Two recent news reports reveal a cause and effect relationship which surely escapes the educational “establishment” and those who determine the daily fate of American children.
One report from the New York Times should be enough to bring a person to tears. It describes the new sheriff in town who is remaking Houston’s schools. The sheriff/superintendent, Mike Miles, was put in place by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, which alone should be disqualifying. The micromanaging regime Miles has implemented has been informed by his experience as an Army Ranger and a charter school “tough love” sort of guy. It is essentially like junior Army Basic Training. I did the real thing. It was not fun.
Pity the children.
The Houston Chronicle reported that parents were upset by disciplinary policies, like the one that required students to carry orange traffic cones to bathroom visits. Less concern has been expressed about the strict requirements that teachers follow the curriculum script, which includes countdown clocks on the walls, snappy answers and unwavering compliance. This kind of model is not new. “Educators” like Miles believe, without meaningful evidence, that a rigid mechanical system, designed to churn out more “right” answers, will work if properly enforced. He visits lots of classrooms to enforce.
Miles and his co-conspirators don’t know a damn thing about learning or children. The “success” cited above is meaningless and the programs that yield this kind of illusion are a form of child abuse. It will surprise few readers to note that 80% of the kids in Houston public schools are Black, as is sheriff Miles. It recalls a quote from an architect of a New York charter chain who responded to my criticism of “tough love” education for Black kids by saying, “They need it.”
It is unimaginable that public schools in Scarsdale or private schools in Manhattan would march kids from class-to-class, send them to the bathroom with traffic cones, or require teachers to drill kids using digital clocks ticking down the time allotted for a snappy answer.
It is infuriating that so-called educators evidently believe that poor Black kids respond to an entirely different set of practices than privileged white kids.
The cause and effect to which I referred is between this kind of “reform” and the recently reported results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This supposed gold standard showed declines in both reading and mathematics. The data are complex (and meaningless), but the main takeaway is that high performers are doing relatively well and low performers - not so much.
In the arcane analysis the article undertakes, you would search in vain for mentions of “poverty” or “Black.” It’s all couched in “low-performer” and “high-performer” terms. I find that absence to be professional malpractice. It exposes a reality that this nation has not faced and will not face. We fail to address racism or poverty so glaring educational disparities are blamed on pandemic learning loses or inadequately “scientific” reading instruction. So bring an Army Ranger in to fix the poor Black kids.
So how do I explain this excerpt from the Times article?
Halfway through the second school year that the new model has been in use, officials argue that it is paying off. The number of schools in Houston that were rated D or F by the state dropped to 41 from 121. Math and reading scores on state standardized tests have risen. The overall gains were “largest single-year growth in the district’s history,” district officials said.
I was recently made aware of a phenomenon known as Campbell’s law. It states, in part, that “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
I could not craft a more succinct summary of what has gone awry in American education for decades.
The existence of, and stubborn emphasis on, testing has thoroughly corrupted the “social processes” they are supposed to monitor. Whether (somewhat) benign “teaching to the test” in the broad public system or abusive, regimented school days in poorer districts, the flat or declining scores are not despite the intense focus on preparation, they are because of the intense focus on preparation.
There is abundant research showing that the methods used in Houston for short-term gain have the consequence of long-term loss. That’s not surprising. Even a cursory knowledge of neurobiology and cognitive psychology shows that these deficits are inevitable. Except Army Rangers and charter school profiteers don’t have even cursory knowledge.
Aside from the demonstrable stupidity of these educational practices, the children are learning something; to hate school.