By coincidence, I finished reading Sizer’s The Red Pencil at the same time this new “Broader, Bolder Approach to Education” statement was released.
Not by mere coincidence, Theodore Sizer is among the dozens of signatories to the statement. Reading his book, and then the proposals advanced in the new policy statement, I have a hard time untangling my thinking about each from the other. So what I have to offer here is the result of an accidental paired reading.
To begin with, Sizer’s ideas in The Red Pencil are probably bolder, broader, and more challenging to the status quo than what the Bold Approachers have to offer. But the Bold Approach group didn’t begin with Sizer. The genesis of this group was the 2006 reauthorization deadline for US DOE’s No Child Left Behind Law:
Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, convened a task force to consider the broader context of the law in the nation’s approach to education and youth development policy. Helen Ladd, a Duke University economist; Pedro Noguera, a noted education policy expert and New York University professor; and Tom Payzant, former Boston schools superintendent and U.S. assistant secretary of education, agreed to serve as co-chairs.
The task force…proceeded to draft a statement to articulate the theme that the nation’s education and youth development policy has erred by attempting to rely on school improvement alone to raise the achievement of disadvantaged children. Rather, school improvement, to be fully effective, must be complemented by a broader definition of schooling and by improvements in the social and economic circumstances of disadvantaged youth.
The “broader definition” of schooling they propose includes smaller class sizes, attracting and developing high-quality teachers, expanded pre-school opportunities, in-school health care services, longer school days, summer and after-school programs, and school-to-work programs with the aim of “weakening the link between socioeconomic background and achievement.”
In principle, I agree with all of these ideas, and with the more general idea that the link between socioeconomic status and achievement is not something that schools alone can remedy. But I also don’t see how this set of proposals is really broad enough, or bold enough, to accomplish the stated goal. They’re all still rooted in school-based reforms, and they don’t directly confront the larger social structures that contribute to the social class differences to begin with. In a sense, they contradict themselves by giving schools more responsibility for providing social services that could and should be broadly available.
Every one of these ideas has a huge price tag attached to it, and they don’t offer any immediate satisfaction to the everyday problems people deal with outside of school. A lot of the special needs kids have suffered various forms of domestic trauma, and they present unique challenges to teachers – which is different than assuming they arrive with a simple deficit of skills. What if, instead of expanding in-school health care, for example, we had universal health care? Everyone would benefit – not just kids in school – and perhaps some of the pressure on parents to work multiple jobs would be lifted. Maybe, then, we’d have fewer special needs kids in school. The Broader Approach does mention improving health insurance options for low-income families, but why not advocate for something that would benefit more people?
In his book, Sizer discussed the role that vouchers might play in a reformed educational environment. He distinguished his vision for them from the one that neoconservatives embrace.
I was disheartened by the willingness of these supposedly conservative, and thus likely “small government” advocates, to encourage political authorities far from the classrooms to decide what will be taught…To leave the resolution of that dispute to people far from those directly affected strikes me as excessive centralization in a democracy.
Sizer’s vision is of a community-based approach to education in which a wide variety of schools would present a range of true options to families. In a locked-down standardized system, those options can never be explored, and true choices, except the choice to segregate kids according to race or social class – through mechanisms of “choice” – will never be available. In an environment in which innovation is encouraged, merit pay for teachers would not be necessary. In an environment in which true choices are allowed to flourish, motivation for students would not stand as a major challenge.
Sizer explored three “silences” that need to be broken in discussions about education reform. The first was the silence about structures that limit opportunities for students, as exemplified in our belief that education is confined to buildings. He also examined the need for order, which we see in support for the standards movement, curriculum development, and testing which places the teacher in the role of “deliverer’ of content and turns time into an educational commodity. Certainly, order is necessary on a local level. But at what point does its imposition on a system interfere with the operation of the various parts?
The most interesting of the three silences, for me, was Sizer’s analysis of the nature of authority. There may be other ways to think about this, but I found it useful for understanding the forms of social glue that hold the system together. He sees authority as coming from the exercise of institutional power, the development of scholarly inquiry and getting to know students individually, and the exhibition of character “…where ‘authority’ represents the power of one to influence others on the basis of their confidence in his or her judgment.” Importantly, he sees authority as a negotiated process of treaty-making with interested parties working toward a state of balanced authority and shared responsibility. It’s helpful, especially if we want to encourage democratic participation, to think about authority more broadly than simply as a set of rules and consequences.
“Democracy,” Sizer said, “is not about mindless obedience. Democracy depends on informed, imaginative, engaged, independent people who know when to act and when to show restraint.”
I believe the BoldApproach.org statement is a good point of departure from the current policy mire. But we’ll ultimately need to move beyond that. Sizer’s book maps some of the possibilities.
6 Comments
Yeah, it isn’t that “bold,” but certainly would be a step in the right direction.
@Doug
Great post! I’ve been a fan of Sizer’s over the years and appreciated reading his thoughts and push for the Coalition of Essential Schools. I’m interested in the comment that programs really can’t effect the socioeconomic issues that go with under performance. I have a number of friends and colleagues who teach in the public system here in Peoria who often argue that their work is ineffective because it is not valued by the community they serve? If this is true how do we change these perceptions? How do we make students value the education they are receiving?
