Beat the Children

Why would you keep beating your head against the wall to cure a headache?

You wouldn’t, of course, but that is the sum and substance of a New York Times piece this week by Fordham Institute President Michael Petrilli.  The fully unqualified Petrilli and his corporate sponsors are - gasp - mortified by pandemic “learning loss” and have just the solution: tough love and more accountability.  In the column, Petrilli quotes the real guru of education, Michael Bloomberg.  Heaven help us.  Quoting Bloomberg is a real gem. What does that man know about real children, how they learn and how they struggle?  

I call Petrilli “unqualified,” not out of malice, but because he is.  His entire career has been as an analyst, a policy wonk and a bureaucrat.  None of those things are inherently bad, but they are not - should not be - the platform from which the well-being of actual children is determined.  I believe this analogy is fair and apt: having a lifelong armchair analyst driving education practices is equivalent to having a MBA hospital administrator performing heart surgery.  (Actual heart surgeons might argue that this is precisely what is happening in medicine.)  

Fordham and its conservative "thinkers" have been the problem, not the solution. Starting with the fraudulent A Nation at Risk in 1983, the standards and accountability folks have made flexible, engaging, human and humane learning more difficult.  This steady drumbeat has done much more harm than any supposed learning loss from the pandemic.  Learning loss is a relatively unimportant statistical phenomenon based on the rigid, wrongheaded notion that everything important can be measured.  

Petrilli and brethren blame minor declines in test scores on “learning loss,” yet flattening scores preceded Covid by 10 years.   By any measures, including the meaningless metrics of No Child Left Behind Act and Every Student Succeeds Act, 40 years of Fordham, Walton, Gates et al have brought no progress.  Lots of profit for “reformers” and test manufacturers, lots of progress for the charter industry, and bundles of cash for consultants and analysts. 

Beating the children and starving the teachers (figuratively, of course,) hasn’t done the job, so the answer must be to beat and starve a little more vigorously.  Tough love.  

I’ve often used the example of Hansel and Gretel, the fairytale victims of famine, left in the forest alone.  Petrilli and company would try to fatten the poor kids up by weighing them more often.  If it didn’t’ work, they would recalibrate the scales. If that failed, they would contract with McGraw Hill to build new scales.  As it turns out, scales are much less expensive than food.    

All this think tank blather ignores the real culprits: poverty and school choice.  American education is intentionally bifurcated; one set of experiences for the affluent, another for the rest.  No real effort is underway to eradicate poverty.  In fact, the subtext of conservative approaches to poverty and education is the same.  Poverty is mostly a character flaw - make them work harder, sew on a few bootstraps.  In education, it’s the fault of parents, resulting in absenteeism and lack of discipline.  Toughen them up!  Harder grading systems, longer days!  Close underperforming schools!  Fire the incompetent principals, blame the teacher unions!  

As to “choice,” the red herring of “freedom to choose” results in devastating budget cuts to the least advantaged communities, and the chance for poor families to pick from one or the other of the lousy schools the free market provides. Or stick with the increasingly abandoned, dilapidated, neighborhood school where teachers are giving up and armed guards are roaming the halls.  Would make me want to show up and do my best.  How ‘bout you?

Here’s an idea: Fund schools adequately - lavishly - and pay teachers well.  Leave them to teach the children in their care, not make them play incessant accountability games.

But you won’t read that in the Times.  They, and every other major newspaper, are fully on the corporate, conservative, accountability bandwagon.  It is frustrating, to say the least.  The Times has a print and digital readership of 3.8 million.  My blog has 391 subscribers. There are many thoughtful educators, psychologists, and teachers speaking out, but we are no match Petrilli and company.  They have the money and the megaphone.

Among the many offensive aspects of conventional wisdom is this recurrent call for “tough love.”  “Tough love” is an oxymoron, intentionally used to sugarcoat abusive, ineffectual actions.  That’s not what children need, damn it.    How about just plain love?