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A nation still at risk

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Staff

Steve Peha

It seems like ed reform has been going on forever. But it’s only been 26 years. In 1983, the landmark report “A Nation at Risk” was published, detailing many things its authors thought were terribly wrong with American schools. What interests me about the 26th anniversary of this report is that, as of this year, two full generations of K-12 students have made their ways through the system.
And I have a feeling if the same report were written again, its title would be “A Nation Still at Risk.”

What have we come up with in the last 26 years to help our kids be more successful in school? It’s a short list: testing, standards, vouchers, charters and merit pay. That’s it. We look more closely now at attendance and high school graduation rates, but this isn’t reform, it’s just bookkeeping.

If it feels like we’re not getting very far, it’s because we aren’t. Let’s take a look at why.

First up: testing. Testing has given us a lot of data, but much of it hasn’t been very useful because virtually every state has done one or more things to distort the numbers in their favor. Mostly this has meant making tests easier or using fancy statistical workarounds like “confidence intervals” and “minimum subgroup sizes” to make their scores look better than they really are. In return for this faux accountability, a pervasive teach-to-test culture has infiltrated our classrooms.

Second: standards. In theory, curriculum standards ought to make teaching easier, better and more consistent. And this consistency, in particular, should lead to dramatically increased learning for kids. But this hasn’t happened, and it’s hard to know why. Are the standards bad in some way? Most research suggests they are too broad and too numerous. On the other hand, why hasn’t increased curricular consistency helped our kids very much? I suspect it’s because there’s a practical side to the standards issue that no one likes to talk about. If every kid gets taught the same standard every day, what are the low kids, who don’t quite understand, getting out of it? And, for that matter, what are the high kids, who know the information already, getting out of it? Standards have hurt differentiation, which is the ability of teachers to give individual students work that is most appropriate for their ability level.

Third: voucher programs. These have been particularly popular with parents. But the programs have been so small, they can’t possibly have had an effect on education, even in the districts where they’ve been tried. Could we make voucher programs larger? Not likely. Too many people would argue, quite rightly, that too much public tax money was going to too many private schools. And we don’t have nearly enough private school capacity to take all the kids whose families would want to send them.

Fourth: charter schools. Of all reforms, this seemed like the most promising to me. But the data has not been good. Most studies suggest that most charter schools are no better than their public school counterparts. Why is this? I suspect the people who have started charter schools have simply discovered that it’s darned difficult to run a successful school. The only universally acclaimed charter success is the KIPP program, but their 10-hour school day, Saturday sessions and extended school year haven’t been replicated anywhere else. If charter schools worked the way they were supposed to, KIPP’s success would be our nation’s success.
Charter schools were supposed to accomplish two goals: Provide competition to local schools and create models of new schools that could be replicated. No matter what you think about charters, you can’t argue that either of these goals has been fulfilled.

And finally: merit pay. Some people think you can get teachers to work harder or attract better teachers if you figure out some kind of performance-based pay model. Again, the data here is not great. What we know about merit-pay programs is that the annual incentives have to be large (about 15 to 20 percent of salary), the system for distributing bonuses has to be seen as fair to all and the program has to continue for a long time (five years or more). And even then, the gains in student performance have not been earth shattering.

Two things we haven’t looked at are innovative models of instruction and better training for teachers. It seems we’ve done everything but look at how teachers teach. As baby boomers ease out of the workforce, we’re going to be bringing in an unprecedented number of new teachers. There’s no better time than the present to see that those teachers are well trained in innovative and effective practices. If we continue to ignore this opportunity, and stick with the reforms we’re using now, we have no one to blame but ourselves when another two generations of kids march through schools with similar achievement levels – and we’re still a nation at risk.

Steve Peha is founder and president of Carrboro-based Teaching That Makes Sense Inc.

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