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School reform is the province of utopians, apologists, and well-intentioned practitioners who inhabit a cloistered world where conviction long ago displaced competence. For too long we have permitted these advocates to trample common sense beneath grandiose schemes. Aspirations of social justice and a love for children are noble things. However, when homilies and dreamy visions of sugarplums serve to excuse inaction and incompetence, the high-minded can become blasphemous. The result: schools where success is often a happy accident. Who shoulders the burden? Tens of millions of America’s children. It is time—indeed, it is long past time—to recapture our nation’s schools from the wide-eyed dreamers and to imbue education reform with the simple discipline of common sense.
America's schools are in a state of crisis—though it is not the one that we usually imagine. American schools are not awful. They are not gutting our economy. They are not terribly unsafe. On balance, given the population they serve, they are probably doing as well as they did two generations ago. Since that time, however, the importance of education and our investment in schooling has increased exponentially. In 1954, a high-school dropout could reasonably expect to build a rewarding life. In 2004, such hopes are increasingly illusory. In such an age, educational excellence becomes a democratic obligation and mediocrity an abomination. The crisis is that so few of our schools are excellent, so many are mediocre, and yet the adults responsible are content to tinker and theorize. It is true that schools have been asked to educate more children who were previously excluded, more children from single-parent homes, and a larger population of students for whom English is a second language. It is equally true, however, that today’s children are much more likely to benefit from being raised in smaller families and by more educated parents. The best that defenders of the status quo can muster is to claim that schools are better than overzealous critics suggest and that, thanks to continuous growth in spending, schools are not doing worse than in earlier times. Consider that. What other institution in American life would defend treading water as an accomplishment? The Living Facts This lack of performance is often chalked up to insufficient spending. If we want school improvement, we’re told we’re going to have to pony up “real” money. This rhetoric has not changed in decades. Since 1994, elementary and secondary education spending has grown from less than $300 billion a year to over $400 billion a year. Today, amid painful budget deficits, states are asking public schools and other public services to absorb necessary cuts. Educators have reacted to these modest requests in a damning fashion, refusing to slim down school systems while frantically threatening to cut school days, lay off young teachers, or shutter popular programs. In every decade, status quo reformers have used complaints of pinched budgets to excuse mediocrity. This plea has grown old. The truth is that schools spend a lot of money. They probably spend at least enough money to teach every child the essential skills they need.
The challenge is to use resources more effectively, rather than to state endlessly that we don’t have enough. Only forceful action will reverse this state of affairs. If this requires the establishment of clear priorities and a pruning of peripheral services, so be it. Americans have been well-served when entrepreneurial energy opened the door to talented practitioners and innovation, and closed the door on the ill-equipped or ineffective. Two Kinds of Reformers Status quo reformers are happy to dabble in curricular and pedagogical reforms but shy away from real changes in job security, accountability, or anything else that would fundamentally change schooling. Status quo reformers imagine that we can drive widespread improvement without having to tackle structural problems if only we make schools smaller, raise teacher pay, shrink class sizes, supply new and improved professional development, buy new textbooks, address racism more forcefully, modernize school facilities, buy more computers, give parents and teachers more say in school management, or adopt any other number of proposals touted by experts and advocates. It’s not that any of these proposals are necessarily bad ideas. Many of the suggestions are good ones. The problem is that they too often serve as distractions from the harsh discipline of more commonsensical reforms. Traditional reform has amounted to so little because, in a phrase favored by education policymakers, it is “like punching a pillow.” The system absorbs reform efforts and oozes back into place. Commonsense reform isn’t about making educators do anything differently; it’s about changing the world in which they work. It constantly seeks out and recruits new talent, finds ways to put that talent to good use, and gives professionals the flexibility to make good decisions. It focuses on two precepts: accountability and flexibility. Only tough-minded measures and meaningful competition will force leaders to make hard choices that are unpleasant. When General Carl Vuono was chief of staff of the U.S. Army, he used to preach to the commanders of major Army units: “Poor training kills soldiers. If the American Army is not well trained, you can’t blame it on Congress, you can’t blame it on the media, you can’t blame it on the mythical ‘they.’ It’s your fault, your fault, your fault and my fault because we didn’t do our job.” Where are such voices in schooling? Military leaders too would like more money. They too must make do with the available recruits, cope with political pressure, and endure public scrutiny. Yet, they are expected to get the job done. Why do we accept anything less in schooling?
