The June issue of The American Spectator carries a thoughtful–though ultimately unpersuasive–article by Lewis Andrews, “Meet the Suburban Parents.” Like legions of activists and analysts before him, he ponders why upper-middle-class parents haven’t rallied to the cause of school reform.
Suburban parents have always been ready to mob a school board meeting to agitate for improved athletic facilities, but never for teacher evaluations or merit pay. The PTA will mobilize families and schools to support the most controversial social movements, from gay rights and gun control to affirmative action and costly accommodations for the disabled, but not a peep about the pressing need to save urban children from failing schools.
In places like Marin County north of San Francisco, Fairfax County in Virginia, the affluent suburbs north of Chicago, and Fairfield County, Connecticut, even very modest reforms that could save taxpayers money while improving the quality of education–giving credit for courses taken at community college or online, for example–are either ignored or downplayed.
It’s a provocative argument, and a worthy topic. But Andrews, like most of us in the education commentariat, isn’t careful enough to keep two very different issues distinct: First, whether affluent parents should be satisfied with the public schools to which they send their own children. And second, whether those same parents can be energized to fight on behalf of school reform for the poor.
The second question, it seems to me, will soon be answered by Michelle Rhee’s new endeavor, Students First. Rhee’s potential donors and supporters surely include many well-educated, well-to-do parents; she is encouraging them to contribute money and time in order to fix the schools of other people’s children, not their own. (Teach For America alumni–sensitized to the plight of inner-city education–will play a key role, I would bet.) The gambit is whether a “social justice” pitch to fix urban education can resonate–and be sustained–with people with the resources to engage politically. Time will tell whether Rhee and others can pull it off.
A totally separate issue is whether affluent parents should be up in arms about their own schools. Here Lewis’s case is the weakest; he writes that some ritzy school districts that spend a lot of money get reasonably mediocre results in student achievement, perhaps because they are too focused on frills instead of the “basics.” What he doesn’t concede is that these schools are probably giving the affluent parents exactly what they want.
Here I must rely on a data set of one: myself. When I think about my aspirations for my boys (ages 3 and 1), I take as a given that they will do fine academically. Maybe it’s naive, but I just assume that they will end up going to a good college, find interesting work, and so forth. What I want for them is to enjoy the ride along the way: Make good friends, have plenty of time for play, learn to be part of a team (athletic or otherwise), tap into their artistic nature, spend as much time outdoors as possible. These inclinations led my wife and I to pick a Waldorf preschool for their early years. We’re not sure we’ll stick with such an “alternative” approach over the long term. But I surely don’t want my boys anywhere near a “testing factory.”
Now, I’m not arguing that all affluent parents are like myself. I’m sure that there are plenty of parents who value academic rigor above all else. We at Fordham are launching an effort to identify different “segments” of the parent market to understand just what it is that parents want, and why. There’s no way the answer is the same for everybody.
But with a degree of affluence comes a degree of luxury. Confident that their kids will do OK academically and vocationally, I bet that many upper-middle class parents want to reach for something more: Emotional, spiritual, and physical growth, especially. And thus the frills that Lewis derides (like all manner of extra-curricular activities and “specials”) become quite important. And as for the test scores–well, who cares if they are really, really high or just really high?
So am I saying that we should provide one kind of education for the rich and another kind for the poor? That affluent kids get to develop their bodies, minds, and spirits, while low-income children suffer through endless weeks of test-prep?
Not exactly. The best schools for children of poverty focus on all aspects of their students’ development. At the same time, they look a lot different than the schools affluent families send their kids to. They are more focused on making sure their charges have mastered the basics; they spend a lot of effort inculturating their kids in middle-class mores; they give regular assessments to diagnose progress. These elements would be overkill in many affluent schools. One size does not fit all.
Pretending that all kids need the same kinds of schools leads to all manner of ridiculous conversations. Consider this segment from FOX last week, featuring my colleague Amber Winkler. The topic of debate was Los Angeles’s recent decision to minimize the impact that homework could have on a student’s grade. Amber’s opponent, and the show’s host, were in clear agreement that their own kids were doing too much homework. And, if they are attending hothouse schools in upper-middle-class enclaves, they very well might be. But that’s totally irrelevant to the question of whether low-income kids (the vast majority in LA) are being challenged enough to prepare them for college–and whether making homework not count is wise policy. (It most certainly is not!)
