Borderland

The fight against poverty produces political posturing and fatuous claims about “Harlem miracles.” You go visit any low-income public school, job-training program, or community youth center, and you meet committed, caring, idealistic people, hard at work. Then you look at the results from low-grade standardized tests that have been forced on school communities by politicians intent on blaming and shaming teachers and students, and you find that public concerns are being exploited by corporate interests for private gain.

Instead of relying on advocacy research supporting charter schools from the likes of the Education Innovation Laboratory CEO, Roland Fryer, and funded by the Broad Foundation, we should examine the questionable claims that charter schools produce achievement results superior to public schools. One such study, “Is There a ‘Consensus’ on School Choice and Achievement?” which appeared in a recent issue of the Education Policy Journal [abstract] refutes claims that choice-based programs are more effective than regular public schools.

The claims by advocates of a consensus on this question are quite revealing because they represent new modes of research production and dissemination in education research and policy making. These strategies, which tend to skirt traditional processes designed to determine research quality, are particularly noteworthy for their effectiveness in attracting positive media attention and shaping the policy debate.

The authors look at how research on school choice is conducted and promoted, and comment on what they call the “political economy of educational research and policy making,” examining in particular, claims that choice programs serve to boost student achievement for students who use vouchers to attend private schools.

This is a powerful critique of education policy think tank research which is echoed by New York Times columnists who like to frame education experts as “the establishment,” advocating for economic reforms along with education reforms. The so-called “education reformers,” on the other hand, are recognized for their claims that school-based approaches, alone, will produce big (test score) results. Accordingly we should note that education journalists often confuse who belongs to “the establishment,” and who favors real social change.

These journalists have become “no excuses” journalists who shill for organizations like KIPP, [pdf] and Green Dot, and promote entrepeneureal corporate efforts to profit from publicly funded social services. They celebrate superficial efforts to mold student behavior such as teaching students to look at the person who is talking, and teaching them how to shake hands, assuming that cultural deficits and professional intransigence are to blame for disappointing student learning outcomes. The basic theory is that mainstream journalists have certain working models in their heads; who is a real education expert, the benefits of free-market capitalism, and corporate innocence in economic inequality.

Many teachers and parents who actually work with students don’t have these internalized models. They understand that, while a “disciplined, orderly and demanding” school environment can promote middle-class values, these efforts, alone, will not sustain long-term changes for underprivileged students. Education reform must be accompanied by low-cost health care, decent housing, public and domestic safety, employment opportunities, job security, and affordable higher education.

Basically, the no excuses journalists distract us from talking about what really needs to be done by serving as mouthpieces for people with financial and political agendas. They don’t tell us about the funding sources for the advocacy research reports they promote because they know that it undercuts their credibility. They also abuse the traditional role of investigative journalists who speak truth to power by challenging their official sources with difficult questions. Instead, they successfully focus public attention on test scores to the exclusion of real-world measures of disadvantage, generating propaganda suggesting that education without economic justice can create social mobility.

…Because David Brooks believes in miracles.