Shiny Objects

We just need more scales, damn it!

Another ridiculous article in the New York Times this week summarized the latest efforts to deal with childhood obesity by installing more scales in schools. 

Well, not actually. The ridiculous article noted that the latest test scores in New York City public schools revealed a drop in reading proficiency despite (because of?) a shiny new curriculum and a spanking new assessment scheme.

Year after year, decade after decade, it’s a shiny new curriculum and a spanking new assessment system. Despite all the shine, the reports are always the same; statistically insignificant shifts one way or another. The only significant growth in the last 40 years has been the profit margins in the testing, test prep, and educational publishing industries. Children’s success or happiness? Not so much.

In response to this typically dismal New York Times reporting, I wrote a comment clarifying that it was all horsebunky and that the only real strategy to improve learning is to address poverty, racism and unwieldy class sizes. 

“No,” argued several other commenters. “Class size doesn’t matter and it’s not poverty.” “It’s bad parenting and teachers’ unions.” They read it somewhere. There are think tanks galore offering this propaganda in support of their “reform” agendas. 

I needn’t elaborate, as others have done it for me. Class size does matter, especially in neglected communities where, unsurprisingly, classes are particularly large. Read the research if you wish at Class Size Matters. 

It is like much else in our economic and social system. The folks who get the most need it the least. It’s easy to get a loan if you have money. It’s easier to get health insurance if you’re healthy. Similarly, class sizes are smaller in wealthy communities and smaller still in private schools.

 As is also  true with universal health care - Medicare for all for example - we don’t properly fund education because we don’t want to, not because we can’t.

Since the Times article focused primarily on reading, so shall I. 

The never-ending reading wars, pitting phonics vs. whole language, have tilted steeply in favor of phonics. This too is partially due to the persistent pressure applied by the burgeoning market for so-called science of reading and the costly curricula and assessments churned out by the ed-profiteers. 

It is also due to the nearly meaningless self-fulfilling circles of supposed competence which comprise the reading industry. If children are drilled in phonics, they will invariably improve in sounding stuff out and thereby “read.” Context and understanding are secondary or neglected entirely. But they will do marginally better on a standardized assessment.

I and many others have repeatedly pointed out the obvious. Reading is both the symbols in which human language is encoded, and the meaning that is carried within the text. It isn’t, and never has been, one or the other. Some children will learn best by gleaning the meaning and then backfilling the phonics by intuitively knowing what the next or previous word would logically be. Others might get a boost from sounding out words, having an “aha!”, and then backfilling the meaning. 

As with every other element of learning, the cognitive differences among children make any highly specific methodology ineffective for many or most students. It takes an attentive guide to lead an individual student through the process, using the symbols and their meaning in a way that unlocks the mystery. (It is important to note that students of privilege quite often don’t need any of it, as their early exposure to oral and print language already created the neural pathways.)

Educational and life success for poor children, like most in New York City public schools, doesn’t matter enough to merit the investment equity requires. So it’s one damn excuse after another. Parents are irresponsible. Teachers are overpaid and incompetent. Class size doesn’t matter. If only everyone followed the (pseudo) science of reading! 

I’ve been following education for decades. Nothing has changed. No Child Left Behind. Every Student Succeeds Act. Common Core. Charter Schools. Vouchers. Phonics First. 

And every year kids from wealthy backgrounds do well and poor kids don’t. We have no intent to systematically address that fundamental truth.

So next year and every year hence, we’ll have a brand new glossy set of curriculum materials delivered to every desperately underfunded and depressingly crowded classroom in communities like the South Bronx with promises that this time it really will work. 

You know what Einstein would call that.