But if different kids need different schools, then different schools need different policies. And this is where the school reform camp runs into big problems. The No Child Left Behind backlash in the suburbs isn’t due to concerns that the law isn’t working to fix urban education. Plenty of evidence shows that it’s helped. The anger comes from a feeling that the federal law is starting to make affluent public schools worse–or at least worse in the eyes of their customers. If a principal asks a beloved teacher to scrap her favorite unit on dinosaurs or poetry or jazz or whatever in order to make room for test-prep, you better believe the affluent parents are going to be mad. As well they should be. Mandating statewide, test-based teacher evaluations will only make the situation worse.
Smart policy would treat different schools differently. It would be more surgical, focusing tightly on schools that are clearly in distress, and offering benign neglect to the others. Ironically enough, the way to get upper-middle-class parents engaged in school reform is probably to leave their own schools alone.
-Mike Petrilli
I agree with your article in general and thinks it makes a critical distinction between suburban and low income (which means disproportionately low ability) schools.
But you’re flatly wrong about saying it’s a bad idea to stop counting homework for much. Making it count means that kids don’t do it, and if you make it count, the kids who don’t do the homework will fail or get a lower grade simply because they don’t do their homework. In fact, many many students–including low income students–don’t do homework but master the material in class. They will fail or get lower grades in a class that weights homework too heavily. Meanwhile, students who don’t understand the work but religiously do homework (which will be graded primarily for getting it done) will get higher grades.
Homework weighting is the reason so many high poverty schools have students with good grades and terrible scores.
Ideally, tests should be the entire grade–or, for English, essays and tests. But under no circumstances should homework be used as a club to reward students simply for going through the motions and punish those who know the material and don’t want to do the work.
You seriously underestimate the willingness of low income kids to shrug off multiple Fs, waiting out two years of high school until they can go to alternative school, where they will do makework to get credits.
I have been puzzling over this piece. There’s a lot of truth here, but I think you miss the mark when opposing affluence to poverty and enrichment to basics.
There’s a vast range of communities that are neither poor nor affluent. There are many schools where the kids do fine on the tests but are not necessarily learning much of substance. Part of my elementary schooling was in South Hadley, Mass., which, apart from the college community, is middle and lower middle class. Certainly not poor–and had there been standardized tests at the time, most kids would have passed. But the curriculum was lacking. In junior high, there was an institutional decision that the kids shouldn’t be pushed to learn anything, as it was supposedly a time for socializing.
Schools such as these can tell us a lot about what’s happening at both ends. The curricular emptiness is a problem even if the test scores are high. The emphasis on children’s social needs can distract from the learning and lead, ironically, to social unhappiness.
Now, between “basics” and “enrichment” there are actual subjects, which combine the two. If you’re studying Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, you’re gaining insight into English literature and the history of English while reading a brilliant and funny work. Granted, the Canterbury Tales are a bit difficult at first and are rarely taught before high school, but there are works for younger children that likewise build “basic” knowledge while doing much more.
The point is that a curriculum can and should offer things that are important and interesting to know, things that build students’ competence and allow for delight and curiosity. Elite schools do this–but no one harps on it. It is taken for granted that students will read specific works of literature and study history. And if the students’ grammar is faulty, the teacher will correct it with a red pen (no worries about harming self-esteem). I have taught in urban schools where teachers weren’t supposed to write on students’ work; they were supposed to attach a Post-it with a commendation and a suggestion (just one of each–or, at most, two).
So, yes, the question “which schools” is very important. But there are problems common to a range of schools–in particular, the neglect of those very eggs (good curricula) that hatch two birds, competence and interest.
The one size fits all thinking is also discounting the way children learn. Some will be faster and some will be slower–naturally. Some children have a natural proclivity for arts and some for science, etc. This will happen across all economic lines, and hence a problem for all.
Our whole system needs to be redesigned with all the information we now know about human learning, brain science and just plain common sense. Isolating children by their “manufacture date” is about as absurd as you having to only associate with those of your age peers. Same with segregating subjects into separate classes that are studied for only 40 minutes at a whack. Why do we do this? Seriously–why?
Let’s think about what our students need in today’s world. What kind of people do we want emerging as capable, caring and educated adults? What kinds of things do they really need to know? And then we can design a program that will reflect these values.