Charlie, I wouldn’t say that “programs really can’t effect the socioeconomic issues…”, but I do think that school-based programs alone won’t resolve them. Claims that schools are failing are being used to justify all kinds of nonsense and place undo responsibility on teachers, schools, and students to “get with the program” (whatever that means) and work harder to help those disadvantaged kids pull themselves up out of the mess they’re in. It makes me wonder about the broad purposes of formal education.
We should all acknowledge that responsibility for rectifying unequal opportunity and hardship is generally shared. But, if we (teachers) point to negative influences on the kids that come from outside the schoolhouse, we run into criticism that we’re ducking responsibility. Right now I’m working through a few ideas about what I can personally do to make things better, beyond simply “delivering” a curriculum or administering a program. And I’m also thinking about the compromises I have to make because of the way things are structured – in and out of school.
Having our work valued by the community we serve is an issue that certainly deserves attention. And I don’t think it’s simply a perception. There’s a real disconnect that we (at my location) are discussing and trying to bridge. What we communicate to parents and students, and how we go about it, is something that is worth consideration. My immediate response to your question about how we make students value the education they’re receiving…I don’t think I can make anyone value anything. I believe that I have to find what they already value, or stimulate an interest that might prompt them to value their education. And that comes from getting to know them, and trusting them to make some choices in what they learn.
Your comment gives me some additional ideas about issues that need to be explored in this discussion. Thanks.
I too, like Charlie, appreciate Doug’s most illustrative quotes and thank him for taking the time to post his comments. I am also a fan of Ted Sizer and I am pleased to know Sizer is again taking on issues of inequality and school reform issues. I would like to comment further on ways in which we can help students and communities value their schools and education.
We know that historically low-income communities have been isolated from their schools by unjust policies: centralization, which put decision-making power in the hands of the few wealthy, politically powerful individuals, vocational education, which tracked minority students into jobs instead of academic programs, the professionalization of the teaching profession, which created an insulated “school community”, decentralization, which was basically policy which gave minority communities limited power in decision-making (and why it eventually failed), the placement of unqualified teachers in low-income schools, and last but not least NCLB, and we know what this policy has done to our schools and their communities.
Re-connecting low-income minority communities with their schools, I believe, has become one of the most important methods by which communities can value their schools and students value their education. There are several ways we can improve the school-community relationship.
First, we can help teachers become more informed about the community in which they teach. We can do this by taking them on “community walks.” The concept here is that teachers should become familiar with the community in which their students and their families live and need to cope with on a daily basis. This idea has been tried in a few communities with much success and has even evolved to more well planned “community tours” in which residents, citizens, and entire classes tour the community and learn about its history, geography, and demographics.
Second, we can connect the school with the community through the curriculum. Developing meaningful curriculum which is directly related to the community. Here one idea which has been proposed is creating a social studies curriculum about the history of the community from its very beginnings to the present. Here, community residents and teachers can be recruited to work in the development of the curriculum. Additionally, presenting professional development to teachers in content and pedagogy in order for the curriculum to be effectively implemented.
One third idea is having community-based organizations work on creating school-community relationships. Education community organizing has helped communities develop neighborhood school networks which promote a wide range of school-community activities. These activities help the community see the school in new ways and schools value the community in which they are situated. These are just a few ways in which we can take bolder steps to improving student achievement.
Thank you to all who posted previously as their comments sparked the need for these thoughts.
Doug, I’m embarrassed to admit this but the last book I read on school reform was Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, and that was while I was in college.
As a teacher in one of the most socioeconomically depressed areas of St. Petersburg, Florida, I struggle to maintain a state of calm contemplation of this issue. For decades, our city leaders have systematically dismantled the African-American community in the name of progress. Families have been dislocated and businesses closed in order to support condos, strip malls and sports arenas. And now that our district has been released from their desegregation order and have initiated a new “choice” plan, our schools are quickly beginning to resemble the segregated schools of the 60s. Heightening the madness, city officials never pass up the chance to bemoan the sorry state of our high schools, citing the depressingly low graduation rates as prime inhibitors to attracting new businesses to the area.
As a result, the redesign of high schools has become a hot issue, here. I’m actively involved in the school-based planning, so you’ve made me think that reading Sizer might be beneficial. Though we discuss strategies for increasing community involvement, we always seem to skirt the systemic issues that keep us disconnected from our community. I agree with you when you say, “if we (teachers) point to negative influences on the kids that come from outside the schoolhouse, we run into criticism that we’re ducking responsibility.” Maybe reading “The Red Pencil” will give me some idea of how to get these discussions started.
Thanks for the food for thought.
Yeah. The words “choice” and “reform” mean very different things depending on who you talk to. Most of what passes for “choice” in the current standards-based environment is not at all what the progressive reformers in the 60’s had in mind. I haven’t read Savage Inequalities, but I did read Kozol’s Shame of a Nation, which is about the re-segregation of US schools based on “choice” mechanisms. It sounds like what’s happening in your area is, sadly, just what we’d expect.
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