WHY IS IT SO HARD TO GET "GOOD" SCHOOLS?
For this entire century, there has been conflict among educators, public officials, researchers, and parents over whether traditionalist or progressive ways of teaching reading, math, and other subjects are best. Struggles over teaching phonics or "whole language" have parallels in math over whether students should learn multiplication tables or the skills of real-life problem solving. [1]
This unrelenting struggle for the one best way of teaching a subject or skill is linked to the enduring search, past and present, for the "good" school. Are schools that effectively prepare students for the work force "good?" Are schools with high standardized test scores "good?" Are schools that seek to develop the mind, body, and emotions of each child "good?" These questions reveal the competing purposes for public schools that make a label of a "good" school uncertain. As this century draws to a close, passionate analyses of what's right and what's wrong with America's schools again roil the media and educators' journals. Recent book titles capture the persistent quest for "good" schools: E.D. Hirsch,The Schools We Need & Why We Don't Have Them (1996), Gerald Bracey's Final Exam: The Perpetual Scrutiny of American Education (1995), and Mike Rose, Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America. (1995). Progressives and traditionalists, then and now, have sought (and contested) different goals for their schools both in pedagogy and outcomes.
To answer this question that is the title, then, I offer glimpses of “good” schools that are clearly different from one another. I argue that all are "good." Based upon these vignettes, I analyze the futile battles between traditional and progressive ideologies during this century that have in their evangelical fervor, like the religious warfare of an earlier century, constricted the search for "good" schools. [2]
I begin with a verbal collage of three schools. Two are elementary public schools in the same middle-class California community to which parents choose to send their children. Both schools have staffs that chose to work there. And both schools have been in existence for 25 years. The third school follows these descriptions (Ruenzel 1995).[3]
SCHOOL A
SCHOOL B
On most points, then, Schools A and B are very different from one another. What each group of parents, teachers, and students valued about knowledge, teaching, learning, and freedom, differed. Yet each school enjoyed the enthusiastic, public endorsement of their students, teachers, and parents.
The evidence for support is both clear and strong:
Moreover, by most student outcome measures, both schools have compiled enviable records. In academic achievement, measured by standardized tests, School A was in the top 10 schools in the entire state. School B was in the upper half of the state’s schools.
Now, to complicate matters, I describe a third school which I will call School C.
SCHOOL C
I offer again a verbal collage of images but they will be taken from a composite of schools, past and present, that have shared these common features (Covello 1958; Lightfoot 1983; Hill 1993; Wood 1992).
This high school of about 1000 students is in a working class neighborhood of a large city. The high school had experienced declining academic achievement, poor attendance, and a deteriorating building. High teacher turnover each year created vacancies that had to be filled with inexperienced teachers. The parent-teacher association had dissolved..
A new principal came to the school five years ago and brought with her a cadre of experienced teachers from the previous school where they had created a community-based school program. Here are some activities and quotes drawn from the school over the last five years.
The evidence for support for School C has been, like Schools A and B, clear and strong:
Moreover, by most student outcome measures, School C has made substantial gains. In academic achievement, measured by state standardized tests, School C went from 30th percentile in reading three years ago to 52nd last year; in math, the figures went from the 25th to the 60th.
CAN ALL THREE SCHOOLS BE GOOD?
Even though the three schools
differ dramatically from one another socioeconomic status, size, and age of
student, even though they obviously differ in how teachers organize their
classrooms, view learning,
approach the curriculum, and connect to their community, the schools possess common features. They have clear
and shared purposes; they believe that all children can learn; each school
staff has developed a working
culture that embodies these common beliefs and enjoys collective action;
parents are deeply involved with the school. Thus, very different concepts of
schooling held by parents and teachers can be embraced without sacrificing core
purposes of public education. Sufficient toleration, even acceptance, of
differences exists to include schools that are dissimilar both in philosophy
and practice.
These commonalties evaporate, however, when ideological labels are applied. School A would probably be called “traditional” or “conservative” with pride by supporters and scorn by opponents of this type of schooling. Schools B and C would be called "progressive" or "non-traditional," also with pride or scorn----depending on the speaker's preferences.
Considering the differences and similarities, are all three schools "good"? Yes, they are.
Notwithstanding such a straightforward answer, my response neglects two important questions. First, what made these schools “good?” and, second, why has there been so much conflict, so much intolerance in the U.S. in this century among policy makers, academics, parents, and taxpayers over which kind of schooling: progressive or traditional---is best for children?
What accounts for these schools being “good?” Traditional and progressive ideologues would probably argue that their respective beliefs about children, learning, and teaching made the difference. Let me suggest other factors that might explain why these schools became prized as "good" by their students, parents, and teachers.
Schools A and B are in middle-class communities that financially and politically support public schools. Parents seeking a place consistent with their beliefs about how children should be raised and schooled chose each school. Over 25 years, committed principals and teachers--who also chose to be there--worked in tandem with parents to make each school what it is today. School C, on the other hand, serves a blue-collar neighborhood yet it had an experienced (albeit new) principal and teachers committed to a philosophy of making the high school an integral part of a community in what was studied and how academic subjects were taught. They worked together to improve the school for five years. Students learned that where they lived was valued and needed improvement, not contempt.
