The schools' burden
One of the sharpest divides in perceptions about the challenges and solutions facing education surrounds the role of schools. Put plainly, it's the related questions of how much schools can be expected to do and how much schools should be expected to do. On the one extreme are those who believe schools should be social institutions as much as educative ones, thinking of the school as a place that should actively counter issues such as health care and poor parenting. The polar opposite camp wants the social work extricated from the schools, demanding that students leave their problems at the door as they enter the building where it is their sole job to learn. Few people actually fall squarely into either philosophy, but we can generally correlate "liberal" with the former and "conservative" with the latter.
What's really intruiging is that neither extreme comes to the conclusion that the schools can and should be expected to teach every student to a point of proficiency that maximizes his or her opportunity. Take, for example, hardline anti-NCLBer and fellow blogger Jim Horn, who argues that:
This logic has its counterpoint in the position that it's up to the students to decide to learn, and that external factors are simply excuses.
Now, first of all, the evidence undercuts both trains of thought. Poverty and socioeconomic factors clearly do play a role in education, if for no other reason than schools in higher-poverty districts recieve less money, less experienced/excellent teachers, etc. Yet at the same time, there are high-poverty schools that face these challenges and overcome them to the tune of nearly complete proficiency. Witness Elmont H.S. in New York, M. Hall Stanton, City Springs, Dayton's Bluff, J.E.B. Stuart, etc., etc. It's fine to offer that these exceptional schools are unusual, but that's only because they are currently exceptions; there is no reason to think that such success isn't replicatable.
But what's more interesting to me is the logical conclusion of either the "all-environment" or "no-environment" crowds (or, to be fair, those falling near those extremes): Simply, that some students are not going to learn. You're never going to be able to alleiviate poverty, though it's a noble goal; you're never going to be able to have every student just buck-up, though it's a good goal. So, what happens to those kids on the margins? And, what happens to the kids during the generational task of repairing societal fault lines? Sorry, wrong place at the wrong time, have a nice not-very-productive life?
I don't buy it. As Aristotle's truism has it, everything in moderation. We can't ignore the effects of poverty, not on the schools or on the kids. A bad home life is not conducive to wonderful learning, and low-SES kids have a bounty of challenges that their wealthy peers don't ever have to worry about. There is massive social work to be done, and every effort will ease the challenges a bit more. Yet at the same time, we can't use poverty as a wringing-our-hands excuse for failing to educate these students. Not when we know for a fact that poor children can succeed at just as high a level as anyone else.
Let me sum it up this way: Kids born into a low-income family currently have a 9% chance of recieving a bachelor's degree by age 25. That either means the bulk of the other 91% are stupid and lazy, or inexorably crippled for life by the conditions of their birth. Or, the third option -- they're a segment of the population with unique obstacles that our educational system has yet to properly address.
The fork between assigning the school no responsibility and assigning the school every responsibility is a choice between Scylla and Charybdis. The only safe course is to steer carefully through the middle.
What's really intruiging is that neither extreme comes to the conclusion that the schools can and should be expected to teach every student to a point of proficiency that maximizes his or her opportunity. Take, for example, hardline anti-NCLBer and fellow blogger Jim Horn, who argues that:
The sad, but irrefutable, fact remains that the achievement gap that we hear so much about is a product of the income and opportunity gap, which is a product of a tradition of racism that goes back over 300 years in this country. It is a problem that will not be resolved by pretending it is the fault of the schools.
This logic has its counterpoint in the position that it's up to the students to decide to learn, and that external factors are simply excuses.
Now, first of all, the evidence undercuts both trains of thought. Poverty and socioeconomic factors clearly do play a role in education, if for no other reason than schools in higher-poverty districts recieve less money, less experienced/excellent teachers, etc. Yet at the same time, there are high-poverty schools that face these challenges and overcome them to the tune of nearly complete proficiency. Witness Elmont H.S. in New York, M. Hall Stanton, City Springs, Dayton's Bluff, J.E.B. Stuart, etc., etc. It's fine to offer that these exceptional schools are unusual, but that's only because they are currently exceptions; there is no reason to think that such success isn't replicatable.
But what's more interesting to me is the logical conclusion of either the "all-environment" or "no-environment" crowds (or, to be fair, those falling near those extremes): Simply, that some students are not going to learn. You're never going to be able to alleiviate poverty, though it's a noble goal; you're never going to be able to have every student just buck-up, though it's a good goal. So, what happens to those kids on the margins? And, what happens to the kids during the generational task of repairing societal fault lines? Sorry, wrong place at the wrong time, have a nice not-very-productive life?
I don't buy it. As Aristotle's truism has it, everything in moderation. We can't ignore the effects of poverty, not on the schools or on the kids. A bad home life is not conducive to wonderful learning, and low-SES kids have a bounty of challenges that their wealthy peers don't ever have to worry about. There is massive social work to be done, and every effort will ease the challenges a bit more. Yet at the same time, we can't use poverty as a wringing-our-hands excuse for failing to educate these students. Not when we know for a fact that poor children can succeed at just as high a level as anyone else.
Let me sum it up this way: Kids born into a low-income family currently have a 9% chance of recieving a bachelor's degree by age 25. That either means the bulk of the other 91% are stupid and lazy, or inexorably crippled for life by the conditions of their birth. Or, the third option -- they're a segment of the population with unique obstacles that our educational system has yet to properly address.
The fork between assigning the school no responsibility and assigning the school every responsibility is a choice between Scylla and Charybdis. The only safe course is to steer carefully through the middle.
This entry was posted
on Monday, November 21, 2005 at 5:49 PM.
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