Final Essay: Why Education Reforms (Usually) Fail

(Coordinated with Chapter 15: “The Future of Social Studies Education”)

Fall/Winter, 2014–2015

Why Education Reforms Fail: An Aerial Perspective on the Present and Future

Reform often misfires because we fail to learn from those who disagree with us.

—Michael Fullan, Dean, Ontario School for Studies in Education

Education is often in the news lately, and most of it is not particularly happy. We are in the midst of a decade long ‘reform’ that is causing considerable infighting, policy issues, dissatisfaction, and national debate.

The current so-called reform movement sets great store, it says, in being research based, but its advocates do not seem to know the literature on the nearly persistent failure of educational reform in the United States. This requires a bit of research into history and of all things, research. The American Educational Research Association (AERA), to which most educators belong, has a plethora of studies going back to the ’50s and ’60s through to the present about reforms, and there is considerable agreement about how to build reform and what to avoid.

The current reform group seems, with few exceptions, to have avoided this entire body of research.

First, reform implies that a system is in really bad shape and needs reshaping, rather than merely a series of improvements, better funding, and fun people.

Second, reform this time around is tightly focused on teachers being responsible for all ‘poor’ educational results. Very little is said about students or parents, government, curriculum, or funding.

Third, much of the reform seems to be sponsored by or sold off to business interests (often connected to government) who are regarded by many of the reformers as efficient and effective, if only given the opportunity to take control and shape the system (for a fee!) like a business.

Fourth, the reforms seem obsessed with evaluating students, teachers, and schools of education, but not leaders or policies.

Fifth, most of the reforms and evaluations have been imposed from above with relatively little conversation or input from teachers, unions, schools of education, colleges, or other stakeholders who play key roles in teacher preparation.

An aerial view of education in the United States immediately reveals deep underlying problems: e.g., inequality and poverty. There is an almost perfect correlation between socioeconomic status and school test scores, student performance, and teacher accomplishment. Yet reports show that inequality is growing and so is poverty—not the same thing, but equally difficult to solve and equally pervasive in diminishing school performance.

A second flyby reveals that the U.S. population is largely segregated by race, income, and ethnicity. There are generally poorer performances from immigrant groups and minorities for completely understandable reasons of poverty, language, and past and present racist and exclusionary policies. In many urban inner cities and rural counties, performance is diminished by additional factors like distance, dysfunctional home situations, poor health, and lack of motivation for academic studies.

A third flyover reveals that teachers across the nation are rather poorly paid though fairly well prepared (bachelor’s degrees or better; master’s degrees or better in many states). They are confronted by large class sizes, difficult students, inclusion pupils, a vast testing network, and new, stringent demands about performance. Scores should be going up, you know, no matter what the problems are, if only teachers were reformed so they could lead all of the pupils out of the wilderness of cell phone society and get them into the rapidly declining textbook market, or at least an iPad to connect to the Web.

A fourth aerial zip and zoom reveals that the conquest of the mind by Internet and electronics receives very little attention from reformers or teachers except as new delivery systems to provide facts in/facts out, while the Common Core, standards, evaluations, and all the rest demand that teachers promote higher-order thinking, helping all students (who can’t get their eyes off their cell phones) into college and careers. Meanwhile, many parents are having trouble surviving in a sluggish economy and have little time to motivate or support their kids to learn and earn (and the job situation is sluggish or dead in the water for most teens).

Anyway, into this delightfully ‘easy to solve’ situation for teachers, the reformers gallop on, selling franchises to Pearson, McGraw-Hill, the College Board, and other companies to test what isn’t taught, and to create and administer tests that have not been scientifically validated, except by policy decisions in statehouses and Washington, D.C. Thank you, Arne Duncan.

A cursory review of research on the history and effectiveness of education ‘reforms’ yields the following ‘surprises’ (see if you agree with the conclusions, or not):

1. Reforms work best when the stakeholders agree with and endorse a common set of goals before setting out to make changes (see Barnes, 2004). .
2. Reforms work best when there is general respect for and rewards (money, advancement, bonuses, etc.) for the educators delivering instruction to student populations (Boreman et al., 2003).
3. Reforms work best when new materials and methods of teaching, that is the content and process involved, have been disseminated throughout cities, states, and nations, through workshops, demonstrations, and courses by qualified trainers and experts (Slavin and Madden, 2012).
4. Reforms work best when parents and students are brought into the discourse and encouraged and rewarded to actively participate in supporting the new goals for improvement (Hoover-Dempsey, 2005).
5. Reforms work best when curriculum and goals are shared democratically from bottom to top within educational circles rather than imposed by technocrats, government officials, or outside businesses (Datnow & Castellano, 2001).
6. Reforms work best when up-to-date content, curriculum, and instructional methods of quality replace hoary antiquated materials that do not capture student interest or motivate active participation (Edgecombe, Cormier & Bickerstaff, 2013).

Thus, as a result of an aerial perspective, we can rise above all of the petty arguments about how many times a teacher should be observed, or when an elementary student should take six hours of testing, or what performance indicates brilliance by student teachers with six months experience, or whether to lease charters, to see the ‘Big Picture on Education’ in the United States: stasis, stuck, flat.

What surprises me is that teachers and the ‘system’ are doing as well as they are, not as badly as critics say. Given too much testing, morale issues, large class sizes, relative lack of funding, moderate pay scales at best, lack of curriculum innovation or training for teaching higher-order thinking or Common Core, one might conclude that our educational system is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances.

And the circumstances don’t seem to be changing much as there is little serious new funding coming by way of education. Parents want terrific education for their kids, and some get it, but they and government want it on the cheap, and without being bothered very much to seek counsel or participate. Political leaders exploit parent, business, and voter dissatisfaction, but once elected or reelected do little or nothing—or even worse, act negatively, decreasing funding and increasing imposed, often punitive, assessment systems for public schools and colleges.

We seem to have lost sight of the Big Picture and what we really want out of schools, while educators try to survive in a rather hostile and very critical atmosphere, without many allies. 

And yet, we still DO need improvements, and maybe even ‘reform.’  What do you think?

References

Barnes, F. D. (April, 2004). Inquiry and Action: Making School Improvement Part of Daily Practice, 1-21. Providence, RI: Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.

Boreman, G. D. et al. (Summer, 2003). “Comprehensive School Reform: A Metanalysis.” Review of Educational Research, 73, 125–230.

Datnow, A. & Castellano, M. E., (April, 2001). “Managing School Reform: Leadership in Success for All Schools.” Education Administration Quarterly, 37, 2, 219–249.

Edgecombe, N., Cormier, M. S., & Bickerstaff, S. (2013). “Strengthening Developmental Education Reforms: Evidence on Implementation Efforts.” CCRC Working paper No. 61, 1–43. New York:Teachers College Columbia, Columbia University.

Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., et. al. (2005). “Why Do Parents Get Involved? Research Findings and Implications.”The Elementary School Journal, 106, 2, 105–130.

Slavin, R. E. and Madden, N. A. (2012). Success for All: Summary of Research on Achievement Outcomes (revised). Baltimore: MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.