These may well be the contextual, political, and leadership factors that made the three schools "good" not whether each was labeled traditional or progressive. The century-long war of words over traditional vs. progressive schooling replays familiar if tired arguments filled with charges and counter-charges that School A, B, or C is better than the other. Educational leaders who count themselves as either progressives or traditionalists have believed that their way is, indeed, the best way to teach and learn. Moreover, their way is, they believe, both correct and moral. Yet educational researchers, time and again, have failed to prove that one pattern of schooling is superior to another. Consequently, the long-running verbal duel has elevated ideology to the primary factor while ignoring other less obvious but nonetheless important ones.[4]
I doubt, however, whether the faith-based contentiousness will end soon or easily. Even with ample evidence of "good" traditional and progressive schools in inner-city and suburban schools, few educators and parents have paused to consider that "goodness" in schools comes in many colors, sizes, and ideologies. No surprise, then, for entire century there has been ideological conflict among educators, public officials, researchers, and parents over which pattern of schooling is best for children.[5]
SCHOOL WARS BETWEEN PROGRESSIVES AND TRADITIONALISTS
In the early 20th century, a version of progressive schooling, drawing from the work of John Dewey and many other school reformers, swept across the country, changing traditional curricula, partially modifying conventional instruction of the day, and greatly expanding the social role of the school to take on duties that families had once discharged. Progressive reformers scorned the schooling of the day with its bolted-down desks, regimented instruction, blind obedience to authority, organizational inefficiencies, and divorce from the world outside of the classroom door. They wanted to focus on the personal and social development of students; they wanted children to be active learners engaged with their teachers in the pursuit of knowledge that was relevant to them and worthwhile to society; they wanted schools to be part of the community rather than separated from it; they wanted efficient schools to offer many choices to students inside and outside school that would fit their different futures in the world of work and as citizens (Cremin 1961;Tyack 1974).
By the end of World War II, however, progressive educational ideas and practices had declined in popularity, giving way to new programs triggered by national fears of the Soviet Union. The Cold War revived interest in students learning more math and science to become engineers and scientists who could defend the U.S. against a powerful enemy. The New Math, major science projects, national tests, and programs geared to achieving individual excellence in student performance and increasing respect for school authority, practices usually associated with traditional schooling, replaced progressive programs (Ravitch 1983; Tyack and Hansot 1982).
Supreme Court decisions on race in the 1950s and a growing civil rights movement in the 1960s shifted school policy debates toward matters of equity. Inequalities in buildings, teachers, and curricula between mostly white and mostly black urban schools and the neglect of personal and social development of students led to a revival of progressive ideas in innovative programs. Head Start, Career Education, “open classrooms,” and “open space schools” became high-profile initiatives in schools where poor children attended. Federal laws created new programs for the poor that served preschool children (Head Start), dropouts (Job Corps), and those preparing for college (Upward Bound) (Ravitch 1983; Kluger 1977; Tyack and Hansot 1982; Silberman 1971).
By the early 1970s, however, with the Vietnam War still dividing the country, declining numbers of students enrolling in schools, and reductions in federal and state funding, enthusiasm for progressive ideas evaporated. Since the late 1970s, as global economic competition increased and periodic recessions reminded Americans that getting and keeping jobs was uncertain, a traditional schooling focusing on higher academic standards, stronger school disci, a uniform curriculum, and improving standardized achievement test scores returned. Into the late-1980s and early 1990s, the rhythmic oscillation persisted. Progressive reformers urged new curricula based on concepts rather than facts, teaching for understanding rather than acquisition of knowledge, collaborative learning rather than passive listening, and performance-based assessment rather than bubbling in multiple choice items on standardized achievement tests. By the end of the 1990s, however, that progressive moment was overwhelmed by a renewed enthusiasm for traditional patterns in schooling that sought both higher academic standards and test scores (Kirst 1988; Cohen and Spillane1992; Elmore and McLaughlin 1988).
Because of this century-long cyclical rhythm of contentious words about conservative and progressive patterns of schooling notions of what constitutes a good school in America (unlike most other democratic nations) have become frozen within ideological boundaries. Why has there been this protracted intolerant bickering? I offer two reasons: a deeply-rooted political conflict over child-rearing beliefs that has been grafted onto schooling; and a bottom-heavy, dispersed system of schooling where public officials have responded continually to different constituencies who, in turn, have urged schools to adapt to larger social, economic, and political trends.[6]
THE MORAL POLITICS OF HOW BEST TO RAISE AND SCHOOL CHILDREN
In the early 19th century, taxpayers, parents, and public officials saw tax-supported schools as places to extend the reach of the family's influence on children. In school children would become literate (as defined by the norms of the day), God-fearing, morally upstanding, and possessed with republican virtues. Versions of Protestant Christianity steeped in Biblical views of parental authority saw children as innately depraved and in need of guidance. Disobedience was a sin. Thus, raising children to respect authority, be self-disciplined, and know clearly right from wrong were essential in the family and expected in their one-room schoolhouses. This model of raising and schooling children was viewed as natural and, of course, "good" (Lakoff 1996; Tyack, James, and Benavot 1987)
Beginning in ante-bellum reforms and continuing after the Civil War, another view emerged challenging the religious-based popular model of child-rearing and, by extension, of how to properly school students. The onslaught of industrialization, rapid urban growth, immigration, and social upheaval spurred reformers to advocate another, more "progressive" view of how best to raise children. Confined initially to manuals for parents (e.g., Jacob Abbott, Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young, 1871) readers were urged to cultivate the innate goodness of children rather than dwell on their potential for sinfulness. Parents should nurture their offspring through example rather than coerce proper behavior. Parental love would yield respect for authority, self-discipline, and moral rigor in children (Wishy 1968).
