5 Messages About Public Education That Don't Sell (and Ones That Will)

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It’s also just not true. Rutgers professor  Bruce Baker looked at the data and concluded:

On average, higher per-pupil spending is positively associated with improved or higher student outcomes. School resources that cost money — like class size reduction or higher teacher salaries — are indeed positively associated with better student outcomes. Further, when states improve the level and distribution of funding across local public school districts this tends to lead to improvements in the level and distribution of student outcomes.

So instead of talking about the need to “tighten our belts” and adjust to the “new normal” we need to talk about doing what’s really best for kids and getting the resources that are necessary.

Message #4: Schools Should Be Run Like A Business

How often do you hear people say, “If we ran a business the way we operate schools, it wouldn’t be in business very long”?

We’re told that

• Public schools are archaic that they were designed for the industrial age and are out of step with the needs of a “knowledge society.”
• That education is too inefficient and not productive enough, that schools need to focus on “quality improvement” and “zero defects.”
• We’re told that teachers resist change, that they’re protected by tenure, and that schools are a bureaucratic monopoly.

So now superintendents are calling themselves CEOs and parents are being called customers.

This rhetoric doesn’t sell well because it distorts the mission of education.

First when people say run schools like a business, they don’t say what kind of business? Coal mines aren’t run like restaurants.

Second, most businesses fail. Do we really want schools that are constantly failing? How is that good for kids?

Third, you’ve all heard the Papa John’s tagline “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza.” Well, as Jamie Vollmer has pointed out, schools can’t control their ingredients. They have to educate all children with the resources they are given by the community.

Lastly, businesses are not democratic institutions. Schools must be democratic if we want parents and taxpayers to have input into how schools are run. And schools must model democracy if we want children to be prepared to function in a democratic society.

So instead of comparing schools to businesses, we should be talking about schools as essential infrastructure, like fire and police protection, roads and bridges, and our electoral process.

Message #5: Higher Standards Will Solve Inequality

It seems today that whenever the issue of education inequality or the achievement gap comes up the reply is to raise standards. We’re often told that the way to reduce inequalities is to

• Hold all students to the same, more rigorous, learning expectations.
• Make teachers ratchet up the difficulty of curriculum so that, for instance, algebra is taught in earlier grades, or little kids are made to read more difficult nonfiction rather than Charlotte’s Web.
• And demand that states and school districts raise the cut scores on high stakes tests so more students fail.

At a  panel on education at a conference I went to earlier this summer I heard one of the panelists call the Common Core State Standards “Brown 2.0″ likening the new supposedly higher standards to the landmark Supreme Court case that forced the racial integration of schools. Really?

The message higher standards solves inequality doesn’t sell well because it overpromises the benefits of standards, and it lets those who are responsible for persistent inequality off the hook.

You can’t raise the bar while at the same time you’re cutting the supports children need to reach it.  As my colleague  John Jackson likes to say, this is like throwing a kid who doesn’t know how to swim into the deep water and then continuously pulling back the shore.