The unfortunate reality of the classroom is that educators have traditionally worked as efficiently, as thoughtfully, and as determinedly as they chose to. If a teacher’s child is sick and he rushes through grading a stack of essays, the students won’t know, the principal won’t know, and the parents won’t know. If a math teacher plans poorly and, at the end of the year, winds up rushing through the most challenging units, the students can’t tell, and no one else will know. In other lines of work, like journalism, or engineering or law, professionals know that their work will be assessed. Historically, teachers have been largely left to their own devices, with the future of every child left utterly dependent on our unverified faith in each teacher’s professionalism. Changing this requires rethinking everything—including who should be running schools, who schools hire, how schools are staffed, how performance is recognized and rewarded, how ineffective employees are removed, how services like information management and human resources operate, and how money is spent. After decades of social experimentation, Americans have rediscovered that the simple answers are frequently the best answers. Watching crime explode in our cities taught us that acceptance of disorder breeds lawbreaking. Watching welfare become an intergenerational legacy taught us that tolerating dependence will encourage it. There are still some sophisticates who would like to roll the clock back on policing or welfare reform, but they are swamped by the sensible judgments of the American people. It is time we bring that same stolid judgment to education. A Commonsense Challenge
The commonsense reformer is humble enough to know that she cannot prescribe exactly how to get there in a given community. She does not try to tell schools what to teach, how to calibrate the balance between coercive and market accountability, how much ought to be spent on research, how technology should be used to deliver instruction, or exactly how to structure teacher compensation or training. Rather, the commonsense reformer relies on certain principles that have been shown to increase effectiveness, enhance productivity, and align self-interest properly understood with the common good. Commonsense reform rests on seven simple, straightforward principles:
New Schools for a New World Reaching out to the teachers and education leaders that we need requires that teaching be interesting, creative, rewarding work and that educators need to be fairly compensated. It also requires that states and districts strip down licensure barriers and hiring procedures that discourage nontraditional candidates from applying for positions within the schools. Educators should be entrusted to make informed, data-driven decisions, and be held accountable for the results of their endeavors. Commonsense reformers embrace tough-minded accountability and competition, in large part because they foster an environment of cooperation and commitment. Teacher unions, education professors, school administrators—these influential groups all favor current arrangements that protect their positions, grant schools of education control over who is permitted to teach, limit accountability for student performance, and so on. This is not because the leaders of these groups are mean-spirited but because their job is to protect the interests of their membership—whatever the larger results for schooling or America’s children. They’d be irresponsible if they didn’t take care of their members. Yet this type of protection for workers undermines our responsibility to children in schools. Our world has changed, but our schools have not. Why? Simply put, those who would bear the brunt of change do not desire it. If employees hold lifetime positions and are insulated from management’s scrutiny or ire, the work culture they construct will come to seem unyielding. Pursuing change in this cozy world by exhorting timid, consensus-loving souls to envision a bold and uncertain tomorrow is not a winning strategy. Nonetheless, reformers must remove the protections that buffer failure. Sensible reform must begin by tipping this world. No More Excuses The business community has too long allowed itself to be steered by status quo experts instead of providing the commonsense leadership it is uniquely positioned to provide. The civil rights community also has focused on issues of access and resource equity, while not holding adults responsible for how well minority children are learning. And even parents who help their children and support their local school do not realize that they are acquiescing to a culture of mediocrity that puts their children at risk. Each of these three constituencies is practical, skeptical, and knows from hard experience and personal involvement that what matters are results. Each recognizes that failure is not an abstract or theoretical concept and cannot be excused or atoned for with good intentions or high-minded ideologies. However, would-be commonsense reformers are too often apologetic for their commitment to tough-minded measures; they back away from challenging romanticized depictions of teachers. The truth is that commonsense reformers have nothing to apologize for. Well-meaning efforts to make competition, accountability, and workforce reform more appealing have produced toothless measures that leave the culture of incompetence unscathed. Commonsense reformers cannot allow themselves to be enticed by talk of consensus or airy promises of partnership with status quo reformers; they must focus on creating a world in which experts and educators are oriented by a culture of competence.
It is time that we step back and look forward. It is only when the public sees past the facile appeals of the status quo reformers and recognizes their fundamental lack of seriousness that we will make progress on providing a brighter future for all our children. It is not until the politicians see the public’s resolve that they will be willing to take on the status quo crowd. In a world as complex and diverse as ours, it is easy for simple truths to get lost—simple truths like responsibility, accountability, merit, and opportunity. Real school reform must begin by resurfacing those truths. About the Excerpt About the Author
HGSE News, Harvard Graduate School of Education
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