To post-Civil War urban reformers who saw immigrant and migrant parents working long hours and living in urban slums, the fabric of traditional family and community life was unraveling before their eyes. Progressive reformers also saw an emerging urban middle class that had the time and money to invest in their children yet worried whether their children would find a proper social niche for themselves. Existing schools, these reformers concluded, were inadequate to cope with either unschooled newcomers or parvenu families. They urged that schools expand their usual duties and take on the nurturing roles that families had once discharged. Schools should offer medical care, meals, explicit lessons to build moral character including respect for civil authority (and cleanliness), and job preparation. Administrators and teachers were expected to develop children's individual intellectual, emotional, and social capacities and, ultimately to produce happy, civically engaged adults.
The "New Education" at the turn of the century--what historians called "progressive"--extended the ideas generated decades earlier of nurturing children rather than breaking their will. These notions about an expanded social role of public schools converged with the newly-emerging science of psychology and growing urban middle class to created a rival ideology of what a "good" child, family, and school were (Cremin 1961; Cremin 1988)
By World War I, then, these competing progressive and traditional ideologies constituted different faiths in the best way of raising children. They were already embedded in educators' language and school programs thus creating contrasting patterns of schooling children and a platform for subsequent struggles over what "good" schools were. This century-long see-saw struggle of ideas over what is the best form of raising children and its application to schooling is, then, a much deeper religious conflict over what role schools should play in society writ large and, more specifically, how children should be schooled.
To some readers labeling the conflict "religious" may be carelessly slipping into hyperbole. I need to explain that I use the word to compare the ideological struggle between progressives and traditionalists with the two century-old contentiousness among rival sects over the role of religious instruction in schools.
Mid-nineteenth century school reformers, public officials, and religious leaders, anxious to keep competing gospels from aborting the public school movement, had cobbled together a political compromise that enlisted tax-supported public schools in the joint family-church mission of moral teaching without sectarian instruction. The school became a place not only for transmitting core values and gaining literacy but also for perfecting the sin-prone Child. Horace Mann and other reformers, for example, promised that the public school could teach morality. "Educate, only educate enough, and we shall regenerate the criminal and eradicate vice," he said. "Through the schools," he added, "we shall teach mankind to moderate their passions and develop their virtues." The idea that whoever has "charge of a young mind should be a moral educator" and that public school teachers were to lead "the progress of Christian civilization" was embedded in the political compromise that removed sectarian religious instruction from public schools (Wishy, 69-70; Tyack, James, and Benavot, 162-168) .
It was an ideological compromise, however, that Catholics and some Protestant sects found impossible to accept, that is, a morality divorced from religion. Catholics eventually established a separate private school system. For evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants--rather than modernist co-religionists--who relied upon a literal reading of the Bible and saw public schools as a critical venue for both moral transmission and regeneration, controversies then and since have erupted over Bible reading, prayer, the teaching of evolution in tax-supported schools. Some evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants, then and now, have withdrawn their children and established private schools. Others have chosen to convert public schools into settings more hospitable to religious teachings. What is (and has been) at stake for such fervent religious advocates of a "best" way of raising children to obey authority, become self-disciplined, and act morally is literally one and only one way of schooling children.[7]
From these sectarian differences in gospels over how best to rear and school children in a proper manner, fiery oral and written exchanges between educational progressives and traditionalists have come to resemble earlier evangelical struggles among religious and secular authorities over morally-charged instruction in public schools.
Consider the matter of "discipline." Since 1969, public opinion polls on education have asked Americans to identify the single most pressing issue that they saw in schools. Every year parents and non-parents named school discipline as one of the top three problems that schoneeded to address. Incidents of school violence such as robberies, attacks on teachers or drug use became front-page news and TV stories. Media amplified fears of parents and taxpayers that schools were failing to fulfill their primary task of providing security for children and teaching respect for authority (Elam 1989).
How the "religious" merges with the political in patterns of schooling also became evident. Family concerns about how best to raise children easily segued into concerns over children's in-school behavior. For traditionalists, cracking down on students who disobeyed school rules was the best way of teaching respect for authority. Some even sought a return of corporal punishment. Others wanted to expel unruly students and tighten school security measures, including the presence of police (Elam 1989; Lakoff 1996).
For progressives, a breakdown in school order was a community problem--growing violence in a media-saturated society--that public officials had neglected. Blaming schools for a larger social problem was scapegoating a vulnerable institution, they argued. Moreover, while progressives shared conservatives' concern for respecting authority and the rule of law, they felt strongly that resorting to corporal punishment or imposing more rules and stiffer penalties was counter productive. Such actions diverted attention from deeper social problems while creating a police-state climate within schools. Progressives were not opposed to punishing unruly students for acts that hurt peers and the school; but they also sought non-punitive ways of helping children become self-disciplined and respectful of others' rights (Flannery 1997).[8]
For the last 30 years, there have been few resolutions of these "religious" or ideological differences among progressives and traditionalists over the best way to deal with school discipline. What has remained muted and taken for granted (or perhaps ignored) has been the public’s over-riding desire for more orderly schools and the common faith, held by progressives and traditionalists, that respect for parental and civic authority and democratic practices are essential. This common faith has been a quiet, unnoticed background to the loud foreground noise over securing discipline in schools. [9]
Frequently expressed concerns over students' behavior underscores the historic common goal of strengthening core family and community moral values. However, defining these ideological struggles over discipline--and I could just as easily have added debates over standardized achievement test scores, using phonics to teach reading, tracking students by their performance, or even school uniforms--as technical educational squabbles between progressives and traditionalists hides the deeper and more pervasive moral imperative embedded in public schooling. Such narrowly-defined quarrels over discipline and related school questions have obscured the enduring tension in the U.S. over which goals for public schools should have priority. Thus, there is a nexus between the religious and political, between the family and the school, between family child-rearing and schooling the child. In George Lakoff's terms: moral politics permeates schools.
