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In the following excerpt from his paper, "Educational Reform: Progress and Prospects," HGSE lecturer and former Achieve, Inc. president Robert B. Schwartz discusses the progress made by and dangers implicit in standards-based reform.
If I had to pick the singlemost significant political contribution to date of the standards movement, it would be its effect on the way in which both educators and the general public define the purposes of public education, and on our criteria for measuring success. Although our schools are still subject to pressure from a wide variety of constituency groups, each pressing its own agenda and priorities, I believe there is now quite broad consensus that the principle purpose of our public education system is to equip all young people with a foundation of academic skills and knowledge sufficient to enable them to function successfully in post-secondary education or in a high-performance workplace. This may not sound new or radical, but for an education system that has historically expected only some of its students to master challenging academic content, this represents a significant shift in focus. For the past two decades there have been three competing conceptions of education reform jostling with one another for support among educators and public policymakers. Although there is some overlap among these categories, and some reformers who claim membership in more than one camp, each begins with a different definition of the problem. The first, called standards-based reform, [has as its premise] that the core problem in American education is the lack of clarity about mission, and its response has been to define clear academic learning goals for students in each core subject at each level of school, measure progress annually against those goals, and hold people accountable for results. The second approach has no universally recognized name, but I think of it as network-based reform. This approach begins from the premise that the school, not the state, is the focal point of reform, and that building networks of schools that share common principles and practices is the most promising strategy for spreading successful practices and scaling up demonstrably effective programs.
And the third conception of reform is market-based. Simply put, it believes the core problem is that public education is a monopoly in which the producers have all the power. Therefore, the response of market advocates is to create much more competition by transferring power into the hands of the consumer. By definition, this approach, like network-based reform, is highly eclectic on the content of reform. Its goal is to create a broad and diverse array of educational options, and then let parents, teachers and students choose among them. This approach to reform has also been incorporated into public policy in a variety of ways, ranging from the charter schools programs in 36 states and the District of Columbia to the public-school choice provisions in No Child Left Behind (NCLB). *** I don’t share in the growing consensus that all young Americans need to go to college, especially not to a four-year college. I do believe that all young people should leave high school equipped with a sufficient foundation of knowledge and skills to keep on learning, but for many young people, that learning might well take place on the job, or in the military, or in a post-secondary technical certificate program. It should tell us something that despite the steadily increasing percentage of high-school graduates who enroll in college, the percentage of 25-34 year olds who actually obtain a baccalaureate degree has hardly budged over the past two decades: it’s about one in four. My point here is that, while I want to ensure that all high-school graduates have the foundational skills to do credit-bearing college work, I don’t think that a sector that effectively serves only a quarter of our graduates ought to so heavily influence the programmatic design of high schools. Urban districts that are seriously taking on the challenge of reforming high schools are adopting a variety of strategies, but all have at their core the need to address questions of student motivation and engagement. One common denominator has been the desire to create more human-scale organizations where kids feel a sense of membership and where face-to-face relationships among adults and kids are more possible. This is being accomplished either through the creation of new small schools, often with financial assistance from national foundations like Gates and Carnegie, or through the restructuring of larger high schools into organizationally and thematically distinctive small schools or academies. The use of programmatic themes, built around broad career clusters or academic specialties or service opportunities, is the other common denominator, whether for new stand-alone schools or decentralized units within larger restructured high schools. The challenge for states is to figure out how to structure some measure of quality control across an increasingly diverse array of secondary-school options without creating a set of statewide assessments that unduly constrains the curricular and programmatic choices available to small schools. *** Can we imagine states creating sufficient political space to allow districts and networks of schools to create more diverse pathways to graduation, especially given the growing accountability pressures of No Child Left Behind? Even if NCLB’s assessment requirements are principally focused on grades 3-8, doesn’t the whole tenor of the law, with its relentless emphasis on scientifically based instructional methods, militate against...innovation and experimentation...for high schools? And won’t most states be so focused on putting in place lowest common denominator assessments with politically manageable cut scores in reading and math that they will have little or no energy to deal with assessments in subjects not touched by the law? States need to be treated differentially, and their reform strategies and progress need to be respected. A law that leads Michigan to report 1500 low-performing schools and Arkansas to report none obviously needs some fine-tuning, and if the problem of persistently low-performing schools is going to be addressed seriously by states and districts, the Department is going to have to provide guidance that enables states and districts to concentrate attention and resources on some number of schools that bears a reasonable relationship to state and district capacity to provide assistance, which in most cases is a double-digit number, not several hundred. We need to differentiate between schools needing “continuous improvement” (virtually all) and schools that are genuinely stuck and need radical intervention, which in most jurisdictions is a relative handful. Mislabeling large numbers of schools as failing can only erode public confidence and reduce the likelihood that those needing help the most will get it. If NCLB is going to be the vehicle at least some of its sponsors envisioned—a vehicle to spur increased attention and resources targeted on the kids and schools that most need help, and to help states continue on the reform path many are already on—the Administration will need to cut the saber-rattling and exhibit a bit more confidence in the good faith and commitment of states. If state leaders believe their current reform strategies are beginning to yield results, then they will have to summon up the resolve not to be thrown off course by the compliance demands of their 7% Federal partners. About the Paper For More Information
HGSE News, Harvard Graduate School of Education
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