What an alarming picture: expelled students in Chicago, unwanted black youngsters
in Lynn, vulnerable urban kids terribly harmed by the demand that they meet
state academic standards. What on earth can Massachusetts and so many other
states be thinking of?
Of course, those Chicago students may be troublemakers keeping everyone else
from learning; they may need the "safe schools" that have been specially
designed for them. In Massachusetts, meanwhile, the METCO program (which brings
a select group of city kids to suburban schools)has never been properly evaluated
for its academic impact on the minority students–who are, after all, far
from a random sample of the Boston school population. Sure, they go college
in high numbers, but, most likely, that would have been equally true had they
stayed in Boston. If we want to talk about equity, let’s discuss all of
Boston’s students–not just those who have been privileged to ride
a bus to the suburbs. They all deserve a good education, which is precisely
what the current drive for high academic standards and accountability is about.
Indeed, the reforms that Deborah Meier scorns have been inspired, first and
foremost, by concern for highly disadvantaged kids, who for so long have been
educationally neglected. And already in Massachusetts the new demands are driving
better instruction. For instance, for years Boston promoted students who had
not mastered the most basic reading and math skills; the district is now talking
about strategies to teach reading to those who arrive in high school functionally
illiterate. It’s running a catch-up summer school. Many districts are placing
new emphasis on early intervention to rescue children already behind by second
grade; some are running summer workshops in content areas for teachers; others
are adding more reading and writing to the curriculum, since the tests ask open-ended
questions that assess the student’s ability to understand complex material
and organize a short essay.
The demand for academic rigor is changing teaching in the tony suburbs too.
But it’s not the kids in Lexington and Concord who will gain the most from
the new stress on solid skills and a basic knowledge of core subjects. Deborah
Meier wants different standards for advantaged and disadvantaged children. Instead,
the state is delivering a vital message: no excuses. Kids can come from low-income,
one-parent families, or from chaotic neighborhoods. The color of their skin
may be a few shades darker than that of an Irish Catholic. But in the classroom,
it doesn’t matter. They can still be expected to acquire the knowledge
and skills they will need to hold down decent jobs in today’s economy.
And knowledge and skills are the road to true equality.
Low expectations are demeaning and patronizing, and let’s not kid ourselves
about the basic economic picture. Meier is concerned about "income equity."
Increasingly since the early 1980s, those who know more, earn more. Not the
number of years spent in school, but actual skills determine earnings. Word
knowledge, paragraph comprehension, arithmetical reasoning, mathematical understanding:
these are some of the skills the state-wide assessments measure, and they are
the same skills that middle-class jobs require.
Deborah Meier suggests the definition of "well-educated" is up for
grabs, that there is no consensus on what an 18-year-old should know. Does she
really want to argue about the worth of learning geometry or the importance
of understanding why we fought a Civil War? And how about a nine-year-old? Would
she label the insistence that kids read abhorrent "standardization"?
Should the state remain unconcerned when a child does badly on a third-grade
assessment? No one is talking about punishment; the point is to provide help.
And to do so before the child begins to slip further and further behind, becomes
discouraged, and tunes out.
The kids in her school were learning to read, she would undoubtedly argue.
Not to worry. Trust her. Well, aside from the fact that her students at the
Mission Hill school performed below the state average on the third-grade reading
test, what is the principle here? In setting academic standards, should we trust
everyone involved in every school, including the children themselves? Unencumbered
by the road map that the state provides, will they magically all decide to drive
in a good educational direction?
In fact, what’s all this romantic stuff about schools freed from "outside"
educational arbiters in order to do their own thing have to do with teaching
kids basic democratic values–responsibility for one’s own ideas, tolerance
for others, the capacity to negotiate differences? Totally severed from the
state, some schools may engage in racist admissions practices, teach intolerance,
and celebrate armed conflict. And that’s just for starters. Public dollars
carry strings. That’s what Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is all
about; accept federal money, and you can’t discriminate. Accountability
is now tied to state education funds as well. Schools that the taxpayers fund
must meet the standards that those taxpayers and their representatives set.
If Deborah Meier doesn’t like strings, she ought to advocate the complete
privatization of education–an idea from which she surely recoils. Or she
should campaign to send some educationally deprived students to one of the parochial
schools that are serving inner-city children so well, free from heavy-handed
government interference. She’s a closet no-strings voucher advocate.
Meier sees standards as a threat to individuality. But the highly educated
are the most radical individuals of all in American society–just cast an
eye over the Harvard faculty. The educational system in France could hardly
be more centralized, but the French don’t look like lemmings to me. Knowledge
is liberating, not confining. And you can’t embark on an intellectual adventure–say,
exploring the still unanswered questions about World War II–unless you
have a solid grounding in European history, the immediate German context, and
the chronology of the conflict. Yes, learning requires digesting, even memorizing,
some basic knowledge. But that knowledge, once acquired, becomes the spring
board from which the imaginative individual takes off.
Meier’s essay contains much rhetoric about "democracy" and "community."
She even throws in "commitment" and "love." Nice buzz words.
They warm our hearts. But how do our new academic standards stop the creation
of smaller, more nurturing schools that are tied to the local neighborhood?
And how do they threaten the fabric of American democratic life? (She draws
a lurid link between state-wide standards and low turnout on election day. Quite
a stretch.) Thriving democracies require educated citizens. And educating citizens
is what ed reform is all about.