Yet there are (and have been) other goals that the public expects of its schools. Taxpayers and parents not only expect public schools to develop children's moral character but they want schools to honor individual excellence. They expect schools to focus on efficiently preparing students with skills and credentials to get jobs and maintain a healthy economy. They expect schools to do everything they can to develop the personal and social capabilities of each and every child. Over the last two centuries of public schooling in the U.S., Americans have viewed building citizens, preparing workers, cultivating each student's potential, and developing moral character as essential and achievable goals. Although these goals for public schools overlap, they are in tension with one another. There are insufficient resources to fully achieve all of them and, of equal importance, they contain internal contradictions. Experts and casual observers have noted that such conflicts arising from the inherent contradictions within the very nature of democratic polities, has prompted time and again patchwork compromises to reconcile competing values (Paris 1995; Ravitch 1983; Labaree 1997).
Thus, a century-long stubborn moral politics filled with millennial reform rhetoric about rearing children pervaded national and local debates between traditionalists and progressives over what kind of schooling children should receive. In a democracy where voters can express their opinions about officials and taxes at the ballot box and where authority to govern schools is widely dispersed the matter of what kind of schools are best has often become contested by rival faiths seeking primacy for one goal over another. PUBLIC SCHOOL RESPONSIVENESS TO CONSTITUENCIES
The second reason for the long-running ideological wars is the permeability of public schools each decade to interest groups from the political right and left. Historians have documented how temperance reformers reshaped public school curricula with mandatory courses on alcohol, tobacco, and drug abuse. Historians have recorded the pervasive influence of business interests in mobilizing public support for vocational education prior to World War I and, since the 1970s, for school reforms calling for higher academic standards, downsized bureaucracies, and greater use of information technologies. The historical record is rich with instances of activists deeply committed to equity and social justice mobilizing support for legislation (e.g., Civil Rights Act of 1964; Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975) that required schools to treat underserved children equitably. Finally, historians have noted how elite groups' turn-of-the century concerns for immigrants' many languages and customs overwhelming the dominant culture were converted into Americanization programs. Similar fears and responses have been noted in the English-only and anti-immigrant legislation that have marked the last two decades of heavy in-migration from Latin-America and Asia (Tyack 1974; Kantor and Tyack 1982; Callahan 1962).[10]
The primary mechanism for schools responding to larger social changes, of course, is electing school board members who pursue particular school improvement agendas--singly or as organized interest groups. After direct elections comes lobbying sitting boards and their appointed administrators in each of the almost 15,000 school districts in the country (down from over 100,000 a half-century ago). A second mechanism of change are local, state, and federal legislators who seek to alter what schools routinely do. Both mechanisms have resulted in many changes within school curricula, organization, and governance.
Why have schools been so responsive to constituents? The answer is uncomplicated: To survive, public schools must have the political and financial support of voting taxpayers. Surely, some very large school district boards and administrators, at different times, have been able to insulate themselves from voter disaffection. But not for long. For the most part, school district governing bodies have responded to coalitions of media, interest groups, and ad hoc parent organizations that pursued certain policies and programs (e.g., more phonics to learn reading, higher academic standards) they believe school boards must embrace. In the early 1970s, for example, amid the winding down of the Vietnam War, and the first twinges of an inflationary economy, school boards began to feel the effects of a declining school enrollments in the early 1970s. Taxpayer groups merged with lobbies for elderly citizens to press school boards across the nation to close schools and save tax dollars. There is a truth about democracy buried in the cliché: When the nation has a cold, public schools sneeze (Wirt and Kirst 1989; Powell, Farrar, and Cohen 1985; Cremin 1990).
BROADENING THE DEFINITION OF "GOOD" SCHOOLS
These two rea(differences in social beliefs of how best to raise children and the schools' responsiveness to their constituencies) help explain the pendulum-like swings between progressive and traditional schooling over the last century. But they fall short of offering a workable way out of this ideological cul-de-sac.
And that is why I began with my descriptions of the three schools. They represent for me a way out of this impasse over which kind of schooling, which kind of "religion," is viewed as better than the other. I argue that all three schools are “good.” One is clearly traditional in its concentration on passing on to children the best knowledge, skills, and values in society. The other two are progressive in their focus on personal and social development of individuals and making the community a part of the school’s curriculum. Each asserts that they serve different values; each, in their own fashion, puts into practice what they seek to achieve; each uses emotionally-loaded words to describe what they do. Such "good" schools driven by different ideologies and hybrids of each exist in urban slums and suburban ghettos. Yet---and this is the important point that I wish to stress--these goals, practices, and vocabulary, different as they appear, derive from a common framework of core values that most parents and taxpayers want their public schools to achieve. Opinion polls and referenda on school issues reveal common values that both progressives and traditionalists want for their children. They want their sons and daughters to become literate, successful, self-disciplined, and self-reliant adults. They want their public schools to inculcate in the next generation democratic attitudes, values, and behaviors (Lakoff 1996; Elam, Rose, and Gallup 1996; Paris 1995).
