavior e.g. Grit, Growth Mindset, PBIS etc
11) Allow teachers the autonomy to actually teach children what they need to know in an age appropriate way.
12)Respect is a 2 way street and teachers and admin need to understand that there is life outside of school and that "interests" matter to kids....sports, art, music, friendship.
edblisa
DeleteThank you for expanding the list with some very valid concerns. Getting parents like you back will be a heavy lift given how many public-school educators have their heads buried so deep in the sand. The simple message that they need to hear is that parents want safe and orderly schools, back-to-basics, no-nonsense, unscripted curricula (minus any ideology), and a system that hold students accountable for their academic efforts and disruptive behaviors.
#12 is an interesting addition that often gets lost in the pressures fomented by standardized testing. Given it's two decades of failure to budge the needle and do mor harm than good, its long past time to give up the ghost.
Here's the thing. Back then, we parents went and calmly protested against CC and the standardized testing. We got the big "F" you from top administration. It was going to be Bill Gates' way and we stupid parents didn't know what we were talking about. We opted our children out or refused the tests for as long as we could.
DeleteThe private schools started filling with public school students. Teachers left the public system (some retired and some just left) and came to teach in the private schools. The kids were/are happy, the teachers were/are happy (but make less $$$). I can't blame parents that want vouchers because they are essentially paying twice to provide a holistic education for their children (I'm not advocating vouchers....just sayin'!).
Now what's left of public school parents are the very angry ones. They know the "system" is rotten and they get nowhere when they show up to complain....hence the scorched earth behavior at school board meetings (over poorly developed SEL/DEI purchased curriculum). The "system" can't keep doing this to people's children and expect that parents will continue to take it nicely. Until things dramatically change, I can't advocate for public education/schools. All of these deforms are bad for children/teens and we are seeing the outcome in the way of bad classroom behavior and mass school shootings. Children are more than data points and test scores.
Common Core standards and testing (the beginning of the end of compulsory public education?) were coerced bit the DOE/Duncan/Gates/Coleman cabal via 100% violation of NCLB law requiring 100% student proficiency by 2014. Instead of giving parents the big F-y'all they should have filed a class action suit in 2002 against the DOE and Congress for passing legislation (NCLB act) that was clearly unconstitutional. A law that cannot possibly be complied with is clearly illegal. If they had stopped it in its tracks Peter Greene would spend his days playing with his twins and playing in the local band.
ReplyDelete