Why Education Reform Won't Work

I don’t see anything particularly wrong with any of the proposals from the Education Reform movement. Each of them, taken by themselves, out of context, appears to be a fairly good idea – or at least harmless. But these ideas aren't intended to work out of context; they are intended to work in our dysfunctional system. In that system they don't work. Moreover, they don't solve the problems they are supposed to solve. Most of them don't even address the problems that they are supposed to solve and, worse yet, they generally exacerbate the problem.

Take Education Reform's number one idea: charter schools. Not a bad idea, really. Who could be against the proposed creation of innovative schools with no tuition? Not me. But it doesn't address the problem it is intended to solve - it actually makes it worse. What is the problem that charter schools are supposed to solve? Bad schools, right? What's a bad school? In general, a "bad" school is one with a lot of struggling students - students from uninvolved families, who are from unsupportive families, who are ill-prepared academically, who don't speak English, who are not motivated towards education, who have behavior problems, or who have disabilities that interfere with their education.

Well, how does the creation of a charter school fix that problem? It doesn't. It doesn't even address the problem because it doesn't even try to make any positive changes in the "bad" school. In fact, by drawing any remaining involved families and high performing students to the charter school, and by denying access to students with special needs, it leaves the bad school with even higher concentrations of struggling students.

A better idea? Do the innovation that would have happened in the charter school in the "bad" school. Directly address the root causes of student underperformance. Provide the students with the support they need to succeed. Reduce class sizes, extend class hours, school days, and the school year. Provide study time, homework support, and enrichment opportunities. Foster a culture that values education. Districts don't do it because it costs a lot of money and it creates perceived inequities for adults.

What of Teach for America? What's the problem here? Unqualified teachers? And how does it solve that problem to put people with even less teacher training in front of students? Teach for America volunteers are placed in high poverty schools where high teacher turnover is a problem, but TfA volunteers only commit to two years, then most of them leave. That actually increases the teacher turnover at these schools.

What's the real solution? First, better teacher training at our colleges of education. Second, targeted professional development. Third, mentoring by experienced teachers in the building and the principal. Fourth, meaningful evaluations. All of these things are possible. Could we do with simplified teacher certification? Certainly, but for everyone; not just a few.

Another big Education Reform idea is Merit Pay for teachers. Merit pay takes three forms: pay for performance, pay for taking hard-to-staff positions, and pay for working in challenging schools.

Pay for performance has already been totally discredited. All kinds of studies have shown that cash bonuses don't even work as incentives for anything but the most mechanical tasks. In addition, the evidence simply does not support the belief that teachers significantly influence student test scores. Finally, there is no reason to believe that teachers are holding back on their effort or that a few more dollars a day will spur them to additional effort. The whole proposal is stupid.

A better solution? Give teachers raises the same way people in other professions get raises - none for those with unsatisfactory performance, a small percentage for those with satisfactory performance, and a larger percentage for those with strong performance. Performance measured by the quality of their teaching rather than the quality of their students' learning.

Additional pay for math and science teachers sounds good, but it is equally stupid. The thinking here is that folks with STEM skills can earn twice as much in industry as they can teaching, so to even things up, math and science teachers should get paid incrementally more than Language Arts or history teachers. Hey, if someone is choosing between $85K per year working for a tech company or $40K per year working as a teacher, making it $45K per year for the teaching job doesn't really change the choice. I haven't heard anyone seriously suggest that we offer math and science teachers anything close to what they could make in industry.

I think the better solution here is make it easier for people who have left industry to enter teaching as a second career. The long term solution, of course, is to make STEM skills more common.

Additional pay for work in challenging schools also sounds good, but completely misses the mark. It is predicated on the mistaken belief that money will motivate teachers to make this choice. It won't. These folks aren't motivated by money. Moreover, that idea is based on a mistaken sense of why people don't want to work in these schools. Studies have shown that it would take a lot more money than districts have offerred to cause a teacher to want to work in a challenging school. Money isn't what motivates these folks. I don't understand any effort to incent people that doesn't begin by asking them what they want.

A better solution? Address the problem. Why don't teachers want to teach in these schools? Because the working conditions are worse. So the solution is to invest in the schools to improve the working conditions for the teachers. Make the schools safer for them. Reduce class sizes. Provide more classroom support. Put the most teacher-friendly principals there. If it is necessary to incent them, then incent them with soemthing they want like academic freedom and professional development.

Education Reformers sometimes talk about innovation and how we need more of it. That's one of the major reasons that they support the idea of charter schools. But they don't really support innovation in our public schools. More often than not we see the Education Reformers aligning behind the top-down imposition of standardization. They actually work to prevent the outcome that they claim to support.

A better solution? Allow teachers to innovate. They already want to do it and they will do it for free where they are already working. All that districts have to do is permit it. Definitely demand that teachers cover the content, the knowledge and skills that we expect students to learn, but free them to use the materials and the instructional strategies of their choice. This will require principals to actually supervise teachers, but we want them to do that anyway. They have to do it to properly evaluate the teachers' performance.

It's funny, but none of the solutions that Education Reformer propose will actually solve problems. They don't even address the problems. How isn't that obvious to everyone?