When writers start using grand phrases like "self-reliant adults" and “democratic attitudes” eyes often glaze over, yawns are stifled, and pages are skipped. Especially in the last quarter century when the primary responsibility of schools--as so often expressed by public officials and the media---has been equating high test scores with preparation for the labor market. Too often little notice has been taken of the linkage between public schools and the civic life that Americans holding different educational views desire for ourselves and their children.[11]
Within
these common beliefs that I claim both traditionalists and progressives share,
exactly what do I mean by democratic values, attitudes, and behaviors. A brief,
albeit, partial list may help:
*participation in and
willingness to serve local and national communities.
*open-mindedness to
different opinions and a willingness to listen to such opinions.
*respect for values
that differ from one’s own.
*treating individuals
decently and fairly, regardless of background.
*a commitment to talk
through problems, reason, deliberate, and struggle toward openly-arrived at
compromises (Public Agenda, 1998; Guttmann and Thompson 1996; Guttmann 1987;
Myrdal 1944; Dewey 1916).[12]
Such democratic virtues
are learned, of course, in families, at
work, in the community. Most important, however, they are what schools,
at the minimum, are expected to inculcate.
What matters in judging whether schools are “good,” then, is not whether they are progressive or traditional but whether they are discharging their primary duty to help students think and act democratically. To anyone who has sampled media reports on public schools in the closing years of this century, however, little time or space is devoted to such matters. Test scores appear on the front pages of newspapers. Pundits wonder whether schools are adequately preparing students to enter a rapidly changing workforce. For the last quarter-century, a growing consensus among top policy makers has emerged that ties the fortunes of the United States in the global economy to how well the public schools are preparing the next generation of workers. The gold-standard for the adequacy of that preparation has become published test scores (Labaree 1997; Paris 1995).
HOW TEST SCORES BECAME THE PRIMARY INDICATOR OF A "GOOD" SCHOOL
If the issue of orderliness in schools is a crude litmus test for distinguishing between progressives and traditionalists, standardized achievement test scores have also sorted out combatants. Die-hard traditionalists swear by test results because satisfactory scores are proxies for high academic standards, students' acquisition of knowledge, their self-discipline, and equal treatment of minorities--all of which, they argue, will strengthen America's global economic position. Passionate progressives scorn test scores because they fail to capture students' deeper understanding of concepts, their wide range of real-world problem solving skills, and individual changes in attitudes and values. How did standardized test scores become the gold coin of the policy making realm?
In 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) huge sums of federal money flowed into states and school districts to improve schools attended by low-income children. Even though federal funds accounted for less than 10 cents out of every dollar spent on education at that time, federal policy makers, fearful of local misspending of funds, mandated that these programs be evaluated to determine whether poor children were improving academically. A federally-funded survey (authorized under the Civil Rights Act of 1964) designed by James Coleman and other social scientists, used standardized achievement test scores to measure school and individual student performance. >From these efforts, another purpose for testing emerged that went well beyond securing a picture of individual students' achievement: holding schools receiving federal funds accountable for producing academic results (Rotberg and Harvey 1993; McLaughlin 1975; Coleman, et. al 1966).
By the early 1970s, the practice of using standardized achievement test scores to assess total school performance, established in ESEA and strengthened by the Coleman study, had swiftly spread. Annual publication of school-by-school test scores became common fare in the nation's newspapers. National reports on large racial inequities in test results and falling test scores began to sink into professional and public consciousness (Coleman et. al. 1966; Smith and O'Day 1991; Kozol 1991)
One response to declining student academic performance in the 1970s was a resurgent reform impulse for academic excellence through raising academic standards and increased testing. Most states in these years introduced new tests to make schools accountable for producing graduates who had at least achieved proficiency in basic skills. These "minimum competency tests" identified and measured skills that had to be learned by each grade level and where efforts were needed to improve teaching and learning (Ravitch 1983; Fredericksen 1994; Linn 1995).
Another response to the deep inequities between urban
and suburban schools, between black and white student performance was the
effective schools movement. In the mid-1970s, a small number of researchers
began working to disprove the new wisdom that what largely shapes students'
academic performance--as measured by standardized achievement tests--is family
background. Believing deeply in the value of equity and expecting that urban
schoolchildren would be especially harmed by such a consensus of opinion among
policy makers, this small band of activist researchers identified a handful of
big city schools enrolling large numbers of low-income minority children that
scored higher on standardized achievement tests than would have been predicted
by their socioeconomic status (Weber 1971; Brookover and Lezotte 1977;
Firestone 1991).
These researchers-turned-reformers
extracted from these schools certain factors (e.g., principal's instructional
leadership, concentration on basic academic skills, strong emphasis on
maintaining order in school, monitoring academic achievement frequently, etc.)
that they linked to the students' higher-than-expected academic performance on
stests. Within a few years, lists of factors were consolidated into various
Effective School models that swiftly spread to many big cities across the
country. The factors overlapped traditional approaches to teaching and
schooling that also accorded with the wishes of many minority parents and
educators in mostly black schools (Edmonds 1979; Ralph and Fennessey 1983;
Stedman 1987; Levine and Lezotte 1990). [13]
By the mid-1980s, the national
impulse for school reform had accelerated with the publication of A Nation at
Risk and a barrage of
reports about failing American schools. The underlying assumption behind the
school reform impulse was to wed schooling to the economy; better schools meant
a stronger economy (Peters 1988; Cuban 1992; Levin 1998).
Effective School models spread and
became nationalized. Suburban districts and entire states installed programs
that identified five, seven, or fourteen factors of effectiveness and laid out
careful designs for schools to follow in implementing different models.
Amendments to ESEA in 1988 included specific reference to Effective Schools
research. Federal officials directed schools to consider that research when
designing their programs and told state agencies receiving federal funds that
they had to set aside funds to help schools establish programs based upon the
factors that researchers had identified Murphy, Hallinger, and Mesa 1985;
Bullard and Taylor 1993).
