The following piece appeared on the
Friedman Foundation website. Do we want to protect a failing system or do what is best for our Children?
Improving America's Classrooms Through School Choice
by
John Merrifield, Ph.D.Problematic public school classroom conditions have survived
decades of education reform efforts. With federal lawmakers considering
reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act—and new state lawmakers
pursuing different types of education reforms—it is worth reviewing the
root causes of our school system’s ineffectiveness and the policy
reforms that would eliminate those problems—for the benefit of educators
and their students, alike.
The latest edition of the “Nation’s Report Card,” shows that only 38 percent of
17-year-old students are
proficient in reading, with 27 percent lacking even basic skills. Obviously the frenzied activity since the first
Nation at Risk
declaration in 1983 has done little to adequately address the core
reasons for insufficient, properly focused engagement in high-value
academics. It’s not that the reasons are hard to grasp. They’ve all been
noted in a piecemeal fashion, including especially:
- Weak, often poorly targeted, incentives for educator effectiveness and parental involvement.
- Classroom composition policies that minimize student engagement.
- High rates of out-of-subject-field teaching.
- The micro-management of professional educators.
- Teacher tenure, combined with high rates of teacher burnout.
- Misleading, boring curricula and textbooks.
- Discipline problems coupled with related regulation and lawsuit fear among educators.
This blog will discuss the first three; saving the others for
future posts. Policy leaders with the wisdom and will to propose and
successfully fight for systemic change must not ignore that addressing
those issues would greatly improve educators’ classroom experiences and
students’ academic progress.
On a personal note, my review of America’s education ills and
solution proposals have very humble, ground-level starting points. As a
college professor, I noticed severe deficiencies in the preparedness of
many of my students. Basic skill deficiencies in the college bound are
especially alarming. The average skills of the non-college-bound are
even lower. And, as husband to a former public school teacher who taught
diverse groups of children, including students with special needs, I
heard firsthand information on the workings of the public school system
and tales from inner-city and suburban school districts. The stories my
wife brought home were often so traumatic to her we had to set limits on
when and where such discussions could occur. That anecdotal evidence
painted a picture of inefficiency, chaos, and disappointment no one
should have to endure. As an economist, I had to investigate whether the
problems evident to my wife and me were the exceptions or the norms of a
low-performing system—and then offer solutions.
Weak, often poorly targeted, incentives for educator effectiveness and parental involvement
With the exception of some chartered public schools, the
taxpayer-financed part of America’s K-12 education system provides for
few, if any, immediate, tangible consequences for educator
effectiveness, for parental involvement, or for student achievement.
Even the intangibles are often misaligned. For example, it is quite
common for educators to face negative peer pressure for entrepreneurial
and innovative initiatives they employ.
The widespread disconnect between pay and performance is about more
than the political challenges of implementing genuine merit pay. The
intricate explanations of why it is difficult to objectively and
accurately assess merit through administrator observations and
checklists and why the zero-sum nature of taxpayer-funded merit pay
creates problems is worth an addendum to this series. For now, it is
enough to note that reward for individual educator merit, or punishment
for lack thereof, is rare. And often what is rewarded in those rare
instances of something called merit pay is school merit—typified by
increases in the school’s budget—and not individual merit via salary
raises.
As for parental involvement, a key reason it is low is that report
cards and teacher conferences typically lack the critical information
that parents need to make good decisions. Grade inflation, including
social promotion, is known to lull parents into a false sense of security, in part because for many teachers
talking to parents
is among their least favorite things to do. And even if lack of
progress is evident to a parent, and the child might be successful in a
non-mainstream setting, parents may be powerless – lacking adequate
school choice – to influence the factors that would benefit their
children. Powerlessness discourages involvement.
Despite much talk about increased accountability, it has been
widely considered politically incorrect to hold many of the current
system’s players accountable for anything. Furthermore, it is arguably
unfair to hold teachers accountable for poorly conceived instructional
strategies; for example, sorting children into public school classrooms
only by age and neighborhood. Then in that often overwhelmingly diverse
setting, teachers are glibly implored to be successful through the
impossibly demanding feat of broadly differentiated instruction.
And then after maximizing the difficulty of the teaching task, the
system denies the professional status that might give teachers a
fighting chance to achieve tolerable results. For example, teacher
micro-management includes system-selected curricula, tests,
textbooks, and mandated teaching timetables, including those insultingly termed “
teacher proof.”
Classroom composition policies that minimize student engagement
By matching children only by age and neighborhood, the current
system ignores children’s and even educators’ learning styles, subject
themes, or interests. For example, a high-quality science subject theme
would achieve engagement of some children, but leave others behind. And
even if all those students were equally interested in science, some
children learn better in front of a computer with great instructional
software whereas others do better in a traditional face-to-face
classroom setting.
Relying solely on children’s age and neighborhood frequently leads
to classrooms with a mix of overwhelmed, bored, distracted, and
disinterested students. Education reform scholar Dr. Herbert Walberg
makes this salient point:
“Compared with privately provided goods and services, perhaps the
most fundamental market problem with publicly funded schools is to
provide a uniform education that is satisfying to all families. How
difficult would it be for automobile manufacturers, restaurants,
hairdressers, and barbers to satisfy the majority, let alone all, of
their clients with a single, uniform product or service?”
The resulting difficulty feeling successful and maintaining good
relations with parents and administrators is a key reason why so many
teachers quickly abandon teaching careers. It also is why so many
teachers suffer burnout, but stay on the job for lack of viable income-producing alternatives and lack of pressure to improve or exit.
The same overwhelming challenge—meeting the diverse needs of each
attendance zone—explains why district superintendents so often struggle
to dent districts’ academic performance levels, and why
superintendents suffer from such high turnover rates. Longtime education scholar,
Paul Hill,
argued that, “many superintendents have concluded that, in the words of
one, the job is undoable. Most agree that a successful superintendent
is usually one who has avoided a financial crisis or survived a tense
labor negotiation, not one who has transformed a district’s schools.”
High rates of out-of-subject-field teaching
Teacher pay almost always depends just on teachers’ formal
credentials and seniority. Though it is grossly unfair to the more
advanced teachers, varying pay by teacher subject field is also widely
considered politically incorrect. The resulting surpluses and shortages
of specific types of teachers yield pandemic out-of-field teaching.
For example,
69 percent of fifth to eighth graders are being taught math by teachers
without a mathematics degree or certificate, and 93 percent of those
same students are being taught physical sciences by teachers with no
physical science degree or certificate. With so many math and science
courses staffed by teachers who did not major in math or science, is it
any wonder so few American students are succeeding in those subjects?
(That’s not meant to slight non-math teachers but rather to recognize
how important it is schools sync teachers to their fields of expertise.)
Conclusion
To be clear, policymakers should stay out of the classroom as much
as possible. The issues addressed herein should be left to principals,
teachers, and parents to solve. So where then do policymakers fit in?
Policymakers should reduce instructional challenges and create
tangible incentives to deliver the highest quality, correctly targeted
instruction by letting parents decide the schools where public funding
will support their children. They are much closer to classrooms and
their children. Empowered with information and full control of the money
earmarked for their children’s schooling, parents can work with
principals and teachers to provide localized incentives, identify their
children’s educational tracks, and choose the teachers skilled in the
instructional approaches that best fit the needs of their children.
Other issues facing educators and students will be explored in part two of this series on America’s classrooms.
