Amateurs in the Little Red School House

I am an expert flier. Over the last 15 years I have logged literally millions of miles on thousands of flights as a passenger. Every time I fly the same thing usually happens before the flight. As I am boarding, I walk down the jet way to the door of the plane. A flight attendant greets me warmly. I look to my left at the cockpit door which, at that point, is open. The pilot and co-pilot are busy going through their pre-flight rituals. I turn right, walk down the aisle and find my seat. I am proud to say in the millions of miles and thousands of flights, not once have I been tempted to turn left, walk into the cockpit and sit in the pilots lap and tell him or her that I am an expert flier and I think I will take this puppy up this time. It would be ridiculous. I know my place.

Yet every day school people are subjected to folks wanting to sit in their laps and take the controls simply because they have attended school and that makes them an expert school person. After the Nation at Risk Report came out in 1983 nearly every politician decided they were the "education representative," or "education governor" or even the ''education President." Since it had been said that schools were in crisis, everyone wanted to be credited with solving it.

The problem we have is, "Nation at Risk" was overblown in its rhetoric and flawed in its analysis. There may have been a "rising tide of mediocrity" in the schools but subsequent reforms have merely dumped more water on the problem. Schools have gradually gotten better over time; the problem is they have been making incremental progress in an exponential environment. They need to get better but do so by doing things differently. There may have been a "unilateral disarmament" as suggested by the report but if you recall the concern was over Japan and Germany, our vanquished World War II foes who seemed to be gaining on us and the schools were thought to be the cause of it.

There was much concern raised over the fact that more money was going into education but there had been a small but steady decline in the SAT scores--proof positive that the schools had failed. And drop-outs were a problem. Little mention was made of the fact that only a couple decades earlier more students were leaving school before graduating than were finishing and the drop-out problem only because a problem when more were staying in and it was noticed many were not. The other part of that equation was that in the 1950's when more were leaving, they could leave and still contribute to the economy and make a living. By the 1980's this was increasingly not possible.

No one talked about the fact that despite the long, slow steady drop in the average SAT score, every subgroup taking the test had increased its average score. The reason for the decline was that more students in the lower scoring subgroups (poor and minority children) were aspiring to college and taking the test--what might have been celebrated under different circumstances. The reason it wasn't was that the "amateurs" were now running in full-throated panic over the rise of Japan and Germany. Well, they did rise, until the late eighties, a few years after the study but then they ran into their own problems. I don't think they blamed their schools. That seems to be a uniquely American trait. Today we are in a panic over India and China. Same story, different villains. The reality if that the rest of the world is catching up--not because we are falling back but because they are finally in a position to move to first world status (although the reality is that millions of children in India and China are more than left behind--it is just that millions more are doing well and that creates pressure on us.)

The last decade has seen even more panic about the condition of education in America and "so-called" school reformers have taken flight with an emphasis on standards and accountability. They have done so with the aid and abetting of elected officials and corporate heads. The last few months should have put a lie to the wisdom of corporate America. They don't seem capable of running their own business much less dictating how education should be improved. And whether our elected officials know what they are doing is an ongoing matter of debate.

Here's the problem. Those who work in school on a day to day basis have been ignored ("they are part of the problem, not the solution" say some) and those calling the shots have little understanding of the complexity and difficulty of really changing a massive system affected directly by policies that have little to do with what happens in the classroom. If we, as a nation, did a better job of dealing with health care for children and with offsetting the debilitating effects of poverty it would be easier and more appropriate to move accountability directly into the schools and classrooms. As long as schools are affected by the context they exist within, we are apt not to see the kinds of improvements we want from the types of reforms we are currently pursuing.

Here's the real issue. The so-called reformers which have found even more power in the Obama administration know some things. But they don't know everything. It is great to consider charter schools as a part of the solution but they are just that--a part and thus far a small part. Most of America's children go to public schools. Some bad, some OK, some good and some wonderful. We could learn much from looking at the very good ones and seeing what they are doing and if it has any implications for the rest before we put too much effort into newer, untested models. It is good to look at alternative sources for teachers al la "Teach for America" or "New Leaders for New Schools" but they are the source of a very small fraction of new teachers and leaders. The problem, as I see it, is that these and other "amateurs" have pushed out the professionals. As the new administration was staffing up some of these folks even used the term "professional" in a pejorative sense. That is a recipe for a really bad outcome. I still want professionals handling my health, caring for my teeth an flying my planes. The new Secretary of Education, with his less than a decade of school leadership is somewhere between an amateur and a professional. He did some really interesting things in one school system. But I think everyone will be relieved to know that Chicago is not representative of the entire nation. He seems to be a listener and is willing to think about what he hears. He just needs to be sure that he hears some of the pros as well as the well-intentioned amateurs--and that he buffers the reform process from the real amateurs on the Hill and in the White House. Otherwise, his efforts won't get off the ground.