Few of that hardy band of Effective School reformers in the early 1970s could have foreseen how fears of economic decline would have driven national policy makers to link improved schools to an improved economy and embrace a traditional ideology of schooling. Now in the late-1990s, national goals, performance standards in academic subjects, and tests dominate talk of school reform. Aligning academic goals, curriculum standards, and texts to high-stakes tests has become the challenge of the decade.
Since the mid-1960s, then, the conservative idea of a "good" school has been transformed into one in which student performance on norm-referenced achievement tests is the primary indicator of school success. For the last thirty years this concept of effectiveness has become pervasive in federal legislation and school reform agendas. International, national, state, district, and individual schools, have been compared and contrasted publicly to ascertain degrees of success. Although other indicators have been used in the U.S. such as college attendance, drop out rates, and numbers of students passing Advanced Placement examinations, standardized test scores remain as the signal measure of school effectiveness. A school with high or improving test scores has now become a "good" school (Bracey 1995; McDonnell 1994).
Recall that in my description of the three schools I, too, had used standardized test scores and other performance measures. I implied that Schools A,B, and C had done well on these outcomes. Therefore they were “good.”
A careful reader could accuse me of using traditional outcome measures that are really aimed at School A and are generally accepted by the vast majority of Americans in the closing years of this century; such outcomes do not necessarily match what Schools B and C seek to achieve for their students. Such a reader would be correct. I need to return to this point of defining "good" schools and suggest what specific criteria could you used that might melt the ideological deep-freeze that has imprisoned the search for "good" schools.
REDEFINING GOOD SCHOOLS
To determine whether a school is “good” one needs to use standards in making a judgment and holding the school accountable. For schools A,B, and C, I offered criteria like parental satisfaction and staff stability as ways of judging a school’s success and thereby being “good.” Then, I slipped in test scores and other measures customarily used by policy makers and the media to judge schools since the mid-1960s. All of these criteria would fit the aims of School A and satisfy traditionalists while annoying progressives. Are there criteria that could be used to determine a "good" school that might satisfy both traditionalists and progressives while cracking the monopoly that test scores currently have on determining "goodness"? I believe there are.
I have already suggested parent, student, and teacher satisfaction as a
reasonable standard to use in determining how “good” a school is. I would go
further and add: to what degree has
a school achieved its own
explicit goals? Traditional School
A was a clear success by
traditional criteria of students' academic performance, test scores, and
obeying authority.
School B, however, was much less interested in test scores and, even report cards. Teachers wrote narratives instead of giving letter grades. What School B wanted most were students who had grown intellectually and socially; students who could think on their own; students who could work together easily with those who were different from themselves; students who, when faced with a problem, could tackle it from different vantage points and come up with solutions that were creative. Parents and teachers had plenty of stories about students reaching these goals but few tests or quantitative measures exist that capture these behaviors which School B sought.
Similarly, School C had aims that went well beyond the traditional ways of judging “goodness” in schools. The principal and staff sought close connections with the local community by extending academic content and instruction into the neighborhood. Moreover, students and teachers in School C wanted to make a difference in the community by actively working to improve it. Again, there are no tests that can capture to what degree, if at all, the school achieved its goals. There are indirect measures like growing parent involvement, more participation in school life by neighbors and student satisfaction but beyond that, very little.
Finally, there is another standard to judge “goodness” in a school that some readers may have already anticipated. Recall that I claimed that the fundamental purpose of tax-supported schooling in the U.S. has been (and is) to produce graduates who possess the democratic behaviors and attitudes I mentioned earlier. I have argued that this is (and has been) a common framework for public schools in the U.S. since their founding. It has been lost in the battle of words and programs among public officials and educators who champion traditional or progressive schools. A “good” school, I would argue, is one that has students who display those virtues in different situations during and after their careers.
But how can educators, parents, and taxpayers ever determine whether schools have achieved these outcomes? Certainly, existing standardized tests miss coming close to what I suggest. Schools B and C lack assessments that would capture their worthwhile activities. There have been previous efforts to do so but they have faded from the memories of current educators and public officials. Much more would have to be done in constructing such measures. It is not an impossible task (Smith and Tyler 1942).
Here, then, are my criteria for determining “good” schools:
These criteria contain measures by which schools could be held responsible for achieving desired outcomes. Both progressives and traditionalists, I believe, could declare a truce to this hapless war of words and come to agreement over these criteria.
There are some hopeful signs that
the narrow but popular criteria currently used to define "good"
schools might be broadening. Beginning in the early 1970s, alternative public
schools (magnet schools created out of the desegregation struggles; other
schools because of parental dismay with existing schools) were established that
ranged from highly traditional to intensely progressive to hybrids of both.
Becauparents could choose which ones to send their children, no official
approval or disapproval was stamped on these alternatives. Since then,
alternative schools anchored in the principle of parental choice have survived
and, in the late 1980s, expanded
into the Charter School movement. Over 700 public charter schools of different
ideologies in 20 states enrolling 170,000 students have been approved by state
and local authorities. The idea that there are many ways to school children has
become central to charter schools. Finally, the federal government has embraced
ecumenism in "good" schools in the Comprehensive School Reform
Demonstration program. The legislation authorizing the program offers $150 million
to states and districts to improve schools by choosing among a menu of existing
school-site programs that include a spectrum of efforts that both progressives
and traditionalists would applaud (Fantini 1973; Raywid 1985; Wells 1993; U.S.
Department of Education 1997; Rothstein 1998; Consortium for Policy Research in
Education 1998).
Let me close by summing up my answer to the question: Why is it so hard to get "good" schools? First, notions of “goodness” vary. There is nothing inherently wrong with that since diverse notions of goodness about schools reflect the national difficulty in defining a "good" society, a "good" person, how to best raise a child, and worship God. Democracies are forever reconciling and institutionalizing diverse values through electoral, judicial, and legislative compromises. Respecting different versions of "goodness" has been a political issue in each domain, including education.
Second, these varied notions of "goodness," particularly about rearing children have been transferred to schools and become politicized. This is neither novel nor surprising. Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, and John Dewey pointed out repeatedly the links between education and civic life. What has happened in the last century, however, is that the connections have gotten mired in the century-long debate between educational traditionalists and progressives over what is "good" teaching and a "good" school. School officials' responsiveness to interest groups pressing for their agendas and the inability of policy makers or researchers to demonstrate which policies or practices are superior have kept the ideological warfare alive. Within debates over what direction public schools should take, progressives and traditionalists have contested which pedagogical innovations are better for children, ignoring that there are more ways than one to define "goodness" in schools, and failing to acknowledge openly the mixes of both that have steadily changed schools in this century (Cremin 1990).[14]
And that is why, “good” schools are hard to get. It is not because of an absence in expertise or a lack of will. Parents and educators have created “good” schools often. "Good" schools are hard to get because of an evangelical bias for only ONE version of what is a "good" school. They are hard to get because few have examined carefully, deliberately, and openly different conceptions of "goodness" and how each view is connected to the essentials of democratic life. Until Americans shed the view of a one-best-school for all, as religious and secular leaders have come to accept in their domain, the squabbles over whether traditional schooling is better than progressive will continue. Such a futile war of words ignores the fundamental purposes of public schooling as revitalizing democratic virtues in each generation and, most sadly, ignores the many "good" schools that already exist.
NOTES
1
The words "traditionalist" and "progressive" are variations of common terms used to characterize different ideological positions on learning, teaching, knowledge, curriculum, governance and organization of schools. As with "conservative" and "liberal" in the political world, each term carries the baggage of positive and negative connotations, depending upon the reader. Those who use the dichotomy have often been criticized for simplistically dividing the world into halves and obscuring much variation; nonetheless, the dichotomy has survived in popular and scholarly discourse. See, for example, John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1900 and Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan and Co. 1938); Nathaniel Gage, Hard Gains in The Soft Sciences: The Case of Pedagogy (Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa, 1985). Charles Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom (New York: Random House, 1970); E.D. Hirsch, The Schools That We Need and Why We Don't Have Them (New York: Doubleday, 1996). Other writers have tried hard to avoid the educational labels even coining new ones (Philip Jackson, The Practice of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986) but have still used the notion of competing patterns of education.
Acknowledging the risks for readers that accompany using these familiar terms, I need to note one in particular and clarify what I mean: In using each word, I recognize that there are a range of positions taken by progressives (or traditionalists) on any given issue. Traditionalists, for example, vary in their views on the use of phonics in teaching reading, removing books from the school library, prayer in school, and vouchers. In short, there is no monolithic traditionalist (or progressive) view on each of these issues.
For continuing controversy of the teaching of reading, see National Research Council, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Washington,DC: National Research Council, 1998); for similar controversy in math, see Lynne Cheney and Thomas Romberg, "Creative Math or Just 'Fuzzy Math'? New York Times, August 11, 1997, A13 and Tom Loveless, "The Second Great Math Rebellion, Education Week, October 15, 1997, p. 48. Also, Ethan Bronner, "In Bilingual Schooling Setback, Educators See Another Swing of Pendulum," New York Times, June 10, 1998, p. A27.
2
I recognize that there are prior conditions that are essential to securing any version of a "good" school: Parents sufficiently attached to public schools to enroll their children and support the school's goals, committed (and qualified) professionals, adequate facilities, and minimally sufficient resources to get a school running and sustain its operations. When these prior conditions are absent, securing "good" schools of any type are even more difficult to attain.
3
I have visited both schools over the past two decades.
4
A recent example is the Effective Schools movement that began in the late 1970s and has continued since under different names. See Ron Edmonds, "Effective Schools for the Urban Poor," Educational Leadership, 37(10), pp. 18-24 and Pamela Bullard and Barbara Taylor, Making School Reform Happen (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1993); For previous efforts to prove one pattern of schooling better than the other, see Neville Bennett, Teaching Styles and Pupil Progress (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Wilfred Aikin, The Story of The Eight Year Study (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942); and the major federal government's evaluation effort of early childhood models of teaching and learning called Follow Through. See Richard Elmore, "Lessons from Follow Through," Policy Analysis, 1(3), 1975, pp. 459-484; Ernest House, et. al. "No Simple Answer: Critique of the Follow Through Evaluation," Harvard Educational Review, 1978, 52(4), pp. 128-161.
5
Some readers may question whether there are, indeed, configurations of ideas and practices that can be safely labeled "progressive" or "conservative." Two criteria can be applied to determine whether such patterns have existed and are present now: (1) There are sufficient features such as concepts and practices held in common over time that cohere into a tradition. >From notions of what constitutes good teaching and learning to report cards and daily classroom practices, one can easily construct parallel columns that make clear the differences between the two patterns; (2) There is sufficient evidence that each of the patterns were putinto practice at different times. I have cited some sources already that have offered such evidence. Based upon these criteria, I have argued that these patterns exist in both words and practice.
