Cutting Through the Hype

[George Sheridan <learn@jps.net>]

Peter Schrag: School reform for dummies: A short primer
By Peter Schrag -- Bee Columnist

Published Wednesday, June 7, 2006
Story appeared in Editorials section, Page B7
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/14264900p-15077407c.html


Jane David's and Larry Cuban's little 120-page book, "Cutting Through the 
Hype: A Taxpayer's Guide To School Reforms," will never generate hot 
headlines. It's froth-free, and provides little ammunition for the chicken 
littles of American education or for the peddlers of the magic bullets of 
one or another all-purpose school reform.

But it's probably the most sensible book about education reform -- its 
possibilities and its limits -- to appear in a generation. Its calm 
reflection on some 20 of our hottest topics -- how to teach math and 
reading, school choice, merit pay, mayoral control, school-based 
management, social promotion, class-size reduction, tracking -- is 
essentially a message of caution.

If you want passionate declarations for one side or another in the school 
wars, you won't get it from them.

What you'll get is mostly caution. No single program is an all-purpose 
solution, and the differences achieved by different applications in 
different schools of the same teaching program are greater than the 
differences achieved by different programs. The longest distance on Earth 
is that between educational policymakers and what goes on in the classroom.

"All claims about reforms over-promise," they write. "Elected and appointed 
policymakers alike exploit criticism of public education." They overstate 
problems and exaggerate claims. Slogans get thrown around: "research 
based," "best practices," "no child left behind." David, who runs the Bay 
Area Research Group, a small consulting firm, and Cuban, a former high 
school history teacher, school superintendent and recently retired Stanford 
education professor, have a few catch-phrases of their own.

"Avoid tunnel vision" may be the most telling. The measurement of 
achievement based solely on standardized testing and better paying jobs, 
now an article of "unquestioned faith held by rich and poor," narrows the 
objectives of schooling so much that it drives many things that American 
schooling was supposed to be about: civic engagement, building community, 
molding character.

Worse, as the job market gets tighter and even high-tech jobs get 
off-shored, it overemphasizes the economic magic of a college education. 
"The schools are not responsible for the scarcity of productive jobs or the 
decreasing numbers of slots in many institutions of higher education." 
There's no question about the importance of education, and not just for 
jobs. But, as David and Cuban only suggest, in the overemphasis on 
education, other social and economic forces and interventions are 
dangerously minimized.

The point is that in providing opportunities for a decent life for all 
Americans, many things demand attention, from the home background of kids 
-- housing, nutrition, stable communities, family circumstances and 
involvement -- to the tax structure, national health policy, immigration 
and all the rest.

What may be most distressing is that the book had to be written at all. 
Many of its conclusions are familiar, even hackneyed. Experienced teachers 
tell their younger colleagues: "Stay in one place long enough and the same 
reform returns like a bad penny." Time and again, reformers don't learn 
from the past: The fashions have swung from social promotion of kids 
failing in one subject or another to tough retention policies, and back; 
from whole language to phonics; from fuzzy math to drill and kill; from the 
virtues of big high schools to the importance of small high schools.

There are no cheap fixes. "So many reforms," they say, "presume that 
schools alone are responsible for catastrophic dropout rates, unyielding 
achievement gaps and high turnover among school leaders and staffs. Thus, 
policymakers act as though standards-based curriculum, testing and 
accountability measures will remedy these severe problems while failing to 
provide the resources teachers and the support necessary beyond the 
schools. ? Although money is no guarantee of success, lack of money 
predictably leads to failure." Just whipping the inmates harder won't make 
them teach or learn better.

They have lots of ideas, many of them crosses of the extremes in the 
various debates, none of them sexy, few of them new and most pretty obvious:

? However you teach English learners, make certain the teachers are well 
trained and keep in mind that given the burdens that poor immigrant kids 
come with, schools can rarely do the job alone.

? In the face of tight budgets, reduce class size only in schools with 
students who will benefit the most -- schools with poor and minority 
students. Students are better off in a large class with good teaching than 
in a small class with poor teaching.

? Holding kids back usually doesn't work. Those who don't pass the first 
time around aren't likely to do so the second time either, meaning kids 
"pile up" in the lower grades. Double repeaters are likely to drop out. One 
solution is mixed-age classes where kids move ahead in each subject as 
they're ready; another is intense early intervention, including Saturday 
and summer classes, with lots of encouragement for parents to make kids go. 
(That may be the toughest part of all.)

The book could have been called "school reform for dummies." Every would-be 
school fixer should read it.


*  Peter Schrag can be reached at Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852-0779 or 
at pschrag@sacbee.com.



George Sheridan