Journalist Andrea Gabor’s new book heralds a “quiet revolution” in education you didn’t know was happening.
Journalist Andrea Gabor, author of “After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend Business Reform,” is among the growing chorus concluding that the application of outdated, market-based models to a complex process like education has done more to exacerbate social problems than improve the performance of American children. As she sees it, the widespread embrace of approaches obsessed with the production of math and English language test scores “over civics and learning for learning’s sake” even helped spawn an electorate susceptible to the demagoguery of Donald Trump.
So that’s the bad news.
But Gabor has good news, too. While dilettante corporate reformers were making headlines with their quick-and-dirty education schemes, some far-sighted educators, active citizens, and imaginative thinkers across the nation have been swimming against the tide of the top-down, millionaire-driven reform movement with approaches to learning that are not only much more democratic, but remarkably effective and better attuned to the needs of 21st century students.
They’ve enjoyed less attention than their market-oriented counterparts, but they’ve gotten something better: results.
Gabor offers a trip through far-flung regions of country where vastly different public school systems have bucked the market-focused trends, including the state of Massachusetts and the Leander district in Texas, north of Austin.
Instead of prodding teachers and students with sticks and carrots, inflicting them with an endless grind of test preparation, the schools focus on creating a rich setting for learning, exploring, and developing human potential. And they manage to do so with greater efficiency, better outcomes, and certainly more enjoyment for everybody involved than what is often found in corporate reform-modeled schools...
However, the schools have several things in common: a respect for democratic processes and participatory improvement, a high regard for teachers, clear strategies with buy-in from all stake-holders, and accountability frameworks that include room to innovate. They also feature robust leadership and strong teacher voice. Their success underscores the importance of equitable funding and suggests that problems like income inequality are far more detrimental to education that the usual suspects, like bad teachers.
Something seems to have shifted on the education battle lines in the last couple of years. First, reports emerged that even once-enthusiastic proponents of corporate-style reform, like former education secretary Arne Duncan, had started to voice second thoughts about things like standardized testing. Parents across the ideological spectrum began to opt out and rebel against testing regimes like Common Core.
Then came the election of Donald Trump, a man of decidedly undemocratic values, whose appointment of Betsy DeVos — the wealthy architect of Detroit’s disastrous charter system — as education secretary galvanized critics of privatization and market-oriented education models.
In 2018, media coverage started to turn from heralding tech millionaires as the intrepid “disrupters” of schools to highlighting the boldness of teachers, especially those in non-union states, engaged in strikes, walkouts, and protests around the country. The American public was supportive of the strikes and resonated with teachers who didn’t make a living wage and yet poured their hearts into doing their best for high-risk children under terrible conditions with few resources.
Critics like Gordon Lafer are now warning that if antidemocmratic forces and deep-pocketed elites continue to set the agenda for what children should learn, American schools will turn into places where inequality is not only exacerbated, but actually inculcated — something quite different from what most of us grew up understanding as their purpose. Instead of being prepared for lives as healthy and productive citizens, most will be groomed for a life of lowered expetations and servitude.
Gabor sees in all this an opportunity to push to restore democratic principles and participative decision-making to education reform and champion a more humane, sustainable model for success. She views what happens under Trump as the catalyst for better approaches and a recognition that preparing young people for a competitive global marketplace and life democratic society do not have to be at odds: schools can and must do both.
Fortunately, as Gabor’s book demonstrates, we don’t have to invent the wheel: there are plenty of great examples and strategies to choose from.
The stakes could not be higher. If America can begin to issue more tickets to prosperity through education, the country will most certainly survive the current turmoil and chart an optimistic path to the future. If not, the U.S. becomes just another oligarchy.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/millionaire-driven-education-reform-failed-heres-works.html
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