For recent works prizing traditional patterns in schooling, see William Bennett, James Madison High School (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1988); E.D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987); Diane Ravitch, The Schools We Deserve (New York: Basic Books, 1984). For works prizing progressive forms of schooling, see George Woods, Schools That Work; Ann Bastian, Norm Fruchter, Marilyn Gittell, Colin Greer, and Kenneth Haskins, Choosing Equality: The Case for Democratic Schooling (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986); Joseph Featherstone, Schools Where Children Learn (new York: Liveright, 1971).
6
The two reasons I offer for the protracted ideological wars over different patterns of schooling are anchored in institutional and political conflict models that are elaborated in my previous work and drawn from other theorists. We see public schools as political entities heavily influenced by a web of social beliefs in the larger culture (e.g., ideas about child rearing, what is appropriate knowledge to be taught in schools) and utterly dependent upon taxpayers and parents for fiscal and political legitimacy. Although institutional and political factors do shape organizational behavior, they do not mechanistically determine schools' responses. Schools, as institutions, have had discretionary room to adapt to these environmental demands through political processes and leaders' actions. I have used these models in my work, see: How Teachers Taught, second edition (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993); How Scholars Trumped Teachers: Constancy and Change in University Curriculum, Teaching, and Research, 1890-1990 (Teachers College Press 1999). For elaboration of the theories I use here, see George Lakoff, Moral Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); John Meyer and W. Richard Scott, Organizational Environments: Ritual and Rationality (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992);Paul DiMaggio, "Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory," in Lynn Zucker (ed.) Institutional Patterns and Organizations (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1992), pp. 3-21; Frederick Wirt and Michael Kirst, Schools in Conflict (Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, 1989).
7
Lakoff's argument is that all arenas of American life are permeated by the linkage between politics and family rearing practices. Public support for prayer and moral education in schools has been evident in opinion polls for decades. See Lakoff, pp. 228-236. Also Stanley Elam (ed.) The Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa Polls of Attitudes Toward Public Schools, 1969-1988(Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa Foundation, 1989), p. 7. For a discussion of evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants and their struggle with modernist Protestants, see Alan Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 266-276.
8
See, for example, Daniel Flannery, "School Violence: Risk, Preventive Intervention, and Policy," Urban Diversity Series No. 190, ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, December 1997.
9
I could just as easily made the point on academic standards. While progressives and traditionalists argue at length over who should set the standards, and exactly what those standards will be and in what areas, there is general agreement among both groups, white and black, that there should be academic standards that expect more from students. Elam, p. 8; Public Agenda, First Things First: What Americans Expect from Their Public Schools (New York: Public Agenda, 1994; Public Agenda Online, "African-American and White Parents Have Very Similar Definitions of Good Schooling," April 1998).
10
In California where heavy immigration from Mexico and Asia since the early 1980s has impacted the schools, voters have approved in the last three years referenda that banned public services to illegal immigrants and bilingual classes in schools. See "Language, Culture: How Schools Cope," Part 2 of "Public Education: California's Perilous Slide," Los Angeles Times, May 18, 1998, Section R, pp. 1-6.
11
In 1989, President George Bush convened the nation's governors in an educational summit. The outcome were national goals that President Clinton has endorsed and expanded. Goal 3 aims to have all students leave grades 4,8,and 12 by the year 2000 demonstrating proficiency in academic subjects; goal 5 states that by the year 2000, American students will be first in math and science on international tests. See The National Education Goals Panel, Building a Nation of Learners (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), pp. 11-12. Most school districts now have press releases when state and local test scores are published. Media list school-by-school scores with comparisons to state and national averages, where appropriate. For typical examples of these articles, see Valerie Strauss, "D.C. Test Results Seen as 'Progress:' Low Performers in Early grades Show Biggest Gains," Washington Post, June 11, 1998, p. D1; Lori Aritani, "On Test Scores, Is It OK To Be Average?" San Jose Mercury News, July 2, 1998, p. 1.
12
The partial list I offer of democratic behaviors and attitudes could easily be labeled as a liberal credo. There has been (and continues to be) acrimonious divisions over whether liberal and conservative ideologies have dominated political thought in the U.S. Rather than enter that fray, I chose this partial list from those liberal and conservative intellectuals that share basic modernist, secular values. I have, in other words, excluded the fundamentalist wing of conservatism that is generally anti-secular and has established separate private schools. For a discussion of these common values see Brinkley, pp. 277-297.
13
For educator and parental support of traditional forms of teaching and schooling for black children, see Lisa Delpit, "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children," Harvard Educational Review, 58, 1988, pp. 280-298; Michelle Foster,"African American Teachers and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy," in James Banks (Ed.) Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (New York: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 570-581: Gloria Ladson-Billings, Dreamkeepers (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994; Public Agenda Online, "Parents--African American and White--Have Very Similar Definitions of Good Schooling," April 1998).
14
The
evidence of hybrids of traditional and progressive practices is strong in this
century and often ignored by partisans of each ideology. For example,
small-group work in elementary and secondary schools--a progressive innovation
at the turn of the century--is standard fare in schools that prize traditional
practices. Movable classroom furniture, field trips, physical education,
community-oriented schools are other innovations that derived from progressive
ideology and have become embraced by parents, administrators, and teachers in
traditional schools. Inattention by the faithful of either side to these
changes in schools over the decades has helped prolong the futile war of words.
While this is not the place to make the argument, I would point out here that
few teachers and principals are progressive or traditionalist ideologues; they
have learned that hybrids have been most practical in educating children who
bring so much diversity with them